MacOS – Upgrade from Mac OS X 10.6.8 “Snow Leopard” to OS X 10.10 “Yosemite”; App Store takes over 20 hours

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I have an old Mac, currently running Mac OS X 10.6.8 "Snow Leopard" that I must upgrade to OS X 10.10 "Yosemite". It has 8 GB RAM.

The "About this Mac" gives me the following information:

Mac OS X Version 10.6.8
Processor: 3.6 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

The "more info" gives me (among others):

Model name: iMac
Model identifier iMac 11,3

I first did the "Software Updates" which was ready in a few minutes.

When I try the update to Yosemite, though, I get the spinning cursor and it stays that way. I thought that maybe it was just a huge download, so I left it on for the night. The next day, after more than 20 hours, I still saw the spinning cursor.

This Mac belongs to the workplace. An internet search told me to check the "Purchases" tab on the App Store, but for that I need my boss's password. I'd rather not need that.

I do have admin privileges on the machine.

I've found the Console Messages, but the only thing I see there is "This isn't a bitmap context. Forcing destination format to ARGB_8 for CG_Context".

I've looked at this answer but I find that the CRL is already set to "off".

Network connectivity seems OK. Regular browsing works fine.

So – without access to the purchase record of the machine, but with admin privileges, how can I see what is going on? Ideally, how can I upgrade this machine to Yosemite?

Edit:

The problem seems to be with the App Store. I'm trying to install a free utility (Caffeine) and I get the same problem: the spinning cursor, but no actual progress.

Best Answer

If the desired Mac is slow, you can always use another Mac to do the download of the OS X installer.

  1. Make a guest account on that Mac and sign in with your AppleID since you'll want to shift off your boss's password and get everything under an ID you control.
  2. Go to the App Store and download the installer - but don't run it.
  3. Copy that installer application to a USB drive and take it to the slow mac.

The slow Mac probably needs a back up and possible Disk Utility to repair the catalog structure.

Worst case, you can order a USB media from Apple - call in to the sales number for your country and ask to purchase a media instead of a download. They often will help you enough to get your Mac upgraded for free.

Once you get the install running, you can look at /var/log/install.log to see the progress and where things get slow or hang.

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