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.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
I have upgraded to a new iMac and wish to donate the old model. I have tried the erase procedure twice. Both times when I tried to reinstall OSx I get an error "unable contact server", and I must restore from backup. I am connected to the internet, I have tried both wifi and ethernet.
I do not see a procedure to erase and reload High Sierra in the support pages.
Please advise?
iMac 24″, macOS 13.3
If you have macOS installed on an external drive, you could try booting from that drive, checking that you have Internet connectivity, and then getting the High Sierra installer through the link on this Apple Support page:
How to download macOS - Apple Support
If you have macOS installed on an external drive, you could try booting from that drive, checking that you have Internet connectivity, and then getting the High Sierra installer through the link on this Apple Support page:
How to download macOS - Apple Support
Start up from macOS Recovery
Option-⌘-R
Upgrade to the latest macOS compatible with your Mac.
APFS won't work for Sierra, Sierra needs MacOS Extended Journaled. High Sierra won't work fir APFS on earlier Macs.
What has often worked for others is to use this Restore Method instead of CMD+r keys...
Option-⌘-R
Upgrade to the latest macOS compatible with your Mac.
2017 iMac failing to install Sierra in re… - Apple Community
Clean Install of High Sierra: Multiple Fa… - Apple Community
Thanks for your reply, I have tried this and it has not succeeded so far. My machine is running the latest copy of High Sierra, 10.13.6, when I use the Option-⌘-R I go into internet recovery, I erase the disk, then reload OSX it tries to load Lion OS which is not the latest??? It fails to reload and gives the error some components missing?
I then restore from backup disk, try again using simply ⌘-R, I erase the disk, try to reload OSX it does attempt to reload High Sierra, but fails with an error cannot contact the recovery server??
The method worked several months ago when I placed the computer is storage. I regrettably got it back out to use it, and now I cannot get it erased again?
Any ideas would be helpful? Could I copy OSX to a CD, and then erase and reload from there? I have a mid 2011 machine with 16mb of memory and a 500gb hard drive. I do not believe that it required a boot CD to start my machine originally, it was preconfigured with OS, all I had to do was customize it.
I ended up loading macOS High Sierra on an external drive, booting to that drive, erasing my internal HD, and reloading macOS on that drive! Then removing the external drive. Better part of a day!
What a circus, I expected better from apple! When I tried the Command R and Option, command R the system consistently wanted to load OSX Lion, a very old OS??? But probably what my computer shipped with back in 2011. But it also consistently failed to load telling me it was "missing items". If it would have loaded I could have easily upgraded to High Sierra. I did upgrade from 8mb to 16mb of memory several years ago to keep. my Mac functional, could this have been the problem?
Thanks for everyone's help!
2011 models were the last to come with system install/restore disks. Do you have those?
No, I have no idea where those disk might be. Can I make a boot disk from my Mac with the CD r/w
High Sierra 10.13.6 is the latest OS that will run on my iMac, that is why I have replaced it.
I can try! Give me a day or two to work on this!
Good work, :)
Upgrading from 8 GB to 16 GB of memory would not have caused problems, unless the new memory was defective or you damaged the computer with static electricity in the process of upgrading it.
I upgraded memory 5 years ago, but since Apple seems to know my original configuration for osx Lion, maybe original memory also?
Erase iMac mid 2011 with High Sierra 10.13.6
