Stop booting into macOS Utilitites

[ChrisKima]

My wife’s iMac running Sierra 10.12.4 is booting into macOS Utilitites but I can’t find a way to run the normal macOS

I don’t know macOS so I ran the Apple First Aid utility
HDD ST1000LM024 Media, done successful and OS X Base system : done successful

However here I ran out of options:

1) Restoring from Time Machine Backup but there are no backups available.

2) Reinstall macOS. The only disk available is OS X Base System: but “this disk is locked”!

= = =

No optical drive is available

LAN is connected

Who can help me to get this macOS to boot into the normal OS

Thank you for your help

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

You should be able to correct the issue by following these steps:
-Power on or restart and immediately hold the Option-Command-P-R keys until you hear the second chime.
-After you hear the second chime, immediately hold the Option key and keep holding it until you see the Startup Manager screen. You should see disk icons for Macintosh HD and the Recovery partition.
-Click Macintosh HD and then click the up arrow in the circle below it and the iMac should startup normally.

You could also choose your startup disk when in Recovery:
-Click on  > Startup Disk... in the menu bar
-Click on Macintosh HD to select it
-Click Restart... button
-Click Restart

If the iMac still doesn't startup normally, then there may an OS X software or iMac hardware issue.

Let us know how it goes,

C

 

[ChrisKima]

Thank you very much for your time and communication Corey, much appreciated.
As it turned out I did get help from a paid professional who concluded quickly that the boot partition was actually empty, blank, no data at all. How come? we may never know. We reformatted the drive and put the OS back in place. No problem since. Fingers crossed.
Again, thank you very much for attempting to help.
Chris

 

[honestone]

Glad you got the problem resolved. Going forward, it would be best if 1) you perform disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs, from a software perspective, very often, and 2) you make backups to an external device.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries...glad it's resolved.

C