Trouble Re-Installing El Capitan on an early 2009 24" iMac.

[Geeks On Command]

Hello all,

I have an early 2009 24" iMac that was running El Capitan, but I wanted a clean installation.

I booted (holding COMMAND) and tried the reinstall OS option.
After signing into my apple ID, it said that the option to install was "Temporarily Unavailable".
A little Googling told me that this is because my Apple ID was never associated with an OS, so it wouldn't work.

I decided instead to do an Internet install of the original OS (COMMAND+OPTION+R).
It failed to load the Internet installer, and some Googling told me to format the drive first, so I formatted the drive.

After a reboot, COMMAND+OPTION+R doesn't bring me to the Internet OS install, but to the screen with 4 options: Time Machine, Online Help, Reinstall OS, Recover.

At this point, I decided it might be easier to just install from USB so I downloaded an image of El Capitan, and using TransMac on my Windows 10 laptop I created a USB bootable installer.

I booted the Mac (holding OPTION) and got the option to boot to the new USB, and I did.
This brought me to a white screen with a circle with a line through it (like a no ___ allowed sign) and it just stays there until I power off.

Might anyone have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong, or what I might try next? Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Markverhyden]

I booted the Mac (holding OPTION) and got the option to boot to the new USB, and I did.
This brought me to a white screen with a circle with a line through it (like a no ___ allowed sign) and it just stays there until I power off.

Might anyone have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong, or what I might try next? Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Chris

That symbol is Apple's way of saying you can't install that OS on that machine. Which happens on occasion even when it had it on there before. I'd make an installer from an earlier version, say 10.10 or so. Install that and then you should be able to upgrade to 10.15. Let me know if you need any help.

 

[Geeks On Command]

That symbol is Apple's way of saying you can't install that OS on that machine. Which happens on occasion even when it had it on there before. I'd make an installer from an earlier version, say 10.10 or so. Install that and then you should be able to upgrade to 10.15. Let me know if you need any help.

Thank you so much - that did the trick!

 

[Markverhyden]

Thank you so much - that did the trick!

Great to hear.