MacOS keeps installing but not installing

spazmuncher wrote:

The USB and the HDD are not bad/incompatible. The HDD is brand new replacement.

Famous last words! Trust me it is possible and should always be a consideration when you have trouble like this. We received a brand new replacement hard drive direct from Apple once and that drive would not work at all in the designated laptop...yet that same hard drive seemed to work perfectly fine in every other laptop including another Mac. Another hard drive worked perfectly fine in the same laptop. There was just something about that particular hard drive and that particular Mac which did not agree with one another.

USB sticks....I don't trust them at all, so if something isn't working correctly, I will try another one.

El Capitan should be compatible as that's what was coming up when I attempted it though internet recovery. I just had the same thing happen going that route as well.

Internet Recovery Mode was not an option for a 2007 Mac. Local recovery mode was an option, but would require using the old drive to boot to it. Internet Recovery Mode only became available as an option with an update to macOS 10.12.x (I forget which point release .4 or .6) which gave some older Macs as old as 2010 (maybe Late-2009) models access to Internet Recovery Mode.

If you are booting from local recovery mode, then that source drive may be bad or corrupt.

I do not have any of those discs, unfortunately. Can those even be run in recovery mode?

Recovery Mode is not needed to run the AHT. It just boots from the 2nd CD/DVD.

Having an OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade DVD would allow you to get started by installing a copy of macOS onto your drive. Then you could work your way up to the later versions of macOS.

You can try to see if you create & boot AHT using the instructions in the following article which also has links to download AHT direct from Apple's servers:

https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest

So essentially the HDD is new and completely blank. It is erased/formatted through disc utility. Installing goes through until it finishes, then nothing happens. No reboot, no setup screen, nothing.

So do you actually see the phase 1 of the install process actually finish where it tells you to reboot?

What happens if you try an Option Boot? Do you see this drive as a boot option? Keep in mind if the install did not finish, it may not have the name you expect....it could even have a name like "Install" or something.

Just because the HD is new, does not mean it is good or even compatible. Macs can be very picky about the drives used for booting (sometimes even just for use as a data drive). Also, did you erase the whole physical drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled)?

You can try removing the internal drive and connecting it externally using a USB to SATA Adapter, drive dock, or enclosure to see if it makes any difference. You can even try installing macOS to it while it is connected externally. This would help to tell us if this drive is any good...if it works externally, then something is either wrong with the internal connection (cable or MLB), or it is not compatible.

What problems were you having with this laptop prior to trying to reinstall macOS? Something led you to this point, and that something may be highly relevant here to the current OS install issue.

spazmuncher wrote:

I pulled this HDD from a different MBP 2010 when that one bit the dust. The drive was a brand new replacement for that one and worked perfectly there.

If this second drive was in a 2010 Mac...what version of macOS did it have on it? If it had macOS 10.12 or 10.13 on the drive, then did you completely erase the whole hard drive before attempting to install macOS 10.11?

This 2007 was on El Capitan previously.

That is the highest version of macOS compatible with a 2007 Mac.

The original HDD that was in the 2007 was doing the same thing as this current HDD. The install process has me sign in to verify, goes though the whole install progress bar thing, and then at 100% it just goes away and nothing further happens.

Try booting to recovery mode using Command + Option + R which should not require you to authenticate with an AppleID. See if this makes any difference (doubtful but worth a try).

Another option to try...it isn't a very good one, but you could try installing macOS to a USB stick if you have a good one. Unfortunately the install process will be extremely slow and booting from it will be even slower, but the whole point is to see if the macOS installation will get further than it did with the internal hard drive. If you can connect an external hard drive to the laptop that would be a better option, but a USB stick can do in a pinch assuming you have a good quality USB stick.

What make & model drive are you using internally?

You can check the health of your hard drives by using a bootable Knoppix USB stick. Download the Knoppix v8.6.1 DVD .iso file with "EN" in the name for ENglish. Use the downloaded Knoppix .iso file as a source for Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux) to create a bootable Knoppix USB stick. Option Boot the Knoppix USB stick and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". While Knoppix is booting the Mac may appear frozen on the Apple boot picker menu so give Knoppix lots of time to finish booting.

Once Knoppix boots to the Desktop, click on the "Start" menu icon and navigate to "System Tools --> GSmartControl". Within the GSmartControl app, double-click on the icon for the drive you want to check to access the drive's health information. There should be a "View Output" and "Save As..." buttons where you should be able get the information to post here. You can also try using the short & long/extended self-test options....the short test usually finishes in about 2 minutes, the long test can take hours or even days depending on the size of the drive. If Knoppix only boots to the command line, then I can provide other instructions to get the information. Post the drive's health information here (feel free to post the health report for both drives).

FYI, the installation is not complete until it reboots the laptop and proceeds with phase 2 of the installation process.

Then you are greeted with Setup Assistant which has you create a macOS user account & configure some basic settings. It may require a second reboot after phase 2 before you are presented with Setup Assistant (I forget since I usually don't pay close attention to the process).

Assuming you properly created the bootable macOS USB installer, then maybe your USB stick is bad or incompatible. The quality of USB sticks is extremely poor. Also assuming macOS 10.11 is compatible with your 2007 laptop and you followed the instructions in this Apple article for creating a bootable macOS 10.11 USB installer:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

My guess is the internal hard drive is bad which would not be surprising for such an old Mac.

You can try running the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect most issues. The AHT can be found on the 2nd CD/DVD which originally shipped with the laptop from the factory. Just boot that CD to access the AHT.

Why did you erase the drive? What problem were you having? The same issue you are trying to fix by a clean install may be the same reason the clean install is not working.

If this USB drive was one of the two drives used internally which hasn't worked, then it may mean that drive has a problem.

Otherwise, it seems to indicate either an issue with the installer or some other hardware issue with the Mac. You can try creating another bootable macOS USB installer using another USB stick just to be sure. If it is a hardware issue with the laptop, then it is hard to say what it could be, but I would make sure to remove the internal drive to test installing & booting from an external drive just in case having a drive installed internally is causing a problem (does not necessarily mean a hardware failure...may be something about the internal drive's current configuration).

I would try creating & using the AHT using the link I provided in a previous post....maybe it would identify a problem during testing.