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.
Answer
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.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Mihail Minkov , Answer Author : conorb