Cannot Upgrade from Yosemite on MacBook Air

I have a Macbook Air (mid 2011) that is running Yosemite.

I have tried to multiple times to upgrade to High Sierra, Sierra, and El Capitan.

(trying a lower OS X version upgrade each time, in case there was a compatibility issue)

I have tried to upgrade using the upgrade web link and also tried to upgrade by using the 'restore' function (option-command-R on start-up) to upgrade to the newest compatible OS X (which is High Sierra).

No matter how I try to perform the upgrade, the upgrade process crashes with about 40 min left. I can't make much of the log files.

There are many "can't find" messages- "can't find Board ID" "can't find chipset ID" and "\...\...\" directories don't exist messages.

I don't know if any of that means anything.

Has this happened to anybody else?

I could not find this exact issue anywhere on any forum

Any ideas?

I have not tried to completely wipe the disk and try a completely new install. That seems sort of drastic, particularly since I am having no issues with Yosemite (except software incompatibility- my reason for trying to upgrade)

Thanks.