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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.

Mihail Minkov
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2 Answers2

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I would try using an older distro and see if that works first. Also- have you tried installing via a different drive? Its possible whatever drive you have the installer on is corrupt.

You can also try the following steps listed here:

  • Step 1. Go to your applications folder.
  • Step 2. Find the installer for macOS Sierra.
  • Step 3. Right click on the installer and click "Show Package Contents".
  • Step 4. Click on folder named "Contents".
  • Step 5. Click on the folder named "SharedSupport".
  • Step 6. Delete the file named "InstallInfo.plist".
  • Step 7. Enter your administer password to confirm.
  • Step 8. Now open the installer.
conorb
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The problem apparently was that the Macbook used to have a relatively old OS, Lion I think, so the BIOS it has wasn't recently updated. What I did to fix this issue was make a bootable Lion USB, and I was able to install Lion. After that I installed all the possible software updates and then upgraded to El Capitan. After that I was able to install High Sierra without any issues as an upgrade.

Mihail Minkov
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