An error occurred while preparing the installation

Clean Install of El Capitan or Later on a Clean Disk

1. Restart the computer. Immediately after the chime hold down the Command-Option-Rkeys until a globe appears.
2. The Utility Menu will appear in from 5-20 minutes. Be patient.
3. Select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button.
4. When Disk Utility loads select the drive (usually, the out-dented entry) from the side list.
5. Click on the Erase tab in Disk Utility's main window. A panel will drop down.
6. Set the partition scheme to GUID.
7. Set the Format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
8. Click on the Apply button, then click on the Done button when it activates.
9. Quit Disk Utility and return to the Utility Menu.
10. Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

This should install the version of OS X that was pre-installed when the computer was new.

How do you resolve the "an error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."

I deleted and made back up data in my iCloud. I restarted the computer trying to reinstall Mac OS Sierra, but I kept getting an error saying "an error occurred while prep

I'm afraid you are posting in another's topic. This is called threadjacking and it is disapproved of here. Instead please start your own topic.