- El Capitan No Packages Were Eligible For Installment
- El Capitan No Packages Were Eligible For Install Big Sur
My end goal was to install macOS 10.13 High Sierra. I read online that one must upgrade to OS X 10.11 before upgrading to macOS 10.13 if one is starting from OS X 10.6. This upgrade route did not work for me no matter how many solutions I attempted. El Capitan Desktop Support. Can't install El Capitan on Dell PC. GaussDoc; May 18, 2021. No packages were eligible for install: Target Drive for Install - SATA.
Here in Belgium schools are locked down due to #coronavirus. With the school of my two oldest kids now switching to remote teaching, I took the time to set up my old MacBook Pro (model late 2008) for my two oldest kids to use. That didn’t go without any hiccups though: the OS X installer refused to install …
The MacBook I had shelved a long time ago was still running OS X Mavericks. As that version was quite showing its age – and didn’t seem to support 2FA for use with my Apple ID – I decided to upgrade it to El Capitan, of which I still had the installer app lying around. I opened up the installer, it prepared some things, and nicely asked to reboot. Upon reboot the installer was ready to install, but when actually starting it greeted me with this error message:
OS X could not be installed on your computer.
No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.
Uhoh! Restarting the MacBook, as suggested, did nothing: the installer kept showing that same error message. Trying to change the startup disk to get back into Mavericks (by pressing ⌥+R upon starting the machine) also didn’t help, as I could only launch the installer and a recovery partition. Yes, the machine was actually stuck in a loop where it would only launch the installer and the installer wouldn’t install.
~
With a Google Search Coupon in hand I found that the installer refuses service because the certificate it was signed with (some time back in 2015, when El Capitan was released) got expired by now.
Thankfully one can easily circumvent this expiration by simply changing the date of your system. You can do this before starting the installer, or through a Terminal if the installer is already loaded (as it was in my case).
- In the OS X Installer, choose Utilities > Terminal.
- Enter
date 020101012016and press Enter. - Quit Terminal and reboot to retry the installation.
💡 In this particular Terminal you’re running as root, so no need for sudo here 😉
Here the date is being set to Feb 1st, 2016. You might need to tweak the date a bit depending on when you downloaded the installer originally (as it might be signed with a different certificate). Be sure to set it no earlier than the release date of the OS X version you’re trying to install.
💡 The syntax for the date command is a bit counterintuitive. Choosing your own date will require some puzzling from your end:
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Later versions of OS X, such as High Sierra, have become a bit smarter: they give you the warning upfront – when first launching the Installer.app – instead of after having prepared your disk for installation.
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I have an older, MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) that I intend to give as a gift.
For security reasons, I decided that I was a good to format the drive and reinstall OS X El Capitan.
My first effort was thwarted by an error:
This item is temporarily unavailable.Try again later.
After reading Wiped drive, now can’t reinstall El Capitan from Recovery because the “item is temporarily unavailable”, I supplied a different set of icloud credentials, and the process continued.
Eventually, however, the installation failed with a different message:
El Capitan No Packages Were Eligible For Installment
No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Quit the installed to restart your computer and try again.
I tried using 'Internet Recovery' (Option+Command+R) and a bootable USB drive that contained El Capitan, both of which ultimately failed with the same message.
Is there a way to get this to work?
To create a bootable USB drive, I needed the Install OS X El Capitan.app package.
Using my MBP 16', I used the Download OS X El Capitan link on Apple's support site to get the installer.
Unfortunately, running the InstallMacOSX.pkg package in the DMG failed:
This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer.
El Capitan No Packages Were Eligible For Install Big Sur
I 'found' a Install OS X El Capitan.app package and was able to create the bootable media.