Stuck Trying to Reinstall macOS Mavericks: No Entry Sign in Internet Recovery

[MacOSMavericks]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to reinstall macOS Mavericks on my 13-inch MacBook Pro (Mid-2012) for nostalgia reasons, as I already know how to use it just like back in 2013.

Here’s where I’m stuck:

What I’ve Done So Far​

1. I have a macOS Mavericks ISO stored on another computer.
2. I tried using Internet Recovery mode (Cmd + Option + R). It successfully connects to the internet, and the spinning globe loads.
3. However, after it completes loading, I see a No Entry sign, and I can’t proceed further.

Additional Info​

• I erased the internal drive and formatted it to APFS before starting the recovery process.
• I’ve tried resetting NVRAM/PRAM and the SMC, but it didn’t help.
• I also created a USB installer using my other computer, but the MacBook doesn’t seem to recognize it in the boot menu.
• Internet Recovery is my only option right now, but I’m stuck at this point.

Questions​

1. How can I bypass or fix the No Entry sign in Internet Recovery?
2. Is there any way to ensure my USB installer is recognized on the MacBook?
3. If there’s another way to reinstall Mavericks or get this working, I’d love to hear about it!

Thanks so much in advance for any advice. I’m really looking forward to using Mavericks again for nostalgia!

 

[Bigwaff]

I erased the internal drive and formatted it to APFS before starting the recovery process.

What version of macOS did you use to erase and format the drive APFS? Or you erase and format from within Internet Recovery?

 

[MacOSMavericks]

I formatted the drive to APFS using Internet Recovery Mode when it was working previously. Since then, I erased the drive completely, and now I can't boot or access recovery. When I try Internet Recovery, it loads the spinning globe, but afterward, I get the "No Entry" symbol, so I'm stuck.

I don't have any more USB flash drives to create a macOS installer, and my only other computer is an iMac running Windows. My goal is to reinstall macOS Mavericks for nostalgia, but I'm unable to proceed further.

 

[Bigwaff]

Internet Recovery is flakey over WiFi. Recommend you try wired Ethernet.

 

[MacOSMavericks]

I did try ethernet wired

 

[Fishrrman]

I consider Mavericks to be one of the worst OS releases.
Tried experimenting with it, never worked right for me.
Never used it as a regular OS on my Macs.
It's one of the few OS's that I never bothered to "archive" by keeping the installer app.

2012 MacBook Pro?
Try either Mountain Lion... or Mojave.

 

[f54da]

Mavericks doesn't support APFS though. Internet recovery should work, it's not quite clear what's going on there unless the servers are dead (might well be). Just throw the bootable disk image on a HFS+ formatted volume and load from there.

Note that getting a bootable mavericks image these days is a bit tricky, see the dedicated subforum here for info. Least hassle free way is to just download a pre-prepared InstallESD from internet archive.

(Also can't corroborate what above poster is saying about mavericks, it is a very stable os. At least on a combination of haswell mbp + 10.9, the number of show-stopping bugs I have encountered is fairly minimal. And I like to think of myself as someone who could basically publish an errata page on the currently known bugs at every level in 10.9 (kernel, kexts, system libraries, core apps).