Need help installing OS X

[alaaqusous]

hey guys..

so my hard drive went bust a few days ago and long story short, i formatted it using a windows...

now i have a clean hard disk and i do not have the OS disc..

i could buy a disc but my dvd wont work.

i can only do it through usb..

what can i do

 

[talmy]

Assuming you have Internet access, the easiest way is to use Internet Recovery, http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4718.

You can install from USB flash drives, but you would need a working system to create the drive. See http://diskmakerx.com

 

[alaaqusous]

Assuming you have Internet access, the easiest way is to use Internet Recovery, http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4718.

You can install from USB flash drives, but you would need a working system to create the drive. See http://diskmakerx.com

i only have access to Windows now

 

[talmy]

i only have access to Windows now

You need to state what Mac you are installing on. Macs that originally came with Lion or later don't have install disks and can use Internet Recovery, which will install their original OS version. Macs older than that you would need to get the install disk from Apple and attach an external DVD drive to do the install.

 

[Wiley1]

Macs that originally came with Lion or later don't have install disks and can use Internet Recovery, which will install their original OS version. Macs older than that you would need to get the install disk from Apple and attach an external DVD drive to do the install.

My iMac is mid-2010. All attempts to install El Capitan or High Sierra to a blank HD from USB have failed.

What version of OS X was originally installed on this machine?
I have gotten no response from Cmd-R, Cmd-Opt-R, or Cmd-Cntrl-Opt-R.

Would I have better success with an installation DVD?

(yes, I know this thread is three-and-a-half years old. My iMac is eight years old. If anybody has a suggestion, please chime in)

 

[talmy]

My iMac is mid-2010. All attempts to install El Capitan or High Sierra to a blank HD from USB have failed.

What version of OS X was originally installed on this machine?
I have gotten no response from Cmd-R, Cmd-Opt-R, or Cmd-Cntrl-Opt-R.

Would I have better success with an installation DVD?

(yes, I know this thread is three-and-a-half years old. My iMac is eight years old. If anybody has a suggestion, please chime in)

The mid-2010 iMac came with Snow Leopard, so you don't have Internet Recovery. You will have to buy an installation DVD from Apple, although I don't understand why the USB installer didn't work, so you might have other issues.

 

[Wiley1]

Thanks for the info. As it turned out, the internal HDD was 60x slower than normal, probably because of a drive cache failure. Details are posted in another thread.

The final solution was to replace the HDD with a $19 factory refurbished unit, then restore a backup from another Mac using CCC. Now I have El Capitan running and Internet recovery can be used in the future.

I was advised NOT to upgrade to High Sierra because this machine has only 4G of RAM. Do you agree? What about "low" Sierra?

 

[talmy]

Ah, yes, "other issues". High Sierra will make more of a difference with an SSD equipped Mac. The Macs that I have with HDDs I've only upgraded to Sierra. Look at the feature set to decide if it is worth the upgrade (generally it isn't except to run something new enough it gets security updates). The only Mac I backed off from Sierra to El Capitan is a 2GB MacBook Air. 4GB should be fine. A lot depends on what you intend to run.

 

[Wiley1]

This particular machine will live in a semi-public Business Center, aka, Cyber Cafe. 90% of the users will just want to Web surf and print, but some will want to compose documents and spreadsheets.

Can you suggest some free enhancements?
Should I install OpenOffice? FireFox? Chrome?

 

[talmy]

Can you suggest some free enhancements?
Should I install OpenOffice? FireFox? Chrome?

Frankly, Safari will work fine. Chrome is a resource hog and you don't have a lot of memory. OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) are similar to Microsoft Office which most people would be familiar with.