2014 mac air delay when power button is pressed

[jackal68]

i'm having problems with my mac air (2014) 11". Every time I press the power button to start, there is a 20 sec delay before the chime (nothing happens within that time). I have reset the smc and pram but they don't make a difference. As well, I cannot seem to boot from an usb drive, which I know it works as I have tried it with my other 2011 macbook pro. However, on the 2014 air, the usb drive is read and starts to load....but it never ends loading (I can leave it all night and in the morning, it is still on the loading bar). Btw, it has el capitan in the usb drive, so the OS should not be a problem.

I'm wondering if anyone had similar experiences with this and what possible solutions could there be?

thanks

 

[rigormortis]

not off hand, but i would recommend instead booting from sd cards. it is faster. all i can suggest is to run apple diagnostics and regardless if it passes or fails take it to the genius bar. make sure you connect the power adapter when running apple hardware test/diagnostics. did you use the correct method to write the usb key?

http://osxdaily.com/2015/09/30/create-os-x-el-capitan-boot-install-drive/

have you tried holding down the option key?

do you have file vault turned on?? i don't think it would make a difference.

 

[jackal68]

As I mentioned, the usb flash works as it was tested on my 2011 macbook pro. You can see in the attached pictures that it starts to boot from the usb drive, but it never finishes loading (so the unit detects the drive).

As well, the 11" mac air doesn't have a sd slot so that's not an option.