From MacOS Big Sur to OS X Yosemite by accident

[kmoreau48]

Something really strange happened to me as I was preparing to sell my Macbook Pro, I erased my hard drive and when I restarted the computer I was faced with the question mark inside a folder icon. I reseted the NVRAM and restarted my Macbook Pro. The online recovery appeared during start up and when I choose to reinstall the OS, to my surprise it asked me to install Mac OS X Yosemite.

So I was abble to downgrade to Yosemite by accident, did that happen to anyone here? Not sure what happened. See the screenshots attached.

 

[MacPro2006VBox]

Something really strange happened to me as I was preparing to sell my Macbook Pro, I erased my hard drive and when I restarted the computer I was faced with the question mark inside a folder icon. I reseted the NVRAM and restarted my Macbook Pro. The online recovery appeared during start up and when I choose to reinstall the OS, to my surprise it asked me to install Mac OS X Yosemite.

So I was abble to downgrade to Yosemite by accident, did that happen to anyone here? Not sure what happened. See the screenshots attached.

Interesting!

 

[K two]

Something really strange happened to me as I was preparing to sell my Macbook Pro, I erased my hard drive and when I restarted the computer I was faced with the question mark inside a folder icon. I reseted the NVRAM and restarted my Macbook Pro. The online recovery appeared during start up and when I choose to reinstall the OS, to my surprise it asked me to install Mac OS X Yosemite.

So I was abble to downgrade to Yosemite by accident, did that happen to anyone here? Not sure what happened. See the screenshots attached.

Yosemite is the OS your MBP shipped with. A feature in Internet Recovery. 🧐

 

[Fishrrman]

If it was me...

So long as it boots and runs with Yosemite, I'd sell it "as it is", and let the new buyer then decide "how far forward" he or she wants to take it...

 

[kmoreau48]

If it was me...

So long as it boots and runs with Yosemite, I'd sell it "as it is", and let the new buyer then decide "how far forward" he or she wants to take it...

Yeah that is exactly what I did, I figured that if he wants to update to the latest OS he can do it.
I wasn't aware of that "feature" since everytime a new major OS comes out I see people complaining that they can't revert back to the old OS. I guess it's possible but you won't have your backed up data if you do so.

 

[Amethyst1]

You can always go back to an older version of macOS, but only as far back as the machine was initially shipped with. Eg if your Mac initially shipped with High Sierra you can't go back to Sierra, El Capitan or an even older version.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Same thing happened to me!

I have a 2019 MBP 15' that work let me use. (Was on Big Sur). Well, work wants it back so I turned off "Find My" in iCloud, booted into recovery, and wiped the Data and Macintosh HD partitions figuring that I would reinstall Mac OS later. So, I shut off the MacBook and let it sit for a day.

When I come back to the MacBook it boots up with a ? folder and refuses to boot into recovery with an external USB drive - only giving me the option to put in WiFi while it sits for 12 minutes and installs a Mojave recovery with the option to install Mac OS Mojave.

I tried several times to get it to recognize a Big Sur Bootable USB I set up but - it says "The security settings of this Mac prevent removable bootable media" or something like that - telling me to restart, well, when I do that, I have to do the whole 12 minute recovery download ... again. And there is no Administrator account to change the option, so it won't let me change it to allow me to boot from the Big Sur USB key.

So....... I (for the 5th time) did the 12 minute Wifi recovery install, and then installed Mac OS Mojave.


I guess I could set an Administrator account, boot into recovery from the Big Sur USB installer I setup, and update it to Big Sur... or just send it back like this.