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Cannot reinstall macOS after erase

I've installed Windows 10 bootcamp on my MacBook Pro early 2015, and I have erased the Windows data via Disk Utility, and I have resized the volume using the "-" volume in Disk Utility. After that, I can't reinstall either Monterey from the CMD+Alt+R Recovery Mode, or El Capitan from CMD+R Recovery Mode. I have tried using USB Bootable Installer and it didn't work too.


After that I have tried Apple Diagnostic and the error I have gotten is VDH002.


This is my diskutil for your reference. I got no idea what happen, kindly have a look and do inform me if there is any way that I can do to fix my laptop. Thank you!!!


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Feb 4, 2022 7:21 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Feb 5, 2022 9:01 PM

First you used Disk Utility to remove the Windows BootCamp Assistant which is not the correct way to remove Windows. You need to use BootCamp Assistant to install and remove Windows BootCamp.


The other problem is you likely were using a newer version of macOS, but booting a macOS 10.11 El Capitan installer in a later picture. Older versions of macOS do not recognize the new drive layouts and file systems utilized by newer versions of macOS 10.13+.


I'm not sure it is possible to recover from using Disk Utility to remove the Windows BootCamp partition. You will need to boot into the latest version of the macOS installer though to be sure you are using a version of macOS that can read the newer drive layout & file systems. It may not be possible to merge the removed Windows BootCamp partition(s) back into the main macOS partition/Container. You may need to start over by performing a clean install of macOS by first erasing the whole physical drive before reinstalling macOS and restoring from a backup. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. The physical drive is usually identified by its make & model such as "Apple SSD....". Select the physical drive and erase it as GUID partition and APFS (top option) if installing Monterey. Erasing the drive will destroy all data on the drive.


The Apple Diagnostic error indicates a drive failure of some sort. Perhaps your SSD is beginning to fail or maybe you are using a third party SSD? If using a third party SSD, then Monterey won't be able to install until after the system firmware has been updated by the Monterey installer while an original Apple OEM drive is installed in the Mac. It worries me you are running the diagnostics to resolve an issue after attempting to remove Windows. It leads me to believe you may have been experiencing other issues with this laptop before attempting to remove Windows and those issues could be relevant.


You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer (each OS) and all external media which contains important & unique data.


9 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 5, 2022 9:01 PM in response to ChenLe_16

First you used Disk Utility to remove the Windows BootCamp Assistant which is not the correct way to remove Windows. You need to use BootCamp Assistant to install and remove Windows BootCamp.


The other problem is you likely were using a newer version of macOS, but booting a macOS 10.11 El Capitan installer in a later picture. Older versions of macOS do not recognize the new drive layouts and file systems utilized by newer versions of macOS 10.13+.


I'm not sure it is possible to recover from using Disk Utility to remove the Windows BootCamp partition. You will need to boot into the latest version of the macOS installer though to be sure you are using a version of macOS that can read the newer drive layout & file systems. It may not be possible to merge the removed Windows BootCamp partition(s) back into the main macOS partition/Container. You may need to start over by performing a clean install of macOS by first erasing the whole physical drive before reinstalling macOS and restoring from a backup. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. The physical drive is usually identified by its make & model such as "Apple SSD....". Select the physical drive and erase it as GUID partition and APFS (top option) if installing Monterey. Erasing the drive will destroy all data on the drive.


The Apple Diagnostic error indicates a drive failure of some sort. Perhaps your SSD is beginning to fail or maybe you are using a third party SSD? If using a third party SSD, then Monterey won't be able to install until after the system firmware has been updated by the Monterey installer while an original Apple OEM drive is installed in the Mac. It worries me you are running the diagnostics to resolve an issue after attempting to remove Windows. It leads me to believe you may have been experiencing other issues with this laptop before attempting to remove Windows and those issues could be relevant.


You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer (each OS) and all external media which contains important & unique data.


Feb 6, 2022 11:38 AM in response to ChenLe_16

You could connect a USB stick and use the "Save Log..." option, or you can boot from an external macOS drive (full version) to access the installer logs located on the internal drive, although it can be tricky locating the mount point for the proper APFS volume containing the installer log file. If you know the command line and are comfortable with the command line, then you could boot from the macOS installer to locate the installer log on the internal drive. I'm not exactly sure where the installer log file will be located as it has been a while since I had to locate one. So the first option is the easiest one.


Don't post the whole installer log file as it will likely be way too long. You need to read the installer log file and locate the point where things started to fail. It is usually best to start at the end of the installer log file and scroll backwards until you see where the first thing appears to have failed (you will likely see multiple failure entries after the initial failure point). It can be tricky because you may see references to things that appear to be failures, but really are not.


How did you create your macOS USB installers? Usually it is best to focus on USB installers when things are going wrong since Recovery Mode opens up too many other unkonwns regarding Internet and even local network issues. With a USB installer the issues are limited to the USB sticks used and how the USB stick was created. Have you tried using another USB stick (especially a different brand) and even a different USB port especially on the other side of the laptop?


If you have tried multiple USB sticks, and tried another USB port, and you followed Apple's instructions for creating a bootable macOS USB installer, then most likely the laptop has a hardware issue of some sort most likely with the SSD especially since the Apple Diagnostics did report an issue with the SSD. I would suggest trying to install macOS to an external drive instead which will bypass the internal SSD. Make sure to install macOS 10.13, 10.14, 10.15, or 11.x and avoid Monterey for the moment since Monterey will require the internal SSD to be functioning correctly in order to upgrade the laptop's system firmware which may not be possible if the internal SSD is failing. Attempting to update the laptop's system firmware using a failing internal SSD risks bricking the entire laptop if the firmware update does not complete successfully. If you can install macOS to an external drive, then most likely the internal SSD is failing. If, however, you still cannot install macOS )10.13 - 11.x) to an external drive, then it likely means the laptop has some other hardware issue.

Feb 5, 2022 10:23 PM in response to ChenLe_16

I did not look closely at the photo since it was so small and rotated 90 degrees (I have trouble reading sideways) and I'm lazy when I'm on my own time. In the future rotate the pictures before posting them here. If you used an iPhone to take the picture, then you just need to select the "Edit" option which will give you access to the rotation tool so that you can save the edited picture so it is showing correctly on the iPhone before posting or sent to the computer.


Has macOS Monterey ever been installed on this laptop before?


Does this laptop use a third party SSD?


Double check the SSD has been formatted as GUID partition and APFS since one of the pictures is showing the internal drive is formatted as HFS which won't work with Monterey.


Are you booting into Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R) or from a bootable macOS 12.x Monterey USB installer? If the latter, then how did you create the macOS USB installer? You may need to try using another USB stick especially a different brand since the quality of USB sticks is extremely poor and Macs can be very particular about the drives used for booting. Here is an Apple article with instructions for creating a bootable macOS USB installer (using any other methods may lead to problems installing):

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support


You can try first writing zeroes to the beginning of the SSD in order to destroy the partition table. Sometimes macOS can get confused if it encounters something unexpected. While booted to the macOS 10.13+ installer launch the Terminal app from the Utilities menu and run the following commands to unmount all volumes on the SSD and write zeroes to the beginning of the drive. I highly recommend disconnecting all external devices (especially drives) so that they are not accidentally erased. You should also double check that the physical drive is still "disk0". My commands assume the physical internal drive is still "disk0" as shown in the photo, so modify my commands if the internal physical drive is using some other drive identifier or you may destroy the data on the wrong drive.


Check drive identifier:

diskutil  list  internal


Unmount all volumes on the physical drive (assuming "disk0" -- change if necessary if the drive identifier from the above command is different):

diskutil  unmountDisk  disk0


Write zeroes to beginning of drive "disk0" (change as needed):

sudo  dd  if=/dev/zero  of=/dev/disk0  bs=100m  count=10


After this try using Disk Utility app to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option).


Make sure to disconnect all external devices in case one of them is causing a problem while installing macOS.


If this does not help, then perhaps the diagnostic error code is actually reporting an intermittent SSD failure which may be while you are having trouble.



Feb 5, 2022 11:16 PM in response to HWTech

Has macOS Monterey ever been installed on this laptop before?

  • No, it was macOS Big Sur 11.6 before erase


Does this laptop use a third party SSD?

  • No, it is not


The Monterey reinstall was using Internet Recovery Mode.


Check Drive identifier:

-bash-3.2# diskutil list internal
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk2⁩         250.8 GB   disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +250.8 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Store disk1s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩            24.6 KB    disk2s1


Write zeroes to beginning of drive disk1:

-bash-3.2# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk1 bs=100m count=10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
1048576000 bytes transferred in 5.026160 secs (208623681 bytes/sec)


This is the result:

-bash-3.2# diskutil list internal
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                                                   *251.0 GB   disk1



After erase the physical drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option):

-bash-3.2# diskutil list internal
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk2⁩         250.8 GB   disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +250.8 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Store disk1s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Mac                     24.6 KB    disk2s1

Feb 5, 2022 9:13 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you for the info! I just came to realize that the method I used to remove Windows partition was completely wrong after I erased it.


I did try to erase the whole SSD as GUID partition and APFS, however when I was trying to reinstall Monterey, but the error was shown as the first picture I uploaded in the post.


The other problem is that I was trying to reinstall macOS Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur using bootable USB installer, but still I can’t reinstall as error popped out every time. So now I am stuck and do not know what happen.

Cannot reinstall macOS after erase

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