I have tried to reinstall from the Emergency Partition and I even made a USB flash drive that allows me to boot up and reinstall from there, too.
It always freezes up with the long horizontal progress bar showing; I left it going all night long.
Also, if I try to wipe the partition and reinstall, how do I double check my Time Machine backup ahead of time on another computer?
Mac mini, macOS 10.13
OK, so with no responses, I:
1) Plugged my Time Machine backup HD into the Mac mini when it was operating in Mt. Lion and I could see that it had a proper backup of all my necessary files as of the date in August, when I lost access to High Sierra; and
2) I booted from the High Sierra flashstick that I had created and:
a) Used Disk Utility to run Disk First Aid on the Macintosh HD and on the High Sierra partition, which fixed some errors;
b) Then I used Disk Utility to completely wipe my High Sierra partition; and
c) I then reinstalled High Sierra, which worked!
d) Then I reinstalled my Time Machine backup and all is well again!
OK, so with no responses, I:
1) Plugged my Time Machine backup HD into the Mac mini when it was operating in Mt. Lion and I could see that it had a proper backup of all my necessary files as of the date in August, when I lost access to High Sierra; and
2) I booted from the High Sierra flashstick that I had created and:
a) Used Disk Utility to run Disk First Aid on the Macintosh HD and on the High Sierra partition, which fixed some errors;
b) Then I used Disk Utility to completely wipe my High Sierra partition; and
c) I then reinstalled High Sierra, which worked!
d) Then I reinstalled my Time Machine backup and all is well again!
There are 3 partitions of its Macintosh HD: One ("Snow Leopard") boots into Snow Leopard, one (the original "Macintosh HD") boots into Mt. Lion, which is where I am now just to get access to all my files, and the one I use the most, boots into High Sierra ("High Sierra").
I did a normal semi-monthly restart to refresh it (I keep it going 24/7 as a headless server to my 2022 M1 Mac Mini), but I reconnect it to a keyboard, mouse and monitor when I try to reinstall High Sierra.
Reinstall High Sierra Freezes up on installation on my 2011 Mac Mini
