I erased my HD and now cannot restore / recover / boot

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I erased my HD and now cannot restore / recover / boot

Hi All,

I have two second hand mid 2009 macbooks, both were running El Capitan when I received them. I've decided to sell one so erased the hard drive (nothing much on there) in disk utility.

On restart I can't reinstall El Capitan (presumably because I didn't buy it through my apple ID, or on this mac) I made a bootable USB with my other computer but that doesn't work either, it appears when I press option on start up but then just takes me back to language selection and recovery screen. I'd be happy just to take the thing back to the OS it shipped with but I can't seem to do that either, as internet recovery isn't a thing on this early a macbook.

Any ideas? I just want to get it sorted so I can sell it.

MacBook, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Aug 29, 2018 1:23 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 30, 2018 1:51 PM in response to owltrousers

Greetings owltrousers,

I understand you are having trouble to reinstall OS X El Captain on your 2009 macbooks.

So according to your situation, your bootable usb could be not working because you could have created the bootable usb through your other mac instead of your 2009 macbook, which is a installer that is not designed for your macbook.

For example, it is like I went to toyota to buy tires, which is designed for my toyota highlander. However, instead I install to the highlander, I installed to my honda civic (Which the tires would not fit properly into it)

So the solution to this is you would download the OS X El Captain installer (Link provided below)to your working 2009 macbook and create a bootable usb from there(make sure your usb have enough storage for it)

Guide on creating a bootable usb:

https://www.lifewire.com/create-bootable-os-x-el-capitan-installer-2259939

OS X El Captain Installer:

How to download OS X El Capitan - Apple Support

And I wish you the best of luck on solving your problem

Sincerely,

MarcoProlo

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Answer 2

owltrousers Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 31, 2018 1:50 AM in response to MarcoProlo

Thanks for your help.

Sorry I was unclear - I made the bootable USB on my other 2009 macbook, followed those same instructions so it should have worked, still not sure why it didn't.

I did solve the problem in the end. I made another bootable USB this time of Snow Leopard, then I repaired all the disks in disk utility, did a PRAM reset and low and behold it booted up and installed fine.

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I erased my HD and now cannot restore / recover / boot

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