I created a USB disk with a bootable El Capitan as per this documentation. Plug-in your USB key on a turned-off computer. Start your Mac, press immediately OPTION (aka ALT) Select the Orange icon (aka a USB stick) labelled El Capitan. If it does not detect it after 10 sec and you only see your hard-drive. Try another USB port and wait 10 sec again. Once this is done, you have successfully installed OS X El Capitan. Method 3: Upgrade through Safe Mode. Finally, if the above solutions do not work out for you, what you can do is download and install the operating system in macOS Safe Mode. This is only for the users that are trying to upgrade from their current version to El Capitan.
Installing El Capiton on an old Mac Book Pro today, I received the error:
El Capitan Did Not Install
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.
Can't Reinstall El Capitan
I checked Apple’s support Matrix (it is a very old macbook pro) at https://support.apple.com/kb/SP728?locale=en_GB and it was listed as supported.
After lots of Googling and investigation, I discovered that the date and time were not set to current, the macbook thought it was year 2000.
You can easily reset the time and date by following the steps below:
- Click Utilities on the menu bar
- Select Terminal
- Type date
- Confirm the date is wrong
- Type date 062112422016 (example: June 21st 12:42 2016)
- Exit terminal
- Click Restart
Install El Capitan On Mac
Once the Date and time are configured you will be able to install OS X.
El Capitan Won't Install
Easy fix, for a ridiculous error!