I spent hours waiting on my OS X beta program to download but now I've installed it my MacBook pro has stopped working almost completely. It allows me to power on and enter my account password but then white text appears in the top left corner then the screen goes black. It then comes up with a message saying that my MacBook was restarted because an error occurred and I then go through the process again. I've contacted Apple but they said they couldn't provide any technical support on the issue and directed me to forums but after searching I have been unable to find any fixes to the problem.
OS X El Capitan killed my Mac
This problem only seems to occur when 10.11 is installed over Yosemite, so it's likely that some configuration or 3rd party installation on Yosemite is the cause of this issue. A clean install onto another drive or freshly erased partition will give it a higher chance of success - if you want, you can then migrate settings and data from a TM backup using migration assistant.
The good news is that the Guest Account should be accessible to you if you have it active. Booting into Safe Mode should work for you too (switch on and immediately hold the shift key until you see the progress bar), allowing you to copy anything important off your drive. Be warned though that someone else I was helping with this issue could only access Safe Mode once so do everything you need the first time (like allowing the Guest Account or creating a new Admin profile) and don't assume you'll be able to get back in later.
The bad news is that he ended up having to erase and start again.
Do you have a Time Machine backup?
So far I've not been able to access safe mode not even once. The guest profile allows for safari usage only so there's not much I can do when I'm in. I don't think I have a time machine backup but I'd rather start from scratch than for the Mac to not work at all.
Have you tried booting into Recovery Mode (Hold Cmd + R while booting)?
You may be able to reinstall from there.
This worked however when in the OS X Utilities menu it displays none of the options really work for me. Restore from time machine backup offers me a restore Macintosh HD and asks for a password. When I enter the password nothing happens and the option of Macintosh HD goes away. Reinstall OS X options takes me to a screen asking me to set up the installation of OS X 10.11 but it comes up with a message saying 'could not find installation information for this machine. Contact AppleCare. Get help online option is how I ended up here and the disk utility option looks very confusing and I'm not sure what I'm meant to be doing there.
If you have another Mac or another drive with a stable version of OS X on it, you can create a bootable USB installer for El Capitan and re-install it but there's no guarantee that you won't have the same problem afterwards.
If your happy with a clean install of the OS X that came with the Mac, then you can try Internet Recovery: Same as before but hold (cmd + option + R)
Obviously you can upgrade back to 10.10.4 from there...
I just gave the internet recovery a go but after displaying a rotating globe while it loaded it's showing a globe with an exclamation mark across it and saying 'Apple.com/support -4403F'. I have an appointment at a genius bar tomorrow hoping they can help out...
Sorry to hear it (Google says it's because your ISP is blocking the ports to allow internet recovery to work, btw)
If you remember to post back, it would be interesting to know what the diagnosis is...
Only option was to erase everything and start again. Unsure what caused the initial installation to fail and why I couldn't get back in to correct anything but all seems to be working again now it's been wiped.
Thanks for the update. I rather suspected they'd default to wipe and start again.
Best of luck 🙂
I'm having the same problem on my 2011 27" imac, upgraded RAM to 20 gb, intel i5. After install I have been unable to boot whatsoever, I have tried every action afforded to my through research, last resort was internet recovery, where I received an error message: -2106f. Any suggestions?
It is difficult to find El Capitan these days, however last week I managed to get it. Appstore no longer provides OS X El Capitan for download. To solve this issue follow this link: https://bit.ly/2SuNVrJ If you did not download El Capitan before it was removed from the App Store then you will not be able to get it from the Appstore anymore. You can now only download it via alternative sources, Just make sure they are trusted sources though. Hence I recommended the link above. I really hope this will be helpful to you also.