macOS Sierra stuck in Recovery Mode and won't reinstall

Continued.....

I tried target recovery, but since my cable was not thunderbolt it didn't work. I don't have a thunderbolt cable and they are very expensive. Is there any other way? Otherwise I could ask a friend for a thunderbolt cable. Thank you for your help.

You can create a bootable macOS USB installer if you have access to another Mac model Late-2009 to mid-2022. The USB installer you can create depends on the exact model of the other Mac which must be compatible with macOS 10.13 High Sierra to macOS 12.x Monterey......the other Mac can currently be running any version of macOS.

Generally you need the following Mac models to install:

• • macOS Monterey -- 2015 to mid-2022
  • macOS Big Sur -- Late-2013 to mid-2021
  • macOS Catalina -- 2012 to mid-2020
  • macOS High Sierra -- Late-2009 to mid-2018

You can use the information in the following article to confirm macOS & hardware compatibility of the other Macs:

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

You will need to follow the instructions in the Apple articles:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Make sure to use a good quality USB stick from a respected manufacturer (SanDisk are generally better) since the quality of many USB sticks are extremely poor and Macs are very picky about the drives used for booting.

I would recommend erasing the whole physical internal SSD of your 2016 laptop as GUID partition and APFS (top option). Unfortunately the physical drive is hidden by default in Disk Utility so with Disk Utility you need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility. The physical internal Apple SSD should be the top most item called something like "Apple SSD AP256......".

If you do erase the internal SSD of your laptop, it will prevent you from accessing local recovery mode for Sierra that you have been using. You can wait & try to install macOS 10.13+ first using a USB installer, but if you still have issues with the instructions provided here, then you will need to erase the whole physical SSD since the partition or file system may be part of the problem. It is a risk, but you are basically at the end of the line anyway.

If after even erasing the whole physical internal SSD and using a properly created USB installer still does not work, then you may have a hardware issue of some sort. You can try taking the laptop to a local Apple expert to see if they can get macOS installed for you, but I wouldn't spend much money on this old laptop (for multiple reasons).

macbookguy12 wrote:

The error message is '' An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again. ''

Internet Recovery for Sierra and High Sierra has been broken for a while.

https://mrmacintosh.com/fixed-an-error-occurred-while-preparing-the-installation-macos-sierra-recovery-error/

https://mrmacintosh.com/how-to-fix-the-recovery-server-could-not-be-contacted-error-high-sierra-recovery-is-still-online-but-broken/

I'd recommend resetting PRAM and then following that High Sierra workaround to the letter.

I guess High Sierra is needed for APFS support so the Mac needs to install and run that before upgrading to Mojave or later.

> but the slash forward key does not work. Instead, it just goes back 2 selections earlier (like little grey bar (letter selected) goes back forward twice) thus, I cannot use terminal to fix the error message

So you get a different letter than on your keyboard, right? That is sometimes a problem if there is no apparent way to switch to the correct keyboard layout. I then usually just try different Option- Shift- etc keyboard combinations until I finding the correct combo. Or if that that character like / is visible elsewhere, I just copy and paste it to the command.

macbookguy12 wrote:

The other post, I got the flashing folder with question mark to go away, but after I thought it was going to be fine, but macOS Sierra won't re install,

And what happened to this laptop between the time it was "fixed" until when you discovered a problem? These are the critical details we need to know.

at the end it gives me an error message.

And what is the exact error message? If it is in English, then a picture would be useful.

I also tried internet recovery, which gives me an exclamation mark on the spinning earth.

That indicates a network issue of some sort. Try power cycling the router making sure to wait at least five minutes for the router to finish booting before making another attempt at Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R). You can also try accessing Internet Recovery Mode from another physical location preferably one that uses a different ISP.

Are you using another Mac to post these messages here?

If so then you may be able to use it to create a bootable USB installer. If you are using another Mac, please tell us exactly which and we can provide more focused guidance.

If not, then maybe you know someone who has a Mac and might be willing to help?

I would suggest you create an installer for macOS Monterey, which is the newest OS your MacBook Pro can run.

The Sierra OS has been a problematic reinstall for a few years for technical reasons, but Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey always seem to be accessible.

macbookguy12 wrote:

I'm the same guy who posted an other post today regarding my MacBook and it being stuck check my profile and you'll see the other one maybe more info, I thought I had fixed it, at least now the folder icon with question mark is gone but im still stuck here.

FYI, here is the other thread. It would have been nice if you had posted the link yourself since you had the information easily available....help us to help you:

PLEASE HELP!!! 2016 MacBook Pro flashing … - Apple Community

It also makes it hard to figure out what is happening when two threads are involved for basically the same issue....the original issue & this one are likely due to the same problem.....especially when no time has passed since your last post in that other thread....those contributors were already familiar with the whole situation.

I'm confused here. You supposedly solved your issue in the other thread. You say here in this new thread the flashing folder with question mark is gone. We are missing some important details. Did you ever successfully boot into macOS again after reinstalling the OS?

Could you only boot macOS one time during the initial setup of the new OS? Did rebooting afterwards no longer allow you to boot into macOS again?

If you are still in Recovery Mode you can try manually selecting the default Startup Disk by clicking the Apple menu & selecting the internal SSD with the new OS on it just in case the PRAM settings still hold the setting to access Recovery Mode.

You can also try a PRAM Reset (hold it for at least two chimes if possible....some USB-C Intel Macs won't allow two chimes.

I'm thinking your internal SSD has failed & macOS defaulted to booting back into Recovery Mode....usually people will get the blinking folder with question mark, but some Macs can do odd things in these situations. It is probably time to retire & recycle this laptop.

macbookguy12 wrote:

Thank you for continuing to try to help me. So first question, when the folder icon when away I thought I was going to be able to re install macOS, but, turns out I was not able to. The error message is '' An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again. '' I tried multiple times running it, but it didn't work. It gave me the same error message again and again.

Unfortunately these older macOS installers tend to have issues. What is worse I think you are accessing the Sierra installer from local recovery mode.....that is the hidden recovery partition on the laptop's internal SSD. It is very likely that installer is no longer valid. Perhaps changing the date back to 2020 could work, but that requires using the command line.

After, I thought I was going to be able to fix it by, I found a YouTube tutorial and the guy used terminal, and the comments were filled with people saying that it worked for them,

Be careful of instructions found online since some of them can be dangerous & risky. As you have seen Apple has all these instructions in various articles on the Apple website. I have tried to find YouTube videos showing some of these methods, but almost everyone one I have ever watched end up doing something I don't want others to do....the moderators would likely remove the links to them anyway as violating the forum's Terms of Use (for good reason as even I don't wish to link to reference them).

but the slash forward key does not work. Instead, it just goes back 2 selections earlier (like little grey bar (letter selected) goes back forward twice) thus, I cannot use terminal to fix the error message. I tried every single key including key + option or control, or fn, and that did not work.

I don't understand what you are describing here regarding the keyboard behavior when using the command line.

The command line is tricky to use especially if you are using it from Recovery Mode....I'm not even sure if Recovery Mode can be used to make a bootable macOS USB installer (never tried it, but I do know Recovery Mode is extremely limited). You also have to be very careful when dealing with spaces in the path (folder names & file names).

I also don't have usb key.

I'm assuming by "key" you mean Keyboard. I doubt it would make any difference unless when you type a specific key it doesn't display the proper character. This could be due to using the wrong language if you have your laptop configured to use more than one keyboard layout. You may be able to select the correct layout from the icon on the menubar if you have multiple keyboard language layouts configured.

Are you getting any error messages?

Why are you trying to reinstall the OS, and why Sierra (macOS 10.12.x) in particular? The 2016 MBP can run up to macOS 12 Monterey.

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

Time Machine drives after 10.7.3 are said to have a recovery partition on board. so you could boot that as an alternate Recovery drive, but not Full MacOS bootable.

You might be able to do a Time Machine restore, but what you get after many hours may or may not include a bootable system.

From here, all I can see is the words you wrote. 'Doesn't work' does not help determine why.

what did you do to invoke recovery?

what did you expect to see on the screen?

what did you see instead?

How long did you wait for something different?

how did this fall short of your expectations?

macbookguy12 wrote:

Would you think it would also work with a backup drive? Like there would already be stuff on the backup like files and stuff but it would still work and boot up?

You would be putting your backups at risk. You should never put your backups at risk or you may lose your data.

And @Grant's latest post makes me realize your backup may is likely to a drive with the HFS+ file system which makes modifying it extremely risky to the existing data......and if it is a Time Machine backup drive I'm not even certain the TM backups would survive at all. If the backup drive was using the APFS file system (later versions of Time Machine require it), then it would be possible to add an APFS volume alongside the existing backup volume for testing purposes.....it is still a bit risky. However, I don't believe your backup drive is using APFS since you probably created the backup drive on an Sierra which only supported drives that utilized HFS+ file systems (Sierra later on was patched to read APFS volumes).

TLDR: Definitely not if you value the data in those backups.