Home > Questions

My late 2013 iMac doesn't boot, any help?

I have a Late 2013 27" iMac (EMC 2639) with only an SSD drive that no longer boots. I erased the drive and installed macOS Catalina about six months ago. Currently, macOS 10.15.6 is installed. While working on a project in Photoshop, the Mac rebooted twice. After this, I haven't been able to boot it up fully. What I have tried so far: Regular boot: keeps rebooting in a loop from the "Your computer restarted because of a problem Safe Mode: The loading screen stops at 90%. Resetting NVRAM/PRAM: keeps rebooting without getting to the loading screen. Boot into Recovery/Boot from installation USB stick/Verbose Mode: same as a regular boot. Target Disk Mode: I can connect to the drive from my Late 2012 13" MacBook Pro and even boot from it. Swapped RAM for original RAM: This did nothing to help

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Amanda Wong

Amanda Wong

Answered on Monday, April 29, 2024

In the beginning, the iMac reboots twice, it could be a kernel panic issue. And then the iMac crashed, and you can't boot it up, the culprit could be the startup disk, the OS, the peripherals, etc.

The "Your computer restarted because of a problem" message indicates that there may be a hardware problem, software problem, or both with your Mac. It's a kernel panic, technically speaking. As you said, you can use the Target Disk Mode to access and even boot from the iMac hard drive, the startup disk should be fine.

As you said you can't get into Safe Mode, macOS Recovery Mode, and Verbose Mode, and can't boot from a USB, and all of these require to use the keyboard shortcuts, so it is necessary to check whether the keyboard is defective. After you fix the MacBook keyboard not working issue, you can continue to try Safe Mode, macOS Recovery Mode, and Verbose Mode to reinstall macOS, allow to boot from a USB installer, etc.

In addition, the connected peripherals may be malfunctioned and prevent the Mac from booting up normally, you can disconnect all the accessories and perform a restart again. 

As long as you can successfully enter macOS Recovery Mode, you can recover data from unbootable Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, if there is no Time Machine backup, you can save your Mac data in this way.

People Also Ask

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

Safari vs Chrome

Safari vs Chrome: Which is Better?

Some Mac users are hesitant between Safari and Chrome web browsers and want to know which is better. This post will analyze the two web browsers and distinguish the differences between them.

QNAP NAS

Grundlagen, die Sie über QNAP NAS wissen sollten

Mac-Benutzer verbinden häufiger eine externe Festplatte mit ihrem Mac als Time Machine-Backup-Laufwerk. Dieser Beitrag stellt Ihnen eine neue Möglichkeit vor, Ihren Mac über Time Machine ohne ein Laufwerk zu sichern.

Mac Venturaの「ファイルが見つからない」というエラー

Mac Ventura/Montereyで「ファイルが見つかりません」というエラーを修正する方法

macOS Ventura、Monterey、およびBig Surを実行しているMacの「ファイルが見つかりません」というエラーを修正する方法を説明します。なぜ「ファイルが見つかりません」というエラーが発生するのかを説明します。