recover Ventura over the air?

OldGoat67 wrote:

Hi Harridu… Ventura is not compatible with your MacBook as it requires one from 2017…

Ventura is compatible with the OP Mac. You can upgrade a MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, 2017) as far as Ventura, although you cannot upgrade it any further.

If the OP is seeing Sierra after using Internet Recovery on this Mac, it is probably because this model originally shipped with macOS 10.12.5 (Sierra), and Internet Recovery is going back to Sierra 10.12.5 or 10.12.6.

Note that upgrading that MacBook Pro as far as Ventura would no doubt have converted the format of the SSD from HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (journaled, non-case-sensitive)) to APFS (non-case-sensitive). Sierra predates APFS (at least officially), so I don't know if it might be necessary to use Disk Utility to reformat the entire drive before attempting to do Internet Recovery of Sierra.

Drive format aside, there are a couple of ways to get to Ventura.

#1: Try to convince Internet Recovery to go straight to Ventura.

Mac startup key combinations - Apple Support

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

"When you use Option-Command-R, Recovery "might offer the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.""

#2: Successfully install Sierra, then use Safari and the App Store in Sierra to access the Ventura upgrade link in the following article:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

you have to install El Capitan first

Not an option here. The earliest thing that a 12" Retina MacBook from 2017 can run is macOS 10.12.5 (Sierra).

Hi Harridu… Ventura is not compatible with your MacBook as it requires one from 2017… I think what it’s trying to tell you is that either the installer info in your built in recovery partition is damaged and it can’t reinstall from that or the one from

from Apple won’t work… a workaround is to change your system date to September 20,2016 before trying to install it ( for now turn off automatic time( … run disk first aid too… maybe you can do is Catalina, but you have to install

El Capitan first… and you’re using Wi-Fi to install…that’s going to be super duper slow as the installer is 8-16 GB in size and the installer has to be complete ; 100% downloaded before you try to use it/install… if you can/are able to, use Ethernet rather than wifi… if you have another Mac you can use, make a bootable USB stick… if not then Internet Recovery or recovery from built in partition, to do #2, hold down Apple+R together on startup… you should see a language screen… pick one, continue, to bring up Mac OS X tools, move your cursor to the top centre of your screen & click… otherwise #1: hold down Option+ Apple+R together on startup or Shift+option+ Apple+R together on startup.. you should see a spinning globe and progress bar… make sure you’re already connected to a solid Ethernet network or as a 2nd choice, wifi network… as I mentioned, wifi will be very slow…be very patient.. go off and do other things while it’s downloading

well, I’m done here

John B

It would appear that, as OldGoat said, the recovery partition on your Mac is damaged. As he suggested, you'll need to try Internet Recovery, Option+ Apple+R. That will usually install the version of macOS your Mac shipped with, after which, if the reinstall was successful, you should be able to upgrade to Ventura, assuming your MacBook is indeed a 2017 model and not just one that was purchased in 2017 and was actually an earlier model.

If Internet Recovery won't work either, let us know if you have access to another Mac capable of running Ventura and we can provide additional suggestions as to how to proceed.

Regards.

Harridu wrote:

What is it trying to tell me?

Quite possibly filesystem-related.

APFS officially came out with High Sierra. Show Sierra a drive formatted using APFS, and it might be completely confused, as if the drive contained garbage, or at the very least, was unmountable and unusable. If your Mac is downloading and running a Sierra installer (as part of Internet Recovery), maybe that installer is confused, too.

How can I install Ventura 13.7 (the most recent supported version) instead of ancient Sierra?

See my previous post. If you can't install Ventura directly from Internet Recovery, you may need to install Sierra, and then use Sierra to grab Ventura from its hidden place in the App Store.

(Timemachine was a disappointment as well. It was writing backups every hour without complaining, but when it got hard on hard the backup disk didn't even show up in the recovery menu :-( )

Your Time Machine disk is probably formatted using APFS. When High Sierra first came out, Time Machine wasn't able to store backups on APFS-formatted disks, but over the years, Apple rebuilt Time Machine "under the hood", and now APFS is the preferred format for Time Machine backup disks.

Recall that High Sierra was the first version of macOS to support APFS. Your Mac predates High Sierra by several months. Maybe your Mac's Recovery mode doesn't recognize your Time Machine backups because those are on an APFS drive, stored using a new structure … and your Mac's Recovery mode was expecting to see a HFS+ drive containing a Time Machine backup stored using the old structure.