I've already worked on several Macbooks, reinstalling them, formatting, changing drives, etc. and normally it's a relatively simple process.
But I just got a 13" late 2011 Macbook Pro which just won't accept a new installation.
I switched the main drive with a 240GB Kingston SSD, I upgraded the ram from 4 to 8 GB and it turns on without any issues. I previously formatted the drive on another Macbook to the correct format to avoid the installer not detecting it.
I created a bootable USB High Sierra installer, following every step by the book. I am able to boot the installer normally, when I open the disk utility it detects the hard drive.
When I click on Install MacOS High Sierra it thinks for a few seconds and then tells me "The MacOS installer is damaged and cannot be used to install". I tried doing the installer from a freshly downloaded High Sierra Installer two or three more times... no difference. I tried using Sierra, exactly the same error message.
I disabled System Integrity Protection and restarted, same error.
I installed the OS on the hard drive using another Macbook with the same USB without any issues. Then I tried putting the SSD in the problematic Macbook and it doesn't detect any bootable OS. I even booted again and told it to use the SSD as startup drive... it even detects the OS version. Nothing, after a few seconds it shows the folder with a question mark on it.
I thought maybe the computer is not compatible with High Sierra, but the other Macbook is older than this one and it had no issues installing the OS.
I tried using Internet Recovery, but after a while it shows me an error and does nothing. I checked and found out that some models have issues doing internet recovery via Wi-Fi and connected it to a cable and got the same result.
I am starting to consider downloading an older OS and boot via DVD, because this is just annoying right now.