Trying to reinstall El Capitan on iMac

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Trying to reinstall El Capitan on iMac

I'm wanting to sell my older imac so yesterday I ran the Disk Utility to erase the hard drive (7 passes). When I attempt to reinstall the El Capitan OS from the DU menu, I get the message, "To download and restore OSX your computer eligibility will be verified with Apple". When I click continue a new msg pops up: "A required download is missing". After researching, I shutdown the computer and started up while holding down Option-Command-R to enter to Start Internet Recovery. The computer found my wifi and I entered the password, but the screen didn't change and a little icon next to the wifi kept spinning. It sat there for about 45 min before I shut down the computer. Also, sometimes when I do Option-Command-R - I get the spinning glob and progress bar, but nothing happens and I don't expect it to since it never allowed me to connect to the internet.

I'm wondering if I need a firmware update? Or... my drive isn't partitioned correctly after the erase?

iMac 21.5″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jul 27, 2020 2:05 PM

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carbon_dragon

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88 points

Jul 28, 2020 5:59 AM in response to Tammy Parker

I just experienced something a little bit similar. First I had my El Capitan die on me on an old iMac. I tried to reboot but no luck. I forced a boot to the restore partition and tried First Aid but the file system check exited on a code 8 (I think that is some sort of major corruption on the drive). I tried reinstalling ElCapitan from the restore partition and the same thing happened to me from above and every time it booted it just did the same thing over and over.

Fortunately for me, I use Super Duper and had a (slightly old) copy of the disk. This isn't my current machine, I just use it as a sort of youTube server in my office so the data wasn't all that important). So I booted to the secondary drive and copied that drive to the original drive. That worked, so the problem was software rather than hardware (though it could well be that some sectors might now be locked out as bad). Without the super duper backup, I would have been out of luck.

However, if your iMac came with a OSX disk (can't even remember if mine did) and you still have it, you might be able to boot to it and then erase and install OSX from the disk. Note that my disk drive is also shot. In future, having a super duper copy of your drive on an external transportable hard drive (with a copy schedule) is a good bit of insurance. I also have a Time Machine drive but since Apple discontinued the Time Capsules, at some point mine will fail so relying on Apple might no longer be a good idea. It's certainly true for Apple programs such as Aperture. My next OS upgrade, Aperture probably won't work. Thanks Apple.

Anyway, the disk might be an option. Apple might also be able to troubleshoot you if you call them too. I have usually had good luck calling them. I guess this old machine will have to be erased and retired sometime soon (hopefully after the pandemic).

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Trying to reinstall El Capitan on iMac

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