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carlosbracamonteFlag for United States of America

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iMac A1225 Continuous Boot

After installing OS X Yosemite on new SSD drive, iMac is experiencing a continuous boot.

Steps taken:  

1)  Tried to boot to safe mode (press shift key) - unsuccessful; stops half-way during boot process.
2)  Command+option+P+R - Reset NVRAM.
3)  Installed OS X Yosemite on external drive thinking the new SSD had an issue.  Get the same result on the external drive when selected as boot disk.
4)  Disconnected un-needed peripherals, to include the network line before restart.
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strung
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According to:  https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201475

"Your Mac might restart multiple times during installation to install related firmware updates. Once installation has finished, your Mac starts up from OS X Yosemite."
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Justin Bradshaw

Do you still have the old drive you took out in favor of the SSD? If so, and if it still has the system on it, try to boot from it and see what happens.
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Strung - appreciate the link,  My initial thoughts were firmware updates; however, after numerous restarts Yosmite never started up.
Additionally, I connected the same SSD as an external drive on a mini-mac and was able to boot to Yosemite.
Justin - will attempt to boot to the old drive.
Try booting in verbose mode by booting while holding down command-v. You may get a clue to what is happening from the verbose mode screen information.
You could also try running the hardware test:  https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201257
Tried the old drive with OS (same version as SSD) - same result - boot loop.  Even tried old drive on mini-mac with success, able to boot to OS.  

I also booted to verbose and did not see anything that looked suspicious.  

Ran the hardware test and the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) never executed.

Could I possibly be experiencing Kernal issues?
What were the last few lines of instruction in verbose mode before the reboot?

Have you tried resetting the SMC:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
You probably need the system disks that came with your computer to run the hardware test:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201257
You didn't do anything with TRIM or TRIM enabler, by chance did you?

If not, I'd take it to the Genius bar to have them do the hardware testing... or put the original HD back in the iMac and see if that works. Then we'll know it's something with the SSD being in there...
Here is a screenshot of the instruction.  Tried thUser generated imagee SMC reset, same result. Will need to locate the system disks.
Didn't mess with the TRIM.  I did boot to the old drive and I get the same result.  Reason why I went with the SSD drive because I thought my old drive went bad.  I proved to be wrong because I am able to boot to the old drive on the mini-mac.
It sounds like a hardware problem.

Can you boot from a system DVD? Can you boot from an attached USB drive?

If you can boot from a DVD or an attached USB drive, the problem might be the hard drive ribbon cable.
Will it boot into Target Disk Mode? (holding down T at startup)
Tried an attached USB drive and get the same result.  Using a USB EZ-Dock with the SSD and old drive inserted.

Definitely sounds like a hardware problem.  Trying to locate the systems disks that came with the iMAC.
There should be a hardware test on the second system disk.
Seems to boot to target mode, however, the disk icon is not shown.  

May need to acquire the systems disks elsewhere, specifically the second disk as the original disks seem to be lost in transition of users.  This imac is used in the workplace.
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I'm able to get to the recovery partition.  After selecting the partition in a couple minutes I get a voice response "to use English as the main language press the return key", I proceed to press the return key and then hangs about a quarter way through the progress bar under the Apple.

I found the appropriate firmware version, copied onto a disk. Attempted to boot to the disk without success via the Option key.  CD drive not shown, but primary and recovery partitions are.

Tried the Command Option O F keys immediately after boot and didn't get the message as indicated.
Since you can boot into recovery mode, try a Recovery of the OS.
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