Installing El Capiton on an old Mac Book Pro today, I received the error:
OS X could not be installed on your computer
Then, you clicked on the folder now in here, select the image file of Mac OS X El Capitan and click on the “Open” button. Select Mac OS X El Capitan ISO file. Within this step, you’re finished with the settings. Now is the time to make a digital machine to Mac OS X El Capitan. Consequently, you have to press on Create. Once you get the 'Install OS X El Capitan.app' from the Applications folder then you can use the install app to make a bootable USB installer or launch the 'Install OS X El Capitan.app' to do the install (Note: the 'Install OS X El Capitan.app' will automatically be deleted once it is run from the Applications folder, so it is a good idea to. Process: I created a USB disk with a bootable El Capitan as per this documentation. Plug-in your USB key on a turned-off computer. Start your Mac, press immediately OPTION (aka ALT) Select the Orange icon (aka a USB stick) labelled El Capitan. If it does not detect it after 10 sec and you only.
No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.
Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.
I checked Apple’s support Matrix (it is a very old macbook pro) at https://support.apple.com/kb/SP728?locale=en_GB and it was listed as supported.
El Capitan Reinstall
After lots of Googling and investigation, I discovered that the date and time were not set to current, the macbook thought it was year 2000.
You can easily reset the time and date by following the steps below:
- Click Utilities on the menu bar
- Select Terminal
- Type date
- Confirm the date is wrong
- Type date 062112422016 (example: June 21st 12:42 2016)
- Exit terminal
- Click Restart
Once the Date and time are configured you will be able to install OS X.
Easy fix, for a ridiculous error!
I’m trying to sell a 2009 MacbookPro. It’s the model MacbookPro5.5 and Apple supports macOS El Capitan 10.11 as latest available version.
I’ve wiped all data from the installed SSD and had to boot from an external disk. Now I’ve got two problems:
- I’ve only got a Mac with Big Sur and Apple Silicon. I cannot use the package installer from the download provided by Apple to create the installer App for El Capitan. However, I need access to the installer so that I’m able to use the createinstallmedia command.
- The 2009 MacbookPro is already wiped and has only access to the recovery mode. You cannot execute the package installer in Recovery Mode to extract the media.
Luckily I’ve found this blog post from Chris Warrick who explained how to extract the installer App from the package:
- Attach an external Disk which contains the downloaded pkg from Apple. You’ll need enough space on that Disk to extract the pkg and it needs to be writeable
- Open the Terminal from inside the Recovery Mode
- Go to the mounted volume
- Extract the package:
Now we can try to create the install media from the installer app. Make sure you’ve attach another disk which can be overwritten by the installer. In this example its named “MyBlankUSBDrive”:
The InstallESD.dmg image is missing, which we’ll need to add to the right location:
Now we’ll have a valid installation medium which can be used to start the installer from. You can reboot from that disk and should be able to install El Capitan.
El Capitan Won't Install
However, I’ve encountered another annoying issue which caused the installer to fail:
El Capitan Installer cannot be verified
Oh great… On to the next commands you can try from the Terminal inside the Recovery OS:
Can't Install El Capitan
installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target /Volumes/'XXX'where XXX is the name of the disk you’re installing to.- Wait for the installation to say it’s complete. You will not see any sort of progress display.
Install El Capitan Cannot Be Verified
Great, you’ve got El Capitan installed! Apple had some issues with certificates and people found a way to either use the above commands for installation or you’ll have to tinker with your Macs time settings so that the signature is valid again. I would have expected that Apple resigned all installers so I wouldn’t have to use these commands at all but doesn’t look like they did.