You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Mac Book Air - Issue Getting the Laptop Back to Factory Specs

I am trading in my Mack Book Air as I have a new one. I have followed the steps to erase the Hard drive but when I attempt to reinstall OS X, it is looking to install OS X Mavericks and my disc is not showing up. What am I doing wrong?


Posted on Jan 22, 2020 6:55 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 22, 2020 8:03 PM

When booted into Recovery Mode launch Disk Utility and select the physical drive and erase it as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).


If you laptop was running macOS 10.12.4+, then see if you can boot into Internet Recovery Mode with Command + Option + R which would install the latest supported macOS for this laptop. Sometimes even this will still launch the old Mavericks installer. You should still select the physical drive to erase. With newer versions of macOS you may need to click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility.


If a third party SSD is installed in this laptop, then you may require macOS 10.13+ in order to see the physical drive. If this is the case and you cannot access the newer macOS installers in Internet Recovery Mode as I described earlier, then you can download and create a bootable macOS USB installer using another Mac.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 22, 2020 8:03 PM in response to RubyintheEast

When booted into Recovery Mode launch Disk Utility and select the physical drive and erase it as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).


If you laptop was running macOS 10.12.4+, then see if you can boot into Internet Recovery Mode with Command + Option + R which would install the latest supported macOS for this laptop. Sometimes even this will still launch the old Mavericks installer. You should still select the physical drive to erase. With newer versions of macOS you may need to click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility.


If a third party SSD is installed in this laptop, then you may require macOS 10.13+ in order to see the physical drive. If this is the case and you cannot access the newer macOS installers in Internet Recovery Mode as I described earlier, then you can download and create a bootable macOS USB installer using another Mac.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


Mac Book Air - Issue Getting the Laptop Back to Factory Specs

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.