How to install OS X El Capitan hackintosh on your PC: Step 1: Get a copy of Apple’s OS X El Capitan from the Mac App Store. Launch the Mac App Store on the Mac and download OS X El Capitan using your Apple ID. Don’t worry about cost, it’s free: Download OS X El Capitan 10.11 Final Version For Your Mac Free Right Now. Make sure the El Capitan installer (or at least a copy of it), called Install OS X El Capitan.app, is in its default location in your main Applications folder (/Applications). Select the text of the following Terminal command and copy it. Note that the window that displays the command scrolls to the right.
- Go to the App Store and open the El Capitan page there. Then you must click on the ‘Download; button on the El Capitan Page. If your Mac PC is compatible to perform this upgrade, a file named ‘Install OS X El Capitan’ will download to your Applications folder. The installer will open automatically after finishing the download process.
- Install OS X El Capitan.app.zip - Google Drive.
I’m trying to sell a 2009 MacbookPro. It’s the model MacbookPro5.5 and Apple supports macOS El Capitan 10.11 as latest available version.
I’ve wiped all data from the installed SSD and had to boot from an external disk. Now I’ve got two problems:
Install El Capitan Download
- I’ve only got a Mac with Big Sur and Apple Silicon. I cannot use the package installer from the download provided by Apple to create the installer App for El Capitan. However, I need access to the installer so that I’m able to use the createinstallmedia command.
- The 2009 MacbookPro is already wiped and has only access to the recovery mode. You cannot execute the package installer in Recovery Mode to extract the media.
Luckily I’ve found this blog post from Chris Warrick who explained how to extract the installer App from the package:
- Attach an external Disk which contains the downloaded pkg from Apple. You’ll need enough space on that Disk to extract the pkg and it needs to be writeable
- Open the Terminal from inside the Recovery Mode
- Go to the mounted volume
- Extract the package:
Now we can try to create the install media from the installer app. Make sure you’ve attach another disk which can be overwritten by the installer. In this example its named „MyBlankUSBDrive“:
The InstallESD.dmg image is missing, which we’ll need to add to the right location:
Now we’ll have a valid installation medium which can be used to start the installer from. You can reboot from that disk and should be able to install El Capitan.
However, I’ve encountered another annoying issue which caused the installer to fail:
El Capitan Installer cannot be verified
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Oh great… On to the next commands you can try from the Terminal inside the Recovery OS:
installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target /Volumes/'XXX'where XXX is the name of the disk you’re installing to.- Wait for the installation to say it’s complete. You will not see any sort of progress display.
Great, you’ve got El Capitan installed! Apple had some issues with certificates and people found a way to either use the above commands for installation or you’ll have to tinker with your Macs time settings so that the signature is valid again. I would have expected that Apple resigned all installers so I wouldn’t have to use these commands at all but doesn’t look like they did.