Spinning Wheel

[Terry Smythe]

I have a 2013 iMac 27, previously running High Sierra, just upgraded to Mojavi. When it wakes up, the dreaded spinning wheel of death emerges immediately after my desktop emerges. Can't do anything. "Option/Command/ESC" only points to the Finder, does nothing with it. The spinning wheel continues. I'm dead in the water. Currently, I am using my wife's computer to communicate with this forum. Suggestions?

It's getting worse! Just tried re-installing Mojavi, I have it on an external hard drive, attempting to reinstall on my internal 500gig SSD drive. The install process gos through a 3-minute preliminary install, then wants to restart. At that moment the SWOD returns as if by magic and stops the process dead. Restart does not happen, The SWOD just sits there challenging me.

 

[Terry Smythe]

Problem is partly solved. My wife has an identical iMac 27, also running Mojave. Tried a different approach this evening. I cloned her hard drive, carried the clone over to my iMac, hooked it up USB external, and cloned it to my internal SSD drive. Now at least my computer is running. By chance I have a recent clone of my own internal hard drive, but failed to boot, but is accessible.. I booted to my freshly cloned inter nal hard drive, woke up Migration Assistant, it finds the recent clone of my iMac's drive, which I selected as a source for transfer. Unfortunately, MI never stops looking for another source, even though it sees my old clone. Got rid of the SWOD, now face another obstacle....

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Got rid of the SWOD, now face another obstacle....

What is the new issue?

 

[Terry Smythe]

When Migration Assistant wakes up, it looks for a source drive, all drives are displayed. I click on the target source drive, but MI keeps looking, let it sit for an hour and it is still looking for a source. That I clicked on the source does not seem to register, and I have no way of terminating the search.