MacOS Installation Goes to White Screen and Won't Complete.

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Level 1

4 points

MacOS Installation Goes to White Screen and Won't Complete.

I have an older iMac, which was given to me, I believe it's a 2012. I booted it into recovery mode and erased the HDD using Disk Utility, following which I tried unsuccessfully to reinstall MacOS. Using Command-Option-R it booted to internet recovery, I connected to a network via Ethernet, it went through the initial progress bar with the spinning globe, and once complete it showed the typical Apple startup logo, with a progress bar beneath. The bar got about 2/3 complete, then it just flipped to a white screen. I tried this a few times with the same result. I then attempted to install El Capitan from a bootable USB installer I created, which did the same thing (without the globe obviously). I don't think it's a hardware fault, because I can boot the computer into Windows using a copy I have on an external HDD, and it works fine. It just doesn't want to reinstall MacOS. Any thoughts?

Earlier displays & monitors

Posted on Dec 30, 2025 10:03 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 30, 2025 9:04 PM in response to jools5858

jools5858 wrote:

Any thoughts?

Try if resetting SMC and PRAM helps. Or try to install to an external Mac OS Extended -formatted disk (APFS if the installer is Mojave or later).

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Answer 2

Dec 31, 2025 11:56 PM in response to jools5858

jools5858 wrote:

Should it need to be MacOS Ext?

Yes, MacOS Extended, Journaled (GUID partition scheme, case insensitive) for El Capitan and High Sierra. In Disk Utility select View > Show All Devices and Erase the topmost device (not any volumes under it).

Try Internet Recovery if the bootable El Capitan installer does not work. Notice that High Sierra and Sierra Internet Recovery need some workarounds:

https://mrmacintosh.com/how-to-fix-the-recovery-server-could-not-be-contacted-error-high-sierra-recovery-is-still-online-but-broken/

https://mrmacintosh.com/fixed-an-error-occurred-while-preparing-the-installation-macos-sierra-recovery-error/

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Answer 3

jools5858 Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 31, 2025 9:54 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Did the PRAM and SMC reset, unfortunately no success. I'll format the HDD to MacOS Ext and try, but as it stands now its a completely raw disk (after the Disk Utility wipe I used Windows DiskPart to wipe it again, so it's just unallocated space), wouldn't that be the same as a brand new drive? Should it need to be MacOS Ext?

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Answer 4

jools5858 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 1, 2026 12:21 PM in response to Matti Haveri

So I took an install of High Sierra which I installed to an external drive (and tested to be good on another 2011 iMac), but when I try to boot to it, it goes to the white screen again. So it's looking more and more like a hardware fault, but like I mentioned in the initial post, when I boot to an external copy of Windows 10, everything works perfectly. I did the RAM dance too just to see, no luck though.

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