Easiest way to upgrade OS Lion 10.7 to OS High Sierra 10.13 on Mid 2011 iMac (12,1) without the internet.

Question

Easiest way to upgrade OS Lion 10.7 to OS High Sierra 10.13 on Mid 2011 iMac (12,1) without the internet.

Hello,

Q1: I just installed an SSD upgrade kit into a broken Mid 2011 iMac (12,1) that worked till 2018 then the HHD broke, the install was easy and getting into internet recovery was also easy, but the internet installer only gave me Lion 10.7 which doest work with anything online like safari and the App Store but iTunes does work?, no safari so I'm unable to go to apple and get anything, the App Store does not connect so thats off the table, and I do not know how to get a copy of High Sierra for free without having to buy a High Sierra boot off of Amazon ($25.00). can I use a flash drive and get it that way? or put it on my MacBook Pro and use magic to transfer it?.

Q2: I put a 2015 Time Machine backup I have on the new drive, it obviously wants a password which I have because I keep records unlike all my friends and family who cannot be bothered with keeping track of passwords and such..... anyway I put the "correct" password in and it says its unrecognized, the password hint box that pops up actually has the password and its the one I'm trying and nada, I did try some variations but again nada, could this be because the drive has such an old OS on it? or something else that I might be able to correct? so I can get such an old backup working again, I'm more interested in what I was doing in 2015 than anything and just getting High Sierra on the now working iMac is my primary goal here.

Blue Skies

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Jul 17, 2023 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Phil0124

Community+ 2024

Level 10

206,537 points

Jul 17, 2023 9:08 AM in response to Skydiver21016

Skydiver21016 wrote:

Hello,

Q1: I just installed an SSD upgrade kit into a broken Mid 2011 iMac (12,1) that worked till 2018 then the HHD broke, the install was easy and getting into internet recovery was also easy, but the internet installer only gave me Lion 10.7 which doest work with anything online like safari and the App Store but iTunes does work?, no safari so I'm unable to go to apple and get anything, the App Store does not connect so thats off the table, and I do not know how to get a copy of High Sierra for free without having to buy a High Sierra boot off of Amazon ($25.00). can I use a flash drive and get it that way? or put it on my MacBook Pro and use magic to transfer it?.

You can download High Sierra on any compatible Mac and create a bootable USB drive from there. click here ➜ How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

then click here ➜ Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,884 points

Jul 17, 2023 9:39 AM in response to Skydiver21016

First make sure macOS 10.7 Lion is fully patched so you can access the Apple App Store. If you cannot access the 10.7 updates through Software Update (or whatever mechanism Apple used at the time), then you can download the 10.7.5 Combo Updater direct from Apple using any computer (you will need to transfer this updater app to the iMac to run it though):

Download OS X Lion Update 10.7.5 (Client Combo)

Or if you cannot access the App Store for some reason, you can use any computer to download the macOS 10.11 El Capitan installer since it is available from outside the App Store (still direct from Apple's servers). You just need to transfer the downloaded 10.11 "installer" .dmg file to the iMac where you need to extract it before being able to run the real installer app (read the instructions in this Apple article carefully):

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 3

Jul 19, 2023 12:29 AM in response to HWTech

Thanks for the help folks, I figured it out by downloading the 10.10 OS on a disk image from apple support, I put that on a flash drive and installed it on the 2011 which had 10.7, it put 10.10 into my apps folder and all I had to do was double click and install and I then I had 10.10 which gave me a working safari and App Store app so I then went to the App Store and got 10.13 which installed easy peasy, thanks for your alls time, Good Luck and Blue Skies.

-S

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Answer 4

Jul 19, 2023 12:32 AM in response to Skydiver21016

Thanks for the help folks, I figured it out by downloading the 10.10 OS on a disk image from apple support, I put that on a flash drive and installed it on the 2011 which had 10.7, it put 10.10 into my apps folder and all I had to do was double click and install and I then I had 10.10 which gave me a working safari and App Store app so I then went to the App Store and got 10.13 which installed easy peasy, thanks for your alls time, Good Luck and Blue Skies.

-S

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Answer 5

Jul 17, 2023 8:55 AM in response to Skydiver21016

What dialabrain said, and the requirements for High Sierra include an existing installation of OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5) or later as a prerequisite for upgrade.