Macbook from 2009 Reinstall OS

[tekkaman]

Hello,

Someone brought me a Macbook from 2009 to fix. It appears the hard drive is busted. I'm testing if the laptop works with a spare hard drive. I researched and it seems OSX El Capitan is compatible with it. I don't have any other macs to create a bootable media. I have a USB DVD burner with some disks and I have a USB drive I could use. I found the .dmg file but I don't know what to do with it. I haven't found any guide to create a a bootable disk using a Windows or Linux computer. Help!

 

[darkpaw]

I think you can use TransMac on a Windows PC. Should be free.

 

[mikzn]

Have your tried any of these these options when you start up ?

Command (⌘) + R: Should Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version.

Option + Command (⌘) + R: Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.
 Should launch internet recovery to find the latest macOS compatible with your Mac.


Shift + Option + Command (⌘) + R: Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the version closest to it that is still available. Should launch internet recovery and then find the version of macOS that came with your Mac.

Mac startup key combinations - Apple Support

Learn about the Mac features and tools that you can access by holding down one or more keys during startup.

support.apple.com

 

[tekkaman]

Thanks for your replies. I tried using Transmac to create a bootable usb drive. I think it works. But I can't seem to get the Macbook to boot from usb. I tried the pressing option alt as explained in the link provided during boot but all I get is the startup sound, the cursor and a white screen. The symptoms it had before me tampering with the computer was the folder with question mark. I checked the smart data on windows and the hard drive is in bad condition. I put another one to test if the computer works before telling the client to get a new hard drive or ssd. But I'm at a loss on how to make it boot from usb.

 

[YanniDepp]

SSDs are ridiculously cheap these days. Buy a 500GB SSD for 50 bucks and upgrade the RAM to 8GB and you've got a great machine.

Macs are fussy about booting from USB. If you create the USB stick properly from another Mac, it's really easy. But trying to set it up from a Windows or Linux box is very fiddly. It has to be partitioned a certain way - you can't just create a Mac partition on a regular USB stick, you have to change the partition map to GPT.

You'll also have to change the system clock back using the terminal app in the installer. Otherwise the installer will complain that the certificate has expired.

 

[BrianBaughn]

If a new hard drive is truly all the 2009 MacBook needs (and perhaps maximize the RAM) then it can actually run Catalina with the dosdude1 patch.

 

[tekkaman]

I don't have another Mac computer. I only have a Windows Desktop and a Linux Laptop. With transmac it made the USB drive from the dmg image file. But I can't make the computer boot from USB. Don't know how. Now the case of the diagnostic. I'm certain the hard drive is bad. I'm not sure if other components are bad because I haven't been able to make the computer boot. I think I'm going to have to give back the computer to the owner because I'm out of ideas. I think Macs are harder to work with than Chromebooks. I was able to make an unsupported old Chromebook boot to Linux Mint with tinfoil paper and make the computer usable again. I can work if there is information. But there's not much information to fix Macs.

 

[Aston441]

I've had a lot of trouble creating bootable usb sticks for a Mac, unless i used another Mac.

can you just put the other Mac hard drive in the Mac, create the usb from there, and then see if the usb will then boot? Mr Macintosh on YouTube has a few OCLP videos that explain creating the bootable Mac formatted USB.

i made the mistake once of formatting a USB stick on a Linux box once. It took an entire day, using three machines (windows, Linux and Mac) before I was able to unscrew the format horror and make it a Mac bootable stick again.