MacBook Pro 2011

[Charles Tait]

Hi there,

I was planning on selling my old MacBook and decided to do a factory wipe on it, thinking that it would have been simple to re install.

Now that the hard drive has been wiped, when I boot from option or cmd R it goes to run the install and even with internet connected says missing download files.

I have also attempted to install via a bootable External drive, but I've only been able to achieve this with Catalina. The reason being, my new MacBook will only let me download this version from the store.

Is there another way of downloading a bootable installer of High Sierra, or an older version like Lion (that's what it shipped with). I don't have anyone else that has an older MacBook to use theirs to download the file.

TIA

 

[Stephen.R]

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.

support.apple.com

Links to the installers for 5 or so macOS installers, + instructions for creating a bootable disk.

 

[Charles Tait]

Thanks for the reply.

I have seen this link already. The issue is that I can't download High Sierra as it gets upset because I already have a newer version.

 

[Stephen.R]

Oh, so it does. That worked as recently as Mojave - I made a combination High Sierra/Mojave/Catalina bootable flash drive (from Mojave) earlier this year.

I tried the command line option too, and it isn't working for 10.13 or 10.14. However, if you just want a usable version (which can possibly be updated once running): The El Capitan link on https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT206886 works!

 

[Charles Tait]

Once the .dmg file has been downloaded, how do you go about loading it onto the external drive? As once you open the package it will not let the programme start to begin install onto external disk as it states that the MacBook (new one) already has newer version installed. Is there a terminal command to install this onto the external drive?

 

[Stephen.R]

The first page I linked details the process:

El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.

 

[Charles Tait]

When i try and run the package I get the following

"This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer."