2009 MacBook Pro won't upgrade to El Capitan

[carmen617]

Client has her mother's old MacBook - Mom, an artist, has been diagnosed with Alzheimers and terminal cancer, and client want to make sure all her pictures from her iphone and her Mac are safely stored somewhere accessible to the family. They are currently on the old Mac, or in her mother's iCloud account - her Apple ID is an old work email address. The photos on the phone are "optimized", which means they really live in iCloud, and have to be downloaded to a computer to get them back.

My recommendation was to take the old Mac, currently on 10.6.8, upgrade it as far as it can go (which is El Capitan, according to the interwebs), then download all the pictures from iCloud to the photos app, and then create a new Gmail account and upload all the photos (over 12,000 btw) to Google Photos. No problem, done this before. However, the damned Mac refuses to upgrade to El Capitan. The error message I get is "OSX could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install". I googled the error and every solution says it's about a system clock that needs to be reset with a terminal command. However, the system clock on this computer is correct. Just to be on the safe side, I reset it with the terminal command, but that didn't change the outcome.

I've tried doing the El Cap install from within OSX. I've tried formatting and deleting the drive and trying it with an empty drive. Fortunately I made a Time Machine backup before doing anything, and that restores just fine. I have a bench computer I can restore the account onto to do the photo work, but would actually like to give this computer back to the client upgraded. Anybody have any ideas for me?

 

[Markverhyden]

If it's on 10.6.8 you need to do an intermediate upgrade to 10.7,8,9 before you hit the final version. Personally I do 10.8.

 

[carmen617]

If it's on 10.6.8 you need to do an intermediate upgrade to 10.7,8,9 before you hit the final version. Personally I do 10.8.

Thanks Mark, will give it a shot. Pretty sure I've gone directly from 10.6.8 to El Cap before but it's been a while, you are probably right!

 

[carmen617]

If it's on 10.6.8 you need to do an intermediate upgrade to 10.7,8,9 before you hit the final version. Personally I do 10.8.

Thanks Mark, you were 100% correct. An intermediate jump did the trick. Not sure why Mr. Google didn't jog my memory here, but thankful for this forum and your help!

Sorry - spoke to soon. Upgraded to Mavericks with no problem, got same error message going to El Capitan. Geeze

 

[Your PCMD]

Sorry - spoke to soon. Upgraded to Mavericks with no problem, got same error message going to El Capitan. Geeze

Did you try running the combo update instead? Also, have you tried to create a bootable El Capitan USB and install fresh from that?

El Capitan is only available if the mac meets at least one of condition below.

• You have downloaded El Capitan in the past with the same Apple ID
• The mac is NOT compatible with the later macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)
• The mac is compatible with High Sierra but still running 10.6.8 〜 10.7.4.

If you did not download El Capitan before, but El Capitan is your only choice, the mac needs to be either:

• Compatible with El Capitan but not with High Sierra.
• Compatible with High Sierra but still running 10.6.8 ~ 10.7.4

Otherwise High Sierra is your only choice for OS upgrade.

 

[Markverhyden]

Thanks Mark, you were 100% correct. An intermediate jump did the trick. Not sure why Mr. Google didn't jog my memory here, but thankful for this forum and your help!

Sorry - spoke to soon. Upgraded to Mavericks with no problem, got same error message going to El Capitan. Geeze

How did you run the update to 10.11? Run the installer from the live OS or from a bootable stick?

Is your 10.11 recent? As in you've downloaded it in the last few months or so. I've run into something where I've had old installers, meaning well over a year old fail with some kind of security error message. Downloading a fresh copy solved the problem.

 

[carmen617]

How did you run the update to 10.11? Run the installer from the live OS or from a bootable stick?

Is your 10.11 recent? As in you've downloaded it in the last few months or so. I've run into something where I've had old installers, meaning well over a year old fail with some kind of security error message. Downloading a fresh copy solved the problem.

I have it on a stick, but I've actually also tried a fresh download. It just plain old won't upgrade, not from within the OS, or if I erase the drive and try it from a bare drive. Gives me the same error every time. There are a ton of threads out there about the error, but every one has, as the only solution, changing the system clock in Terminal. The system clock is correct, but I've tried changing it anyway. Really stumped here and wasting a lot of time on what was supposed to be a simple flat rate job.

The one thing i can say is thank god for Time Machine - that's the best part of Macs, from my perspective. It lets me restore and try yet again.

 

[carmen617]

Did you try running the combo update instead? Also, have you tried to create a bootable El Capitan USB and install fresh from that?

El Capitan is only available if the mac meets at least one of condition below.

• You have downloaded El Capitan in the past with the same Apple ID
• The mac is NOT compatible with the later macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)
• The mac is compatible with High Sierra but still running 10.6.8 〜 10.7.4.

If you did not download El Capitan before, but El Capitan is your only choice, the mac needs to be either:

• Compatible with El Capitan but not with High Sierra.
• Compatible with High Sierra but still running 10.6.8 ~ 10.7.4

Otherwise High Sierra is your only choice for OS upgrade.

The Mac came to me with 10.6.8. It upgraded to Mavericks no problem. El Capitan in is the highest version of OSX that can run on this Mac. I am using a USB stick with El Capitan on it, and have tried from within OSX and also from a fresh boot.

 

[Markverhyden]

Hmm.... When you updated to 10.8 did you complete all updates in the app store prior to moving on? Moving from 10.6.8 to later includes some firmware updates. If those aren't done then it'll fail. Also, when you checked upgrade options did you look up the serial number at Everymac for compatibility? That's my main source for things like that.

https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

That model is right on the dividing line with the Core 2 Duo. You might just have to live with 10.10. I've had a couple like that before. Could only get to the version before the version they said was the last one.

 

[carmen617]

Hmm.... When you updated to 10.8 did you complete all updates in the app store prior to moving on? Moving from 10.6.8 to later includes some firmware updates. If those aren't done then it'll fail. Also, when you checked upgrade options did you look up the serial number at Everymac for compatibility? That's my main source for things like that.

https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

That model is right on the dividing line with the Core 2 Duo. You might just have to live with 10.10. I've had a couple like that before. Could only get to the version before the version they said was the last one.

I'll check the serial number, I was just going on the model year. I did all the updates on 10.6.8 prior to starting this process, but not on Mavericks prior to attempting again. A firmware update sounds likely, will give that a go.

 

[overburnz]

Client has her mother's old MacBook - Mom, an artist, has been diagnosed with Alzheimers and terminal cancer, and client want to make sure all her pictures from her iphone and her Mac are safely stored somewhere accessible to the family. They are currently on the old Mac, or in her mother's iCloud account - her Apple ID is an old work email address. The photos on the phone are "optimized", which means they really live in iCloud, and have to be downloaded to a computer to get them back.

My recommendation was to take the old Mac, currently on 10.6.8, upgrade it as far as it can go (which is El Capitan, according to the interwebs), then download all the pictures from iCloud to the photos app, and then create a new Gmail account and upload all the photos (over 12,000 btw) to Google Photos. No problem, done this before. However, the damned Mac refuses to upgrade to El Capitan. The error message I get is "OSX could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install". I googled the error and every solution says it's about a system clock that needs to be reset with a terminal command. However, the system clock on this computer is correct. Just to be on the safe side, I reset it with the terminal command, but that didn't change the outcome.

I've tried doing the El Cap install from within OSX. I've tried formatting and deleting the drive and trying it with an empty drive. Fortunately I made a Time Machine backup before doing anything, and that restores just fine. I have a bench computer I can restore the account onto to do the photo work, but would actually like to give this computer back to the client upgraded. Anybody have any ideas for me?

I run into the same issue just this last week! two MacBook Pro 2009 trying to do a clean install and getting the same error, the workaround was taking the HD/SSD and connect it externally to a more recent MacBook (2013 model in my case) and install El Capitan with no issues whatsoever! then put the HD/SSD back into the older machine and just boot it

 

[overburnz]

PS: try this link here also:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886

 

[Markverhyden]

I'll check the serial number, I was just going on the model year. I did all the updates on 10.6.8 prior to starting this process, but not on Mavericks prior to attempting again. A firmware update sounds likely, will give that a go.

You can also run a stand alone update for 10.8.

https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1676?locale=en_US

Of course @overburnz's option works as well. Done that a few times.

 

[overburnz]

You can also run a stand alone update for 10.8.

https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1676?locale=en_US

Of course @overburnz's option works as well. Done that a few times.

i have tried it but with no success, only with El Capitan... very weird issue...

 

[pcpete]

I was thinking of using the method of installing on another system then transferring, but I was not sure about the firmware needed. For that method to work, what previous version of osx needs to be installed to get the needed firmware to run 10.11?

 

[overburnz]

I was thinking of using the method of installing on another system then transferring, but I was not sure about the firmware needed. For that method to work, what previous version of osx needs to be installed to get the needed firmware to run 10.11?

hopefully it will work just fine with no issues

 

[Markverhyden]

The requirement to doing the install on a surrogate machine and transferring the drive back is that the OS version being installed cannot be older than what the surrogate shipped with. That's why it pays to keep around an older Apple machine even if you upgrade to the latest machine.

 

[carmen617]

The requirement to doing the install on a surrogate machine and transferring the drive back is that the OS version being installed cannot be older than what the surrogate shipped with. That's why it pays to keep around an older Apple machine even if you upgrade to the latest machine.

I have a 2011 iMac "donation" from a client I use as a bench machine for just that sort of thing. I can't tell you how many times I've wiped it. One thing I love about TM is that I can restore a TM backup on that doner machine, prior to wiping the client's Mac. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to invest in a new machine sooner or later, but so far so good.

As far as the original problem, I've gotten the system up to Yosemite, which has Photos on it. Good enough to download the client's original photos onto the Mac, and then I'll upload them to Google. As someone who does about 80% residential work, I'm doing many more projects like this, especially for Apple people. Mom might have thousands of photos in iCloud, "optimized" on her phone, and the family wants access to them once the phone is shut down and the Apple ID can no longer be accessed.