What's wrong with my iMac? Help please!

Tech Support
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I have a 2015 iMac that I use next to my M1 MacBook Air. It’s on MacOS 12 and is due to update to 12.2.7. But whenever I run the update, after rebooting I see the same update pending, as if nothing happened. Now I read I should try to start the Mac in safe mode. But I can’t start it in safe mode. When I press shift while booting, nothing happens but normal booting. Then I read I should reset PRAM. But when I press the key combination, nothing happens but normal booting. Something’s wrong (even though normal daily usage is totally fine) and I’m stuck. Can anyone help?

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You cloud try to download the update via one of the methods described in this post:

There’s even a terminal command to install updates.

Mac startup key combinations

Dumb question: Is your keyboard working properly?

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Thanks, I’ll try that! I wondered how to download manually and all ressources I found just let me to the app store, which opened the usual update window.

The keyboard seems to work, I can type with it and it’s connected via USB.

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sigh I managed to download and start the installer, but after some unpacking it simply says: Installation failed.

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When I was having trouble with my iMac (probably self-infliced, but don’t know) and wanted to reinstall I had some issues that I could not work out. Can’t remember details to know if same as you. A call to Apple Support was extremely helpful and resolved with their help. Perhaps give that a try.

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Perhaps you could try a reinstall via internet recovery as that would download the latest OS first? (Your files stay safe but having a backup is, as always, recommended.)

I’m thinking this would help in case there’s something wrong with your current installation that’s preventing the update as Recovery boots from separate partition.

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Can you start with CMD+R? If so, you could do a reinstall of macOS. That’s a good start.

I have had this problem with clients, and in some cases I had to reformat the drive and perform a clean install.

The worrying thing though is that you can’t reset PRAM or start without extensions… I would have tried another keyboard and/or other USB ports.