Unable to install El Capitan...

Question

Level 1

55 points

Unable to install El Capitan...

Hello,

I recently upgraded to a 1TB SSD and now have the additional space needed for a nice sized El Capitan partition... I have been running Yosemite because it has been super stable for me. I had El Capitan on a small partition to test it, and it worked great! But now I cannot get it to install after upgrading?!? It says 'OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install.'... I am getting frustrated.

So this is what I did...

I used CarbonCopy to clone my start up disc and installed the 1TB drive with a 250G partition for El Capitan. Worked great!
I tried installing it to a clean formatted drive... did not work, got that same error.
I tried installing Yosemite on the partition and then installing El Capitan... Yosemite went on great, but got the same error again trying to install El Capitan.
I did all this again but used a USB bootable drive to install the El Capitan... SAME ERROR?!?
I went back on and deleted the installer, redownloaded it, carbon copied my existing Yosemite startup disc to the partition and then tried the install again... same dang error?!?!

What Gives???

Each time it botches up the drive and leaves recovery data for o/s 10.11.6???? ... but no El Capitan and the drive is no longer bootable?!?

I did this before but like I said the partition was too small so I upgraded the drive and now want it back on... but can't get it to work?

Thanks in advance.

** I saw something about the date/timestamp being wrong and using terminal to fix it... my date is fine when checked in terminal.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Dec 7, 2019 7:19 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,678 points

Dec 7, 2019 9:51 PM in response to Jagered72

Are you using an old download of El Capitan to install on your disk. At the end of October several of Apples installers certificates expired and could no longer be installed. One way to get round this was to change the date and time on your Mac to a date and time one year earlier, you can do this in System Preferences> Date & Time> Date & Time. Uncheck Set time automatically and manually change the date field to a year earlier.

Or you could download El Capitan again, Apple released an updated version with new certificates so it will install, see here,

How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan – Apple Support

Read sections 4 to 7 thoroughly and then read them again until you understand what to do, there is a difference in how this download works from previous download of El Capitan.

Firstly it downloads Install MacOSX.dmg, double clicking on that will open to InstallMacOSX.pkg.

Double-clicking on that will open an Installation window which will convert the InstallMacOSX.pkg

to the Install OS X El Capitan.app, which will be located in your Applications folder. Use that to install

Mac OS X El Capitan.

Reply

Answer 2

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,678 points

Dec 8, 2019 8:18 AM in response to Jagered72

Ok so as an experiment I hooked up an empty HD to my Mac. Formatted as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) on a GUID Partition Map, created two partitions. Downloaded InstallMacOSX.dmg from Section 4 of the,

How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan – Apple Support

When the .dmg had downloaded, double-clicked on it to get the InstallMacOSX.pkg.

Double-clicked on the .pkg, followed the prompts on the Installation dialogue.

The InstallMacOSX.pkg then converted to the Install OS X El Capitan.app in the Applications folder.

Opened the Applications folder and located the installer app.

Double-click on that to open the El Capitan installer window, followed the prompts,

selected the destination disk/ partition. Installed and up and running in 20 minutes.

Make sure the Version number of the installer app is 1.7.50

Reply

Answer 3

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,678 points

Dec 8, 2019 9:53 AM in response to Jagered72

Remember to set the date and time back to todays date and time, everything will function.

As you had cloned your Yosemite install onto the new partition the install of El Capitan just installs

itself over what was already there upgrading the system but preserving all of your data.

Reply

Answer 4

Jagered72 Author

Level 1

55 points

Dec 8, 2019 6:31 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Hello and thank you for the response.

I will try changing the date back but yes, I was using the installer that had me open a *.pkg file and then deleted that one and redownloaded one from back in 2015 that was on my Purchased Apps list... neither worked.

Shouldn't these be full install files? ... meaning I do not need another o/s on the drive for them to work? Or do they need the earlier version to verify eligibility for the upgraded o/s? I do not understand why if I download it from the App Store since my Apple ID already is registered to use it...

Thanks again! Will try the date thing first...

Reply

Answer 5

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,678 points

Dec 8, 2019 6:48 AM in response to Jagered72

When you downloaded the installMacOSX.dmg, and went through the three steps to convert it to Install OS X El Capitan.app, what happens when you try to install it, what error message do you get?

The download is a full installer when the .dmg has been converted to the Install OS X El Capitan.app it should be just over 6GBs simple double-clicking on it should bring up the Installation window, after going through a couple of preliminary screens you should get to the part where it asks you where you want to install El Capitan, you can choose from the pictorial display of disks available, or there may be a button 'Show All Disks'.

Reply

Answer 6

Jagered72 Author

Level 1

55 points

Dec 8, 2019 1:55 PM in response to Eau Rouge

Thanks again.

... you missed what I was saying earlier though. The partition was unable to be booted from because the install stopped part of the way into it. I could not restart from that partition... but had my original one still intact.

It auto set the time and date after the install was finished.

All good now!

Reply

Answer 7

Jagered72 Author

Level 1

55 points

Dec 8, 2019 9:22 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Eau Rouge - Thank you for the suggestion about the date change. I did that and let the installer run and came home to a fully installed El Capitan!

Now to have fun with it.

Thank you!

NOTE: This is really weird and kick *** at the same time... the previous attempts left the cloned drive data on my partition drive so when I completed the install of 10.11.6 I have ALL of my links, software etc.!!!

Reply

Unable to install El Capitan...

Similar questions