Thanks Mavericks - installer messed up

I have the exactly same problem! At the moment it is stuck for I guess 1 hour on 'less than one minute remaining'. I will let it sit that way the whole night, hoping that it will resolve itself... Really not keen to get my back up on it again, just made some documents after the backup.

Someone know a harmless solution?

iFajar said:

I have the exactly same problem! At the moment it is stuck for I guess 1 hour on 'less than one minute remaining'. I will let it sit that way the whole night, hoping that it will resolve itself... Really not keen to get my back up on it again, just made some documents after the backup.

Someone know a harmless solution?

Click to expand...

Just wait and it will complete.

I was also stuck at "less than one minute" for much longer than a minute. Maybe 10 minutes or so.
And I did the install from an external USB3.0-SSD (containing all installer contents) to the internal SSD on a quad-core Mac mini (16GB RAM). I guess there aren't many faster hardware combinations around that you could possibly do the upgrade (for installation, that is. Of course the Mac mini can't compare to new iMacs CPU-wise)

It seems quite plausible that it takes even much longer when upgrading internal mechanical HDD from an installer located on the same disk.

Total installation time for me was 31 minutes for the upgrade (from hitting "install" button to showing the login screen again).

So if I'm stuck on the gray screen after restart for 15+ minutes, I'm not to worry? The install disk is encrypted.... rMBP 2013.

Update: Lost my patience after 90 minutes. Hit the restart button, came back to same blank screen, reset PRAM, came back to same blank screen, reset again, came back to recovery mode, reset again, now went through the restart process and began installing Mavericks. About 45 minutes later I'm back up and running. Phew...

I got stuck too and it took much longer than a minute, but it eventually finished. Just be patient and wait it out, it will finish. I'm not sure how long mine took once it said "less than one minute remaining" but it felt like at least 15 mins stuck on that screen.

let it run, took ages on mine aswell, i almost lost faith too.

I got stuck at less than 1 minute remaining

and shut it down. It restarted as a new computer, and I cannot find my files in finder.

When I look in disk utility and look at available space, my files seems to be there based on the amount of space used.

Any idea how to get to the files since I don't have a recent backup?

Thanks
Johan

I had this too. Literally right when I searched for this thread it rebooted.

Mine took longer than 10-15 minutes, probably about 1.5 hours. Eventually I rebooted my macbook, then when it loaded up, it loaded as a new computer so I had to make 2-3 accounts because the first time it shut down and I had to redo it all over again. Eventually I got it to boot up all the way and now I'm in my regular account with nothing lost.

I posted in another thread, but for everyone facing this issue, there is a solution that doesn't involve a restore.

1. If your computer is starting up as if it is a new / clean install, create a dummy user (i.e. User name: test).
2. Get to the desktop logged in as this dummy user and navigate to the "Users" folder. In addition to the dummy user you created and the "Shared" folder you should see a folder for your old user account. Take note of the exact spelling including cases of that user account.
3. Go to System Preferences -> Users & Groups
4. Confirm that the user you are trying to access is not in the greyed out list of users.
5. Create a new user with the user name (short name) identical the name of the user's folder you are trying to restore.
6. It will say "a folder with that user already exists, do you want to use the existing folder?" Confirm "Use Existing Folder"
7. Let it run for a minute and you will see the dummy user's name appear in the menu bar, on the right hand side.
8. Go to System Preferences -> Sharing and change the computer name to something other than 'dummy user account's' Computer
9. Congrats, everything should be back to normal. Log out of the dummy account and into your old account, everything should be waiting for you as you left it.