imac startup stuck on progress bar

[Adalom]

When I switch on my El Capitan imac I hear the ping, the apple appears with the progress bar which moves along but then the screen goes black for half a second and the apple and progress bar re-appear but stuck and the whole screen is slightly greyer. This is as far as it goes. PLEASE NOTE: I have tried ALL FOUR SOLUTIONS from this help page http://girlsinthegigcity.com/2015/01/19/yosemite-progress-bar-is-stuck/, including complete re-install of El Capitan. The problem persists. Does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks, guys

 

[nollimac]

When I switch on my El Capitan imac I hear the ping, the apple appears with the progress bar which moves along but then the screen goes black for half a second and the apple and progress bar re-appear but stuck and the whole screen is slightly greyer. This is as far as it goes. PLEASE NOTE: I have tried ALL FOUR SOLUTIONS from this help page http://girlsinthegigcity.com/2015/01/19/yosemite-progress-bar-is-stuck/, including complete re-install of El Capitan. The problem persists. Does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks, guys

I am having the exact issue...just that my screen never goes black...it just stop halfway on the progress bar. Mine can boot single user mode and I can run fsck -fy command which checks the hard drive and found to be okay...then, typed reboot and get the same issue. I even wiped the hard drive, partitioned in two, then installed El Capitan and Yosemite...both did the same exact thing...get halfway and stuck there not completing the booting process. Since mine doesn't do the Internet recovery, I'll have to buy the Apple Hardware test disk from Apple $19.99...spent three days messing with it so far...my model the 24" A1225. The third party websites that offer AHT to download turns out just empty folders without the diagnostic software.