Reinstall macOS directly from the Recovery HD

[Alt-Z7]

Hello there,
I want to reset an old MacBook Pro (2009, El Capitan) to factory settings.
After having erased the System HD, Apple did not allow me to install macOS from the Recovery HD.
The only option was to connect to the App Store, where I got the message "This item is temporarily unavailable".
I tried restarting while pressing Option-Command-R (for the latest OS), or Shift-Option-Command-R (for the original). No joy...

How can I reinstall macOS directly from the Recovery HD?
TIA

 

[CoastalOR]

You can't.

"Factory setting", to me, means setting it to the original OS that shipped with the MBP. The 2009 MBP shipped with Leopard (10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6), both of which were distributed on DVD. The Recovery HD did not start until Lion (10.7) and therefore can not be used for a early OS (to include no Internet Recovery).

 

[Alt-Z7]

Let's say I just want to reinstall El Capitan from the recovery partition that exists on the HDD and contains an El Capitan disk image.
Is that possible?

 

[Brian33]

You can boot to recovery OK? Yes, you should be able to reinstall El Capitan that way, IIRC.

After having erased the System HD, Apple did not allow me to install macOS from the Recovery HD.

I am left wondering what “did not allow” means.

Do you mean that you could not select the newly erased volume to set it as the destination for the install? If that is the problem it could be that the volume has the wrong format (or isn’t formatted). The destination volume must be formatted HFS+. (macOS extended, journaled, or some description like that). In recovery mode, you can open disk utility and re-erase the destination volume.

 

[Amethyst1]

Let's say I just want to reinstall El Capitan from the recovery partition that exists on the HDD and contains an El Capitan disk image.
Is that possible?

No, because the recovery partition does not contain a full installer.

 

[Alt-Z7]

I looked on the Web for How-to's. Since 3 of them, including some from Apple Support, showed the same sequence of operations, I chose to follow How to Reset Mac to Factory Settings.

I am left wondering what “did not allow” means.

See my original post: It means that selecting Reinstall macOS from the utilities window in macOS Recovery sent me to the App Store, then went into a loop after I had logged in.

No, because the recovery partition does not contain a full installer.

If that is true, I'd rather not comment on it. 🤬