For a while now, my Mac laptop has been suggesting I upgrade my operating system to Yosemite. I've been resisting because I really don't like the flat graphic look of the new system and it's not as if any of the features were things I was dying to use. However, when I found out there was a security hole and it wasn't patched in my current OS, I felt I had no choice. I upgraded.
The download went quickly. This is going to be painless, I thought. And then the installation began.
Apple put a little meter to show how far along the installation was. About 1/3 of the way into the install, the bar seemed stuck. It didn't move for more than an hour. Okay, I thought, maybe it will jump forward by leaps and bounds in a bit. I went and did something else.
The progress meter didn't budge.
I touched the laptop and it was burning hot. The bottom of the laptop was even hotter than the top. I grabbed a chill pad and plugged the Mac into it. That cooled down the underside, but the top remained scary hot.
And still the progress bar didn't move. I begin Googling to find out what's going on. I read about people having issues because of some programs they've loaded, but I don't have any of them. In fact, my Mac pretty much only has the software it came with and the programs I use for writing. Some of the posts had links and I clicked through, but nothing helped.
Hard reboot? I wondered. Some people did it successfully. Other people lost their OS and had to boot in recovery mode. Gah! Okay, no hard reboot.
But after more than five hours without anything happening, I decided I had to try it and hope for the best. I held down the power button until the laptop turned off. With some trepidation, I turned it on again. And it immediately booted into the new operating system.
So apparently while it was sitting there, appearing to do nothing, it had finished doing all the installation. I don't know why the progress bar didn't move, but fortunately everything worked great. This was a huge relief because the last thing I felt like doing was messing around, trying to get my Mac Book to work again.
