Where can I find or download OS files or drivers?

I was able to get someone from Apple to chat and they explained that Lion won't install because the certificates are expired. The only solution they have was to erase the HD and then use a bootable disk with El Capitan installed. That's the route I'm going to go... after sifting through 300 gb of family photos that need saved.

Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to access the online macOS installers. If the laptop ever had macOS 10.12.6+ installed, then this should work to either install macOS 10.13 or possibly 10.7 although the latter may have issues installing.

Otherwise you will need the original OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD which shipped with your Mac.

Edit: If you have access to another Mac compatible with macOS 10.11 or 10.13, then you can also use that other Mac to download and create a bootable macOS USB installer using the instructions in this Apple article:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

AlwaysNeedingHelp1 wrote:

Can this process of creating a bootable USB Installer be done for OSX Lion? Would I just adjust the path in Terminal to match the files?

I don't know. I haven't seen or used the latest Lion installer (we were banned from putting Lion on any of our organization's Macs since there is a major unpatched vulnerability in Lion -- 10.6 was fine, 10.8 was patched). In theory it should be possible to make a bootable Lion USB installer, but how that may be done is unknown. If Apple recreated the Lion installer in a similar manner to the other available installers, then you should be able to use the instructions for macOS 10.11 El Capitan as a template. (should not hurt to try). If the Lion installer is still using the old ways of doing things, then I'm not sure how to create the Lion USB installer since I believe the instructions for the early installers like Lion were different. I've seen a few instructions for the old ways can still be found in web searches. But this is Apple, so I can see them making the Lion installer completely different with no built-in method of creating a bootable USB installer.

If you do figure out a way to create a bootable Lion installer, please let us know.

I guess I'll try it as a last resort. It's outside of my knowledge base lol.

I've been trying for several days to get my Snow Leopard upgraded, but El Capitan keeps telling me it needs Lion installed first. Lion keeps telling me the installer can't be verified. I'm stuck :(

My complete thread on it is here if you've got any thoughts.

Do you get the Lion requirement when extracting the El Capitan installer to the Applications folder, or when you attempt to run the El Capitan installer located within the Applications folder, or when you attempt to use the Terminal command line with the "createinstallmedia" command? If it is the middle one, then try creating a bootable macOS 10.11 El Capitan USB installer instead.

Everything I read on here suggests you should be able to use the El Capitan installer with Snow Leopard as long as Snow Leopard is fully patched. All of the links in the OP's post you linked are valid Apple links so they are safe to use for updating Snow Leopard or trying to download and use macOS 10.10 Yosemite. Perhaps Yosemite may work if El Capitan can not be made to work.

I did stumble upon a post a few years ago which provided instructions for manually extracting and creating a bootable macOS 10.11 USB installer when a compatible Mac was not available, but it required the use of the command line (about a dozen of commands some of which were not exactly clear). I don't know if I can find those instructions again, plus I'm not certain they would work on Snow Leopard since the El Capitan installer has been packaged & compressed using newer methods that Snow Leopard does not have, although it may work if you have a newer Intel Mac that cannot extract the El Capitan installer.

Ah. I didn't think the Lion installer that is downloaded would have that problem since Apple just recently (during the past year) released the Lion installer outside of the App Store, so I never considered that failure. I know it is an issue with the online Lion installer from Recovery Mode. In that case setting the date to 2017 (perhaps earlier) should solve that issue. It would be nice if the software would actually mention a "certificate error", but Apple loves their secrets.

FYI, even if the installer works to upgrade in place, I highly recommend first having a good backup before even making the attempt to upgrade macOS.

Thanks for the update!

Can this process of creating a bootable USB Installer be done for OSX Lion? Would I just adjust the path in Terminal to match the files?