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The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
Hi I have an old MacBook Air A1466 I was using windows on it only and now I am trying to reinstall Mac os back but Won't let me to do that is there another trick to get disk utility install to get the mac os back on b/c the SSD have no operator system
Windows, Windows 10
It appears you have a MBAir 13" 2015 or 2017 model.....they are almost identical.
Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to attempt to access the online macOS 12.x Monterey installer. Once booted into Internet Recovery Mode you will need to use Disk Utility to erase the whole physical SSD as GUID partition and APFS (top option)....making sure to name the volume "Macintosh HD" which is the volume name Apple used from the factory. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical SSD appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.
Unfortunately some Macs may only boot into the older online installer for the OS which originally shipped with the Mac from the factory regardless of the keys used to enter Internet Recovery Mode. Unfortunately it may no longer be possible to install the older macOS through recovery mode since there have been a lot of reports of the older macOS servers no longer being available. If you do boot into the older online installer for macOS 10.10 Yosemite or macOS 10.12 Sierra, then you will need to erase the drive differently.
For macOS 10.12 Sierra, you will need to erase the physical SSD as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).
For macOS 10.10 Yosemite, you will need to instead partition & format the physical SSD using the instructions in the following article:
https://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/formatting/Mac_Formatting_6-10_R3.pdf
Once the physical SSD has been properly prepared, then Quit Disk Utility and select the "Install macOS" item.
FYI, in the future, you should probably consider how you would restore macOS once you are finished with the third party OS while you can still boot macOS on the computer as it would allow you the option of creating a bootable macOS USB installer. Apple is making it more difficult for users to reinstall macOS on these older Macs.
It appears you have a MBAir 13" 2015 or 2017 model.....they are almost identical.
Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to attempt to access the online macOS 12.x Monterey installer. Once booted into Internet Recovery Mode you will need to use Disk Utility to erase the whole physical SSD as GUID partition and APFS (top option)....making sure to name the volume "Macintosh HD" which is the volume name Apple used from the factory. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical SSD appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.
Unfortunately some Macs may only boot into the older online installer for the OS which originally shipped with the Mac from the factory regardless of the keys used to enter Internet Recovery Mode. Unfortunately it may no longer be possible to install the older macOS through recovery mode since there have been a lot of reports of the older macOS servers no longer being available. If you do boot into the older online installer for macOS 10.10 Yosemite or macOS 10.12 Sierra, then you will need to erase the drive differently.
For macOS 10.12 Sierra, you will need to erase the physical SSD as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).
For macOS 10.10 Yosemite, you will need to instead partition & format the physical SSD using the instructions in the following article:
https://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/formatting/Mac_Formatting_6-10_R3.pdf
Once the physical SSD has been properly prepared, then Quit Disk Utility and select the "Install macOS" item.
FYI, in the future, you should probably consider how you would restore macOS once you are finished with the third party OS while you can still boot macOS on the computer as it would allow you the option of creating a bootable macOS USB installer. Apple is making it more difficult for users to reinstall macOS on these older Macs.
Trying to reinstall Disk Utility
