Problem Reinstalling El Capitan

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Level 1

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Problem Reinstalling El Capitan

imac 21, model 13,1 have been running El Capitan 10.11.6 but drive crashed.

I erased disk, reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.5 from Apple's internet reinstall (only have choice of Mountain Lion 10.8.5 or Catalina, there's NOTHING FOR EL CAPITAN!

When I try to reinstall El Capitan there's warnings saying "contact manufacturer and restart". I've restarted and tried to install many times w/o success. I have read and watched many you tubes and still no success. How do I get this machine running El Capitan again??

Posted on Apr 6, 2022 8:55 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

den.thed

Level 9

77,314 points

Apr 6, 2022 9:20 AM in response to gaaxt

You can try making an El Capitan installer on a flash drive using DiskMaker 6.

see > https://diskmakerx.com/download/

But for Security reasons, you should really upgrade your Late 2012 21.5" iMac to the latest macOS it can run, which is Catalina.

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Answer 2

gaaxt Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 6, 2022 9:54 AM in response to den.thed

Thanks for reply.

I need to return to El Capitan to be compatible with other computers & software in my home. It really should be an easy task to return to the OSX but it has been a nightmare.

1_Installed Mountain Lion from Apple internet recovery.

2_Downloaded El Capitan 10.11.6 from Apple How to get old versions of macOS - Apple Support

but this version will NOT upgrade my Mountain Lion 10.8.5 to El Capitan 10.11.6. It goes through all the screens and appears to upgrade but when it reboots it is still on Mountain Lion 10.8.5. Nor does it install a Clean install without Mountain Lion. Tried it both ways.

3_When installing from an external boot drive, the process gets stuck and give warning something like this: Will not install "contact manufacturer and retry & restart".

4_When I try to reinstall from Apple internet restore I get: Will not install "contact manufacturer and retry & restart".

Then computer is stuck in install mode and is totally unusable.

5_Repeated the whole process of erasing disk, reinstalling all over again and the same problem occurs.

Absolutely no success! How do I get back to El Capitan?

Thanks for help!

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Problem Reinstalling El Capitan

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