Clean install error - no package can be found

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Level 1

5 points

Clean install error - no package can be found

Just attempted to do clean install of El Capitan. I keep getting the error message saying no "package" can be found for this computer.

Same error from both an USB bootable drive (that I successfully used multiple times previously) and from the recovery partition (which the error appeared after 11 hours of download)
Same error when trying to install to my 2007 iMac and 2009 MacBook. Both previously running El Capitan.

Fortunatedly, I was able to recover from Time Machine.

Did Apple stop making El Capitan available for clean install?

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Nov 3, 2019 11:22 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,590 points

Nov 4, 2019 8:25 PM in response to jaauu

Apple have released a 'new' version of El Capitan for download, the previous versions certificates expired

a few weeks ago, the is why your older copies will not install, and the date regression workaround mentioned earlier.

If you click on this link, How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan – Apple Support

Go to Section 4 and click on Download Mac OS X El Capitan.

In a change this will download a file called InstallMacOSX.dmg (6GBs)

Double clicking on that will mount a volume on your Desktop and inside is InstallMacOSX.pkg.

Again double-click on that, an installation window will open, follow the prompts.

Once that has completed look in your Applications folder for Install Mac OS X El Capitan.app.

Make a copy of it and keep it safe or make a bootable USB from it.

To start the full installation procedure double-click on the Install Mac OS X El Capitan.app.

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Answer 2

Charlee78

Level 1

125 points

Nov 4, 2019 6:17 PM in response to jaauu

No, you just need to go in terminal and adjust date to mid 2017 when El Capitan certificate was still valid. After that you should be able to install without any errors.

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Clean install error - no package can be found

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