Mystery: Mac Mini 2011 High Sierra bootup issue & no 10.13.6 updates ?

[4sallypat]

So I have a 2011 i5 Mac Mini that I am upgrading with a new 500GB SSD SATA drive + 16GB RAM and High Sierra.

There are 2 problems that I have not seen in my years of refurbishing Macs:

1. After I do the normal High Sierra installation from USB, and reboot to the OS, I get a message saying that "MacOS could not be installed on your computer - An error occurred while loading the installer resources...."
Then I restart, hold the ALT/Option key and then I see 2 startup disks: MacOS Installer & my 500GB SSD boot drive.
Booting into the SSD, it works perfectly fine and goes into desktop just fine. When I look in System Preferences for the Startup Drive, I can only see the SSD drive - I can't even choose to ignore / see the MacOS Installer boot disk I saw earlier....
How do I get rid of the "MacOS Installer" ?

2. High Sierra will not update to 10.13.6 which I wanted to upgrade the disk format to APFS....
So it is stuck at 10.13.3.
Software update does not even offer the 10.13.6 update...


With both these issues, do you think I have a hardware problem or is this a weird installation that I have to live with ???

These are the images:

 

[4sallypat]

I have been able to now update the OS to 10.13.6 so that's good.

Unfortunately I keep seeing the Installer boot up message when I restart.....

Anyone ?

 

[mrkapqa]

maybe you got a bad installer image in the first place;
you still could try to install over the existing installation with a new USB Stick, you could also check out DosDude1 page to download a HighSierra image or make even the USB installer with the method he provides (although it is not needed in your case as the machine is natively booting into HighSierra.)

 

[iluvmacs99]

I have been able to now update the OS to 10.13.6 so that's good.

Unfortunately I keep seeing the Installer boot up message when I restart.....

Anyone ?

Check if the Mini 2011 has the latest boot firmware. APFS needs the newest firmware and without it, the machine will eventually face a boot fault leaving a person without disk access. Once you update the boot firmware, everything will be fine. To update to the latest boot firmware, you need to download the High Sierra combo update which will sequentially update the boot firmware to the latest. Hope this helps.

 

[4sallypat]

I will try reinstalling using a different USB drive.
Over the past 50+ High Sierra installs this is the first time I have seen this....

thanks all!

 

[Kaida]

So I have a 2011 i5 Mac Mini that I am upgrading with a new 500GB SSD SATA drive + 16GB RAM and High Sierra.

There are 2 problems that I have not seen in my years of refurbishing Macs:

1. After I do the normal High Sierra installation from USB, and reboot to the OS, I get a message saying that "MacOS could not be installed on your computer - An error occurred while loading the installer resources...."
Then I restart, hold the ALT/Option key and then I see 2 startup disks: MacOS Installer & my 500GB SSD boot drive.
Booting into the SSD, it works perfectly fine and goes into desktop just fine. When I look in System Preferences for the Startup Drive, I can only see the SSD drive - I can't even choose to ignore / see the MacOS Installer boot disk I saw earlier....
How do I get rid of the "MacOS Installer" ?

2. High Sierra will not update to 10.13.6 which I wanted to upgrade the disk format to APFS....
So it is stuck at 10.13.3.
Software update does not even offer the 10.13.6 update...


With both these issues, do you think I have a hardware problem or is this a weird installation that I have to live with ???

These are the images:View attachment 944636

View attachment 944637

Turn off wifi and unplug lan, then go to terminal and type "date 070900002018". You should be able to install the High Sierra normally without the macos installer part after and you should be able to update. Why don't you just use a 10.13.6 HS installer?

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-high-sierra/id1246284741?ls=1&mt=12

Mac mini 2011 should be easy with rams.. I remember 2007 and 2009 has an annoying problem of needing to use the original ram to install.

 

[Kaida]

I will try reinstalling using a different USB drive.
Over the past 50+ High Sierra installs this is the first time I have seen this....

thanks all!

That is because your High Sierra usb installer date expired. I think.. try the date first and see how it goes..

 

[mrkapqa]

delete