When booting from USB, I get Circle with Line through it

[Weaselboy]

...are you telling me that since it came with my new iMac in the first place that I am stuck with Yosemite?

Exactly. Mavericks does not include the drivers and system files needed to run your iMac.

There are some exceptions, but typically a Mac cannot run the OS versions from before the product was released for this reason.

 

[WizardHunt]

Exactly. Mavericks does not include the drivers and system files needed to run your iMac.

There are some exceptions, but typically a Mac cannot run the OS versions from before the product was released for this reason.

Thanks for your answer. I did contact Apple and they confirmed what you said as well. They had me re-install Yosemite over my existing copy i have and it seems to work a little better. And the reason for the circle is Apple does not want you to downgrade but rather to move on with the future as with Yosemite. Thanks for your reply.

 

[Lumache]

Thank you very much. Using CCC solved the issue. Many kudos!!

It was probably because you formatted the Partition and not the WHOLE DRIVE - if you notice when you format a partition the Partition Style is not even a selection. There are only two drop down boxes instead of three for name, type and then partition style. Instead there are only 2 when formatting a partition. So if you dont see the third, stop and go up to the DRIVE on the left in Disk Utility.

I say this because it took me reading through this one to get what I had done wrong and someone else here or in another post actually said - hey man - check that you are addressing the drive and not a partition. I was equally puzzled. But lesson learned and learned for good.

 

[Marcoss]

Well, I've just stopped by to say thanks and add a little tip for those that may be trying to create an USB bootable MAC OS Install Disk.

I happen to have an ancient Core Duo MacBook, which is 32-bit only, therefore stuck in Snow Leopard. I had formatted it and replaced Mac OS with Linux, but my wife couldn't get used to it, so I needed to at least install Mac OS back in order to see what I do next (probably install rEFInt in order to try to boot Windows 10 32-bit on this machine). Using the Recovery option in Disk Utility I could never manage to make a bootable disk, but CCC also complained that my USB disk would not be bootable, even when I formatted it in Disk Utility using the "GUID partition" option. So in the end I turned to the diskutil command line utility, and I could finally create the proper partition structure in the USB disk, with a command like the following:

sudo diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT HFS+ USB16G 16G

Notice that /dev/disk3 is the device name for the USB drive (you can find this out by using the "diskutil list" command). 1 is the number of partitions, GPT is the partition scheme, HFS+ is the file system type, "USB16G" is the volume name (you can put anything you want) and 16G is the USB drive size (16 gigabytes in this case).

You have to unmount or eject the drive before you perform this command, and obviously you should be extra careful not to wipe your hard drive by mistake (though there's a risk only if you have more than one HDD connected, since you can't unmount your boot drive).

Hope it helps someone - it took me a while to find a solution!

 

[SevenSeamen]

I also received this stop sign while starting installer from usb (32GB) while trying to install OS X Sierra on empty SSD (MacBook Pro 12'' mid-2012, Samsung 850 EVO SSD). Used Install Disk Creator instead. Still got the stop sign. I left the laptop hangin on the stop sign for 20-30 minutes. Suddenly the loading bar started again from where it left off.

OS X has been installing for about 8 hours now. It displayed 'About 7 minutes remaining' in the beginning, now displays 'About 4 minutes remaining' with about 30% done on the progress bar. Not sure if related to original issue.

 

[DracoWF]

Well, I've just stopped by to say thanks and add a little tip for those that may be trying to create an USB bootable MAC OS Install Disk.

I happen to have an ancient Core Duo MacBook, which is 32-bit only, therefore stuck in Snow Leopard. I had formatted it and replaced Mac OS with Linux, but my wife couldn't get used to it, so I needed to at least install Mac OS back in order to see what I do next (probably install rEFInt in order to try to boot Windows 10 32-bit on this machine). Using the Recovery option in Disk Utility I could never manage to make a bootable disk, but CCC also complained that my USB disk would not be bootable, even when I formatted it in Disk Utility using the "GUID partition" option. So in the end I turned to the diskutil command line utility, and I could finally create the proper partition structure in the USB disk, with a command like the following:

sudo diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT HFS+ USB16G 16G

Notice that /dev/disk3 is the device name for the USB drive (you can find this out by using the "diskutil list" command). 1 is the number of partitions, GPT is the partition scheme, HFS+ is the file system type, "USB16G" is the volume name (you can put anything you want) and 16G is the USB drive size (16 gigabytes in this case).

You have to unmount or eject the drive before you perform this command, and obviously you should be extra careful not to wipe your hard drive by mistake (though there's a risk only if you have more than one HDD connected, since you can't unmount your boot drive).

Hope it helps someone - it took me a while to find a solution!

GOD BLESS YOU! ;-) 4 hours of Googling and trying different solutions and finally yours! Thank you! ;-)
P.S. Worked well for High Sierra.