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MlchaelLAX Author

Level 4

2,292 points

Reinstall High Sierra freezes up on installation on my 2011 Mac Mini

I have tried to reinstall from the High Sierra Recovery 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.

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 it froze during the Progress Bar during the Restart.

I reconnect it to a keyboard, mouse and monitor when I try to reinstall High Sierra.

Also, I am considering a complete wipe of the High Sierra partition and then a clean reinstall of High Sierra. How do I double check my Time Machine backup ahead of time on another computer before I delete all of the information on my High Sierra partition?

I have had success on reinstalling High Sierra some years ago, as a means to speed up its rebooting speed.

I previously posted this question on the Older OS portion of this Forum, with no responses; so I am posting it here on the hope that it will get more exposure for the hope of helpful replies; thank you!

Mac mini, macOS 10.13

Posted on Aug 26, 2023 8:51 AM

Top-ranking reply

MlchaelLAX Author

Level 4

2,292 points

Posted on Sep 1, 2023 12:27 AM

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!

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Reinstall High Sierra freezes up on installation on my 2011 Mac Mini

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