Restore Mac OS Sierra fails on Macbook Air mid2011

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wwwaiting Author

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Restore Mac OS Sierra fails on Macbook Air mid2011

I needed a complete restore to original (or latest) OS for my MBA mid2011.

I booted in "normal" restore mode.
I deleted/formated internal drive to "OS X Extended (Journaled), GUID".
I startet Recovery. Target was internal drive.
Recovery took a while till progress bar was finished and then displayed an error "Could not finish because of problem preparing disk" (or similar).
BTW that was the reason I above deleted/reformated the system disk because I had this error on my first recovery attempt and I wanted to exclude that there was something wrong with that partition. I did a disk-check (with zero errors) as well.
I viewed and saved the installation log. This may be the relevant error:

osishelperd[539]: Couldn't mount base system dmg! (error code 110)

I also tried to "Restore from internet" but this displayed an error like "Cannot connect to service". The MBA is conntected via Ethernet which I checked using the provided internet assistant tool. And the restore-process definately did big downloads which I confirmed looking into the log.

SYSTEM:

MacBookAir4,1 @ 1.60 GHz (x 4), 4096 MB RAM

InstallAssistant[526]: Running OS Build: Mac OS X 10.12.6 (16G29)

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Jul 18, 2024 2:58 AM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Community+ 2026

Level 9

73,610 points

Jul 18, 2024 9:07 AM in response to wwwaiting

Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to attempt to access the online High Sierra installer.

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected.

Otherwise you will need access to a 2007 to mid-2018 Mac so that you can create a bootable macOS USB installer. Generally you need a Mac from:

Late-2009 to mid-2018 for macOS 10.13 High Sierra
2007 to 2015 for macOS 10.11 El Capitan

You can use the information in the following article to confirm the other Mac is compatible with the OS you are creating the installer since the above are just general model guide lines as there are some exceptions:

https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

I highly recommend erasing the whole physical SSD to make sure it is a new partition table & file system even if you've already done so. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility (macOS 10.13+). Erase the whole physical drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).

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Restore Mac OS Sierra fails on Macbook Air mid2011

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