Previous owner erased drive. Trying to reinstall El Capitan and it keeps telling me that it is temporarily unavailable after it has me sign in. Apparently its too old to have internet recovery, and I don't know anyone with a mac to download it for me. What can I do? Anyway to create a bootable drive with a windows PC?
MacBook Air
Your Apple ID was never used to download El Capitan so it's not available to you.
Your only option is to Buy Snow Leopard on a DVD from the Apple Store, update it to 10.6.8 and then use the App Store app on the machine to download El Capitan.
Your Apple ID was never used to download El Capitan so it's not available to you.
Your only option is to Buy Snow Leopard on a DVD from the Apple Store, update it to 10.6.8 and then use the App Store app on the machine to download El Capitan.
If you have access to another Mac computer, you can try signing into the App Store using your Apple ID, and see if you can download it using the link below. If successful, quit the installer.
You can make a bootable USB stick to install using these free programs which will do all the work for you. Boot the computer with the option/alt key held down and select the USB drive. Run Disk Utility and select First Aid. Then install the OS.
Bootable USB Flash Drive – Diskmaker X Disk Creator or use Apple’s method Create a bootable installer for OS
Well thanks for the prompt reply. I can't say I'm not disappointed honestly. I was excited to have my first mac! I was told by the previous owner and even read online that one of the great things about a mac is that once you own a mac, you own the os and all compatible updates too. Obviously since it is an air, it doesn't have a disc drive so this just became very difficult for me. Guess I'll shove it in a closet and maybe figure it out sometime in the future. Thanks again for the info.
After doing the suggestion above, use the combo update to save time in Software Update.
App Store Update for OS X Snow Leopard
Got a second hand 2009 macbook air...
