(INTERNET RECOVERY) OS X El Capitan "This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later." Error

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(INTERNET RECOVERY) OS X El Capitan "This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later." Error

Hey! I've been having this issue for a while now, and I haven't been able to fix it myself. I got this old 2011 Macbook Pro from my brother to fix the screen, but it was still running 10.6. I decided to upgrade it to El Capitan for a better interface.

AS IT TURNS OUT, this totally borked the drive and I'm unable to reinstall with the Recovery HD. It auto boots to Internet Recovery and it throws me the This Item is Temporarily Unavailable error every time I try and install.

If anyone has a fix for this, it would be greatly appreciated. Troubleshooting steps I've already tried:

• Trying to boot to a USB installer

• Mounting the USB in single user mode to try and set it as the boot disk

• Setting the USB as the boot disk using Bless in Terminal

• Installing a new HDD and trying to install to that

• Trying to boot to regular Recovery (boots into IR)

Check the pics for more info. The Hitachi drive is the drive that came with the Macbook, the Sandisk Cruzer is the USB installer I'm trying to use (has Catalina on it): (Sorry for the slight blurriness, its 3am and I'm taking them from my bed because I'm exhausted.)

MacBook Pro 15", OS X 10.11

Posted on Jan 10, 2020 12:03 AM

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Answer 1

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,602 points

Jan 10, 2020 1:04 AM in response to canineontoast

If the bootable USB has Catalina on it that is not good, a MBP from 2011 cannot install Catalina.

It can only install up to High Sierra.

In Disk Utility if you want to erase the Disk highlight the Disk not the indented Volume,

so instead of highlighting Main highlight Hitachi, click Erase.

Give the disk a name, Format: MacOS X Extended (Journaled), Scheme: GUID Partition Map,

click Erase.

If you are trying to download an OS through Recovery connect the mac to your router using a cable, do not rely on WiFi.

If you have another mac that you know can run El Capitan you can download it from here

How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan – Apple Support

At Section 4 click on Download OS X El Capitan. This will download installMacOSX.dmg

to your downloads folder. Open that and you will get InstallMacOSX.pkg.

Double-click on that, an installation window will open, this does not install El Capitan

but converts the .pkg to the Install OS X El Capitan.app which will appear in your Applications folder.

Use that t create a bootable USB installer, How to create a bootable installer for macOS – Apple Support

Please note this will not work on macs that came preinstalled with macOS's newer than El Capitan.

If you have trouble installing from Internet Recovery this may be due to the installers on the servers having outdated certificates. Changing the date in Terminal may help. Copy and paste this into Terminal, sudo may or may not be needed.

date -u 0108190018

With the date set to a time before the certificates expired you may be able to download an installer.

If you get an OS installed then you can reset the date and time in System Preferences back to today.

If you want to install High Sierra then click on Get macOS High Sierra in Section 4 here,

How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra - Apple Support this should download

Install macOS High Sierra directly to your Applications folder, again use that to create a

bootable installer

The screen looks like the graphics card has expired, could be difficult to replace I think it is welded to the motherboard.

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Answer 2

Jan 10, 2020 7:29 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Ill try this after work and get back to you! Thanks so much!

My brother's ex-girlfriend actually stepped on the screen, right on the Apple logo haha. The display assembly just needs to be swapped out.

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(INTERNET RECOVERY) OS X El Capitan "This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later." Error

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