Apple announced on Tuesday that it will be offering the latest installment of its Mac operating system, OS X Mavericks for free online. The operating system can be found as a free download in the Apple App store from your Mac device. It will download in one easy step if you're currently running any of the Mac operating systems from 2007 or later.
In many cases, people are having trouble, even running into problems where the Mavericks installer claims the hard disk is damaged and needs to be repaired. Other times Mavericks simply gets hung up downloading from the App Store or fails to ever complete its final installation. If you are experiencing any of these issues, here are a few helpful tips to help you out, courtesy of CNET.
Download isn't Moving: Initially Apple's servers may have been overloaded with people trying to be among the first to download the new free software upgrade. If you find yourself with a download bar that is simply making no progress, simply end the download by quitting the App Store and restarting your device. Once you log back in, make an attempt to restart the download. This will yield better results, especially if you give it a few hours in between attempts.
Hard Disk Error Message: If your computer finds fault with your hard drive and will not install the program you can use the OS X recovery partition to help. Simply hold Command-R immediately after hearing the boot chime when the device boots up. Once the recovery partition has loaded, you can open Disk Utility and use it to run a disk repair routine on your main boot drive. After any found errors have been fixed, you can then reboot normally and attempt to install OS X Mavericks again.
Finalizing Installation: The first bit of advice offered is to simply leave the download alone for a bit if you find it in limbo between the installer and the progress bar halting. Sometimes the installation hits a snag and needs a bit of time to catch up.
If you are still in your OS X installation before the system reboots to install Mavericks after an hour, you can attempt to fix the problem by quitting the Mavericks installer by force-quitting the App Store. Reboot your system and try again.
If you still find yourself in trouble or if you cannot force quit the installation, you may be forced to hold the power button and manually restart your device. It's important to note that this move is very risky and should be done as a last resort only.
If you find yourself unable to reinstall OS X and are running on no operating system, you'll need to reinstall again with the recovery partition.
A more complete list of how to fix these issues can be found HERE via CNET.
