MacOS could not be installed on your computer

Is there a way for me to do a back up if I am unable to view my computer?

Yes, but you will need an external drive. Since you are unable to log into your main drive or the recovery drive you will need to get some assistance from another Mac.

Part 1:

• Attach the external drive to a working Mac. Use Disk Utility to format the drive. Select Erase as Mac OS Extended Journaled.
• Partition the external drive. Make the two partitions. The first partition should be the largest. It will be for cloning your old drive. Make the second partition for installing macOS. Depending on the size of the external drive you get, you can make this as small as 50GB or large enough to do a clean install of your data. Name the second partition "Sierra"
• Download and install Sierra on this drive instead of High Sierra. Unless you have a newer Mac with SSD drive, I highly suspect you will be better off in Sierra.
• After installing Sierra on the external drive, log in and do a setup but do not select to import any data.
• Eject drive

Download Sierra

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208202

Part 2:

• Attach the drive to your Mac while it is shut down.
• Press the power button and hold down the Option key. This will bring up the startup manager. Select the Sierra drive from the choices using your arrow key.
• Once you have logged into your external drive, you will be able to see the contents of your internal drive.

You can manually drag over your data

You can make a clone backup of your data

Software used to Clone:

CarbonCopyCloner http://www.bombich.com/download.html (All options are available free for 30 days)

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ (Free forever to do an erase and install. Purchased version allows for smart updates and schedules)

Part 3:

• Run Disk Utility on your internal drive.
• I suggest you erase your internal drive and clone back the Sierra partition so you start with a clean Sierra install.
• Since your current drive has issues, I would not use migration. It might bring back problems with corrupt files on that drive.

Let me know if there are any questions.

SUGGESTIONS FOR EXTERNAL DRIVE

The 3TB or 4TB drive is often the best buy. You can partition large drives to use for multiple purposes.

Check out the Western Digital & Seagate drives. Comes Mac and/or PC. Get the one that is cheapest. You will format with Disk Utility to use on the Mac and not use the WD or Seagate software. Prices vary so check first.

Check the warranty when comparing drives. The longer the warranty the better the drive. Look for a drive with a 2 or 3 yr warranty.

BestBuy, Staples, Office Depot will match Amazon pricing.

Current best buys on Amazon

WD 4TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBYFT0040BBK-WESN

3TB $95.99

4TB $109.99

Comes in colors

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQH86A/

WD 4TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN

This drive is smaller and does not need to be plugged in to electrical. Runs off USB

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017IGERDE/

3TB $88.95

4TB $107.00

WD 4TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQHL4E

4TB $97.99

Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0, Black (STDR2000100)

Comes in colors

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FRHTSK4

(could use this as a second Photo drive)

2TB $68.80

4TB $106.99

Seagate Expansion 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEA2000400)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017KE8OG0

2TB $69.99

4TB $109.99

Don't get a WD My Cloud drive. Does not work well with clone and Time Machine.

USB 3.0 drives work on USB 2.0 but you do get 2.0 speed. They are cheaper because they are popular PC drives. If you get a new computer you'll get the bump to 3.0 speed. I don’t recommend FW. The newer computers don’t have FW ports. You would need a connector in order to use the drive on a newer computer.

It sounds like your drive is failing. Open the Terminal in Applications/Utilities and type in the following:

diskutil list

Copy and paste results in a reply.

In the mean time we need to make sure your data on the drive is safe and that you have a bootable drive to try to fix your HD and/or install High Sierra.

First, make a clone backup of your data. (see below)

You'll need an external drive to backup your data. Use Disk Utility on the new drive and select Erase. It should default to Format the external drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - Partition Map Scheme: GUID

I suggest a 3TB drive. Partition the drive. If you are interested in suggestions for a drive let me know.

Make 3 partitions. Yes, you do this in this order...

• Partition 3 (on clock it would be approx 10-12) Make the bottom partition the size of used space on your current drive plus 10-20GB extra.
• Partition 2 (on clock it would be approx 7-10) Make this partition the exact size of your drive.
• Partition 1 (remaining space) would be for Time Machine and other partitions you might want to make.

Step 1) Boot from the clone.

When you get to the login screen, enter your password then hold down the Option key to keep any startup items from launching then hit return.

After logging in, under the Apple in the menu bar, select “About this Mac”. You should see Startup Disk. Make sure it's the name of your clone drive and not Macintosh HD.

If the internal drive cannot be repaired, you can select to install High Sierra on Partition 2. You can replace the drive. There are videos on line that show how to replace. I highly suggest replacing with a SSD drive.

Software used to Clone:

CarbonCopyCloner http://www.bombich.com/download.html (All options are available free for 30 days)

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ (Free forever to do an erase and install. Purchased version allows for smart updates and schedules)

Boot into your Recovery Drive and run First Aid on your Macintosh HD. Unless you are booted from an external drive you can't do some repairs using First Aid.

Boot into the Recovery Drive by holding down Command R when restarting.

Open Disk Utility

Run First Aid on your internal drive, Macintosh HD

Quit Disk Utility

Restart

If this fails to fix you would need to erase your internal drive to fix while booted from a clone backup THEN you would be able to install High Sierra.

If you don't have a backup clone in addition to Time Machine backup, you need to backup first. I would also advise that you wait a bit before updating until High Sierra matures a bit.

Create a Clone backup:

A clone is an exact bootable copy of your internal drive. Unlike standard copying of all files to another drive, the clone software copies hidden files along with other in-use files that are not available when you copy over files to another drive.

Software used to Clone:

CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html (All options are available free for 30 days)

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ (Free forever to do an erase and install. Purchased version allows for smart updates and schedules) (note SuperDuper not fully functional with APFS at this time...currently in beta)

@Dianeoforgeon you're right but you've forgotten something quite important! If you just select quit in the menu bar it when you reboot your computer it will boot again on the macOS installer and you will keep on going on a loop!

Melrawas what you need to do is to simply reboot with the option key, it will bring you to a grey screen where you'll be able to select the boot drive! Then just opt for your regular OS drive and not the macOS installer drive... It will boot into the latest version of the macOS you had installed, in this case most likely in 10.13.1... then to update again download from the 10.13.2 Combo Update and not from Apple Store Updates!

Let me know if it did the trick and managed to get out of that unfinished update loop!

Good luck... 😎

When you say deleted your hard drive, I'm assuming you meant you erased the drive.

Boot into the Recovery Drive by holding down Command R when restarting.

MORE INFO:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

If you want to install High Sierra, select the second option.

• command R to reinstall the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version

• option command R to upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac

• shift option command R to reinstall the macOS that came with your Mac, or the version closest to it that is still available

I suggest you run First Aid then erase and format as HFS+. The High Sierra install process will format as APFS if you have a SSD drive.

I had the same problem on my MBP 2016 (w/touchbar).

I resolved it by doing an NVRAM reset, go back to the the App Store, and reload the update. Everything went fine after that.

Hope this helps.

I had the exact same problem, and I did as you advised;

Boot into the Recovery Drive by holding down Command R when restarting.

Open Disk Utility

Run First Aid on your internal drive, Macintosh HD

Quit Disk Utility

Restart

After restarting the installing continued and it was successfull

This worked for me! Thank you, @xmetienne!

Important to not update via the Apple store, but download the combo update.

I had this problem on a brand new MacBook Pro with touch bar.

On my iMac I had no problem with the update.

I Had the Same Issue - “The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.”

EtreCheck version: 3.4.6 (460)

Report generated 2018-01-07 16:22:12

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 1:51

Performance: Excellent

Click the [Lookup] links for more information from Apple Support Communities.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.

Problem: Other problem

Hardware Information: ⓘ

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

MacBook Air - model: MacBookAir6,2

1 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-4260U) CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Not upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

Handoff/Airdrop2: supported

Wireless:
en0: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 607

Video Information: ⓘ

Intel HD Graphics 5000 - VRAM: 1536 MB

Color LCD 1440 x 900

Disk Information: ⓘ

APPLE SSD SD0128F disk0: (121.33 GB) (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

[Show SMART report]

(disk0s1) <not mounted>
[EFI]: 210 MB

(disk0s2) <not mounted>
[CoreStorage Container]: 80.37 GB

(disk0s3) <not mounted>
[Recovery]: 650 MB

Collection (disk0s4 - Journaled HFS+) /Volumes/Collection : 39.97 GB (2.27 GB free)

USB Information: ⓘ

USB30Bus

Apple Card Reader

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Thunderbolt Information: ⓘ

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Virtual disks: ⓘ

Macintosh HD (disk1 - Journaled HFS+) /
[Startup]: 80.02 GB (5.70 GB free) (Low!)

Physical disk: disk0s2 80.37 GB Online

System Software: ⓘ

OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 (15D21) - Time since boot: less than an hour

Gatekeeper: ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers

Kernel Extensions: ⓘ

/System/Library/Extensions

[loaded] com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt (0.0.97) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverVSP (0.0.97) [Lookup]

System Launch Agents: ⓘ

[not loaded] 6 Apple tasks

[loaded] 160 Apple tasks

[running] 70 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[not loaded] 44 Apple tasks

[loaded] 158 Apple tasks

[running] 85 Apple tasks

Launch Agents: ⓘ

[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

[running] com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2017-09-28) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.teamviewer.teamviewer_desktop.plist (TeamViewer GmbH - installed 2017-07-27) [Lookup]

Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[loaded] com.adobe.acc.installer.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

[running] com.adobe.agsservice.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (? 2afb3af7 96972bcc - installed 2017-11-28) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.apple.installer.cleanupinstaller.plist (? ? ? - installed 2018-01-07)

[loaded] com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing.plist (Apple, Inc. - installed 2017-11-29)

[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2017-10-26) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac3.Agent.plist (? 7f4ba9a8 32d5c83a - installed 2016-04-04) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.teamviewer.Helper.plist (TeamViewer GmbH - installed 2017-07-27) [Lookup]

User Launch Agents: ⓘ

[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.bittorrent.uTorrent.plist (? ? ? - installed 2016-04-04) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac3.Scheduler.plist (MacPaw Inc. - installed 2018-01-07) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist (? 712edc71 e29511ef - installed 2017-06-04) [Lookup]

User Login Items: ⓘ

iTunesHelper Application (Apple, Inc. - installed 2017-10-02)

(/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)

Flux Application

(~/Applications/Flux.app)

CleanMyMac 3 Menu Application (? 0 - installed 2016-03-12)

(/Applications/CleanMyMac 3.app/Contents/MacOS/CleanMyMac 3 Menu.app)

Internet Plug-ins: ⓘ

AdobeAAMDetect: 3.0.0.0 (installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

FlashPlayer-10.6: 28.0.0.126 (installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2016-01-14)

Flash Player: 28.0.0.126 (installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

Default Browser: 601 (installed 2017-12-29)

o1dbrowserplugin: 5.41.3.0 (installed 2016-02-24) [Lookup]

PepperFlashPlayer: 28.0.0.126 (installed 2017-12-29) [Lookup]

googletalkbrowserplugin: 5.41.3.0 (installed 2015-12-11) [Lookup]

Safari Extensions: ⓘ

[not loaded] AdBlock - BetaFish, Inc. - https://getadblock.com (installed 2016-09-13)

[not loaded] Save to Pocket - Read It Later, Inc. - http://getpocket.com/ (installed 2016-07-01)

3rd Party Preference Panes: ⓘ

Flash Player (installed 2017-11-28) [Lookup]

Time Machine: ⓘ

Mobile backups: OFF

Auto backup: NO - Auto backup turned off

Volumes being backed up:

Macintosh HD: Disk size: 80.02 GB Disk used: 74.32 GB

Destinations:

GODSNOTDEAD [Local]

Total size: 0 B

Total number of backups: 0

Oldest backup: -

Last backup: -

Size of backup disk: Too small

Backup size 0 B < (Disk used 74.32 GB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU: ⓘ

10%
WindowServer

2%
Google Chrome

1%
kernel_task

1%
Adobe CEF Helper

1%
Creative Cloud

Top Processes by Memory: ⓘ

545 MB kernel_task

242 MB Google Chrome

189 MB Google Chrome Helper

149 MB Google Chrome Helper

143 MB Google Chrome Helper

Top Processes by Energy Use: ⓘ

14.56 WindowServer

2.08 Google Chrome

1.28 Adobe CEF Helper

0.88 Creative Cloud

Virtual Memory Information: ⓘ

1.19 GB
Available RAM

120 MB Free RAM

2.81 GB
Used RAM

1.08 GB
Cached files

0 B Swap Used

Software installs (last 30 days): ⓘ

Adobe Flash Player:
(installed 2017-12-29)

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC 2018 v7.1.0.10:
(installed 2017-12-29)

Adobe Pepper Flash Player:
(installed 2017-12-29)

PhotoScape X: 2.7.1 (installed 2017-12-29)

Install information may not be complete.

Diagnostics Events (last 3 days for minor events): ⓘ

2018-01-07 16:15:22 cleanup_installer Crash [Open]

Yup, the new update fixed the problem for me. I bought a new Imac and put the backup disc from my old imac in the new one so it would get all the data. After installing everything succesfully I got the same problem as you. Holding the option key on startup I found 2 startup discs and the second disc would start normal but the first option gave me your problem. With the update it fixed the problem and now it starts normal.

File in the Menu bar, select Quit.

Hi Masood,

There is been a few issues with latest updates, however there is a way around it! Anyway, try this:

• Reboot with the option key and get out of the macOS install drive and restart with your normal Mac drive
• Check on App Store update if the 10.13.2 update has been installed
• If not and the update is not present on the available update download then download the combo update 10.13.2
• 10.13.2 Combo Update
• Make sure you have a full backup, ideally time machine, as if there is anything going wrong it is the safest way to reinstall it from the recovery!
• Update

Let me know if my answer was Helpful and more importantly, as it seems to be a high volume of issues with the 10.13.2 update it would be important to inform other users of the way it was resolved!

If it does not work, then download etrecheck application, it is a system reporting app widely used in Apple Support Communities. Then past the report in your post, it might help us to pinpoint where the problem comes from. Don't worry about pasting the report here, it does not contain any personal information and sensitive computer data!

Good luck!

Replying to JiboOluye 12 Nov 0554 post.

Received error message referred to here after installing Canon printer update (kind of random) and after mild panic came to your post, followed instructions, and everything appears ok. Only part of your great instructions was that I had to "mount" the HD to run First Aid (intuitive, just you hadn't so instructed.) So after gulping that this is what I had to do, did it, ran first aid exited out of first aid and mac os utilities and restarted. Again all seems ok at the moment.

Thank you.

Is there a way for me to do a back up if I am unable to view my computer? I tried the “hold option” restart with no luck There was no option to open my Mac HD disk, only the installer. As well as “command r” restart with no luck repairing the disk.

I know this is a few months old, but i am just having this problem. I am not getting the option to choose a different disc start up. I only have the one, and that’s the one giving me problems. I can’t seem to get anywhere.