MBP 2012 won’t reinstall OS via recovery mode and bootable USB key created from Windows aren’t detected

B,

In Disk Utility>View, select Show all Devices, highlight the top left entry.

APFS won't work for Sierra or earlier, Sierra or earlier needs MacOS Extended Journaled. High Sierra won't work for APFS on earlier Macs.

What has often worked for others is to use this Restore Method instead of CMD+r keys...

Option-⌘-R

Upgrade to the latest macOS compatible with your Mac.

Messed up Factory Reset on MacBook Pro Mi… - Apple Community

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254793247?answerId=258936149022#258936149022

Clean Install of High Sierra: Multiple Fa… - Apple Community

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255040953?answerId=259391356022#259391356022

Great to hear my friend! :)

To start up from macOS Recovery, turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold one of the following combinations on your keyboard. Command-R is generally recommended, especially if you never installed macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later… How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

Command (⌘)-R

Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac.

Option-⌘-R

Upgrade to the latest macOS compatible with your Mac.

Shift-Option-⌘-R

Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.

Great news it's solved B, I do not know why 1 method works and another does not, I can only note that Apple gas tighter up who or what Macs can do what, & have noted what seems to work for many.

And they definitely are trying to stamp out Windows doing it to get rid of all the Hackintoshes I suspect.

Take care my friend! :)

The older macOS installers downloaded as .dmg files are not bootable images, nor do they contain the actual installer. The .dmg file contains an executable file which will extract the real installer from within the executable file bundle.

Even then, I have not seen of any recent success stories on this forum for people using any Windows based options for creating a bootable macOS USB installer. Apple's installers are a complete mess when it comes to creating bootable USB installers. The actual command line utility within the installer actually picks out various sections from the installer app to store on the USB stick and either copies some boot files from a secret location in the app or creates them, then must bless them so the USB stick appears bootable. Apple has changed the internal layout of items within the installer app over the years so any online instructions from even a year ago may now be obsolete. I recall instructions for manually extracting & creating a bootable macOS 10.11 USB installer....those instructions were no longer valid a year later, although someone found a work around, but even that work around is probably no longer any good.

FYI, if you are going to erase your Mac, then I highly recommend you create & keep on hand a bootable macOS USB installer so you will be able to restore your Mac since Recovery Mode & Internet Recovery Mode may be gone in the future....there have been a lot of reports that many older Macs are no longer able to have macOS reinstalled through local or Internet Recovery Mode, unless Apple quietly fixed their servers recently. You can always create a bootable raw image file from the USB stick (or point the command line tool to a writable .dmg file).

Also, to install older versions of macOS such as 10.7 Lion (assuming they are still available through Internet Recovery Mode), you need to set the system date to some time in 2017 since the installers' certificates have expired. For Jan. 2, 2017 @ 11:33am:

date  -u  0102113317

or maybe will also work:

date  -u  010211332017