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Imac El Captain

K

Killerxboricua

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 25, 2019
10
0
Hello Everyone,

Okay so I'm completely new to macs. My girlfriend got one and it needed to be rebooted. Me thinking I was smart learned to put it into recovery mode and did a clean wipe. After doing that I wasn't able to reinstall anything because we weren't the originals owners of this mac. So now I'm stuck in recovery mode without being able to get into Internet recovery mode.
 
What year / model is the mac? If you can connect an external SSD even via USB, use a friend's mac to install a copy of Mojave (or earlier to whatever it supports) to an external SSD. Use that to boot your GF's Mac (externally) and then once you're connected can figure out the best options for doing a clean install to the internal.
 
Okay, Ill be buying a Flashdrive later on today and see if I'm able to boot it up that way from the recovery screen I'm stuck in. I'll reply again if i have an update. Thank you!
 
Alright So i have a flash drive with el captain pkg. But im still stuck in recovery mode. it wont let me boot the image or let me get to safe mode or anything. I continues to be in recovery mode.
 
Do you have another Mac to work with? What is the year and model of your GF's Mac?
 
To be fair I bave no idea the year of the mac. I've done everything possible so far to try and boot it. I'm no longer just stuck in recovery mode. I'm able to switch between recovery and the boot screen but now my flashdrive isn't showing up. I reformatted the flashdrive before I put the el captain os in it. But when I get to the boot menu I dont get the flash drive option to boot the image from it. Funny thing is that i have another flashdrive with windows and it pops up. Not sure if I should reformat the flash drive back to windows and just throw el captain in it or if theres another way around this whole mess
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vertical smile said:
Do you have another Mac to work with? What is the year and model of your GF's Mac?
Click to expand...

But to answer your question no I dont have another mac.
 
It is really hard to say what to do without knowing basic info, like the year, model, and what exactly you did to it. Maybe take some photos and post them?

There are many people here that are very experienced with Macs that would probably be able to get this issue corrected very quickly if the computer was in front of them, but having to work on a problem in third person makes things so much harder, so having as much information as possible would be very helpful.

Killerxboricua said:
To be fair I bave no idea the year of the mac.
Click to expand...
How about what kind of Mac it is? Such as a iMac or MBA?

Killerxboricua said:
So now I'm stuck in recovery mode without being able to get into Internet recovery mode.
Click to expand...
Have you tried to go directly into internet recovery mode?

Try booting up the Mac, then press and hold the "Command", "Option/alt" and "R" at the same time. This might take a minute to see a spinning globe looking thing showing that it is going into internet recovery.
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BrianBaughn said:
You need a Mac to create the installer on the USB flash drive.

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

You can use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system. These steps are primarily for system administrators and other experienced users who are familiar with entering commands in Terminal.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...

The problem with this is that the OP doesn't have access to another Mac to work with.

I am not sure how the OP created the USB installer that was tried already, but it most likely was not created correctly and most likely why it won't work.
 
BrianBaughn said:
Just stating a fact…not creating a problem.
Click to expand...
I understand, I wasn't dismissing your post, but just pointing out that the OP doesn't have a Mac to make the installer.

The link is very helpful for anyone wanting to make a USB installer, but that would require access to another Mac.

If the OP had access to another Mac, there could be all sorts of things that could be done to troubleshoot or correct the problem.

At the very least, it shows the OP why the El Capitan USB drive that the OP made didn't work.
 
vertical smile said:
I understand, I wasn't dismissing your post, but just pointing out that the OP doesn't have a Mac to make the installer.

The link is very helpful for anyone wanting to make a USB installer, but that would require access to another Mac.

If the OP had access to another Mac, there could be all sorts of things that could be done to troubleshoot or correct the problem.

At the very least, it shows the OP why the El Capitan USB drive that the OP made didn't work.
Click to expand...


Hey ill post a picture next of what i have done. but I did what this guy did on the video to make the usb drive.

 
20191227_145851.jpg

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vertical smile said:
It is really hard to say what to do without knowing basic info, like the year, model, and what exactly you did to it. Maybe take some photos and post them?

There are many people here that are very experienced with Macs that would probably be able to get this issue corrected very quickly if the computer was in front of them, but having to work on a problem in third person makes things so much harder, so having as much information as possible would be very helpful.


How about what kind of Mac it is? Such as a iMac or MBA?


Have you tried to go directly into internet recovery mode?

Try booting up the Mac, then press and hold the "Command", "Option/alt" and "R" at the same time. This might take a minute to see a spinning globe looking thing showing that it is going into internet recovery.
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The problem with this is that the OP doesn't have access to another Mac to work with.

I am not sure how the OP created the USB installer that was tried already, but it most likely was not created correctly and most likely why it won't work.
Click to expand...


So I tried to get into internet recovery with cmd and opt +r and no internet recovery mode. So i figured it was a Imac 2007 A1224 model. its pretty old. i also posted pictures of it. The video i posted above thats the method I used to get the boot image but the usb isn't registering when I hold the opt button on start up only the recovery image that I cant use. After that it brings me into recovery mode not able to really do anything besides erase the hard drive over and over again.
 

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Last edited:
Whoa that's a classic machine there. Looks like a 2007 model, specs here.

Check out this thread where they discussed what might be the best OS X for you to install. That thing is not going to take Mojave but El Cap should be fine.

Good thing it's booting into recovery mode. What happens when you select "reinstall OSX?"
 
3SQ Machine said:
Whoa that's a classic machine there. Looks like a 2007 model, specs here.

Check out this thread where they discussed what might be the best OS X for you to install. That thing is not going to take Mojave but El Cap should be fine.

Good thing it's booting into recovery mode. What happens when you select "reinstall OSX?"
Click to expand...
So I get to the point where it asks me to sign in to my apple Id. Other than that nothing happens. I'm not the original owner so it just kicks me out and asks me to sign in again and again and again.
 
Killerxboricua said:
So I get to the point where it asks me to sign in to my apple Id. Other than that nothing happens. I'm not the original owner so it just kicks me out and asks me to sign in again and again and again.
Click to expand...
I don't think that it is an activation lock, I think it is asking for your Apple ID to access the OS installer from their servers.

Can anyone confirm this?

OP, is there anyone that you know that has a Mac?
 
Killerxboricua said:
So I get to the point where it asks me to sign in to my apple Id. Other than that nothing happens. I'm not the original owner so it just kicks me out and asks me to sign in again and again and again.
Click to expand...

Without being there in person it's somewhat hard to provide sound advice on what to try next. Does it ask for your apple id AFTER it already does the installation? It sounds like it's not booting from the USB installer if it's trying to connect to the internet. You may want to try to install with wifi OFF and see what happens.

Alternatively, do you have an Apple ID and what happens if you use it?
 
3SQ Machine said:
Without being there in person it's somewhat hard to provide sound advice on what to try next. Does it ask for your apple id AFTER it already does the installation? It sounds like it's not booting from the USB installer if it's trying to connect to the internet. You may want to try to install with wifi OFF and see what happens.

Alternatively, do you have an Apple ID and what happens if you use it?
Click to expand...

So I have an apple id and I've tried loggin into it but it tells me that its unavailable at the moment or something like that. I also found a co worker that has a Mac and he was able to make a usb for me but I have the same issue. Its not showing up when I Hold the option on restart. That seems to be my issue.
 
I’m just not sure if that old of a Mac supports a USB OS install. Could be part of the problem too, a hardware limitation not a software limitation. Does it have a CD-rom? In my old 2009 Mac I had to do a CD install.

When I’ve installed MacOS I’ve received the option to “skip” or “set up later” the Apple ID. Unfortunately, your situation is deep into the weeds of old equipment and I’ll leave it to maybe others with older Macs to chime in.
 
3SQ Machine said:
I’m just not sure if that old of a Mac supports a USB OS install. Could be part of the problem too, a hardware limitation not a software limitation. Does it have a CD-rom? In my old 2009 Mac I had to do a CD install.

When I’ve installed MacOS I’ve received the option to “skip” or “set up later” the Apple ID. Unfortunately, your situation is deep into the weeds of old equipment and I’ll leave it to maybe others with older Macs to chime in.
Click to expand...
I appreciate it. You're at least trying to help out.
 
I am pretty sure that I have used a USB installer on a Mid-2007 iMac, so I woukd think that maybe the installer might be broken.

A side note about using a thumb drive as an installer, some thumb drives just done work as an installer.

I have experienced this first hand, and it doesn't seem to be brand related, because I had good and bad results using two different Sandisk thumb drives.

Using an external drive would probably give you better results.


But....
Killerxboricua said:
I also found a co worker that has a Mac and he was able to make a usb for me but I have the same issue.
Click to expand...

This opens up all sorts of possibilities, many other things you can try.

Could you ask your co-worker to install El Capitan on an external drive? Then just boot from that, then reinstall El Capitan on the internal drive.

Or

You can connect the two Macs using Fire Wire, and install El Capitan while your Mac is in Target Disk Mode.
 
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