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Macbook Air 2011, upgrade to highest Mac OS X, but "can't download the additional components needed"

Hello


I have an old Macbook Air from 2011 which is running Max OS X Lion 10.7.

It hasn't been used for years but I wanted to try to resurrect it.


I moved all my old files off it and wanted to wipe it to start again with the highest OS X that it will take (which I'm sure isn't Catalina 10.15, but I think somewhere online said High Sierra 10.13 was the highest this age of Macbook Air could take)


[I also read somewhere that you can't upgrade from e.g. Lion 10.7 to High Sierra 10.13 directly - you have to go via El Capitan 10.11.....]


Anyway. The current situation is this: I have wiped my Macbook Air 2011, and get to the Mac OS X Utilities page after booting, with four options:

> Restore from Time Machine backup

> Reinstall Mac OS X

> Get Help Online

> Disk Utility


As I want a fresh install, I go to Resintall Mac OS X. Do the Continues and Yeses and Agrees, choose my Macintosh HD as the install location (120.47 GB total, 120.25 GB available). The progress bar appears, almost fully blue immediately.... a few seemingly random numbers underneath appear: "About -2,147,323,123 hours and 11 minutes remaining" and then after maybe 30 seconds, this message:


"Can't download the additional components needed to install Max OS X."


I've tried several times, on different Wifis just in case.


At some point I found out about the Cmd-R or Cmd-Alt-R shortcut when booting, which seemed to start "Internet Recovery" or something.... which gets me to exactly the same point as above, with the same out: "can't download the additional components".


This is the only Mac I have, my other computers are Windows 10 machines.

I was hoping I could make a bootable USB and get the Lion or El Capitan or High Sierra install files on there and load from that but I've had no success.


I've got TransMac on my PC now and have a USB Formatted to Mac format.


But how do I get that USB to be bootable with (frankly, now) any of the OS X that will work on this 2011 Macbook Air?


I'm fairly tech savvy but haven't used Macs much past what you get on screen. Never reset one / wiped one to start again... thought it would be easier than this, but perhaps I was wrong!!


Thanks for any advice / help you can offer


Chris



MacBook Air

Posted on Feb 9, 2020 8:14 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 25, 2020 7:38 AM

The only way I managed to solve this was to get hold of a bootable USB which had Lion on it, and boot from that, re-install, that, then upgrade to El Capitan, then upgrade to High Sierra.


But problem is solved now.

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4 replies

Feb 12, 2020 6:35 AM in response to daschrislydon

Hello daschrislydon, 


Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! From your message I can see that you have erased the 2011 MacBook Air and are looking to upgrade the OS X from Lion. 


You're correct that you need to upgrade to OS X El Capitan before you can upgrade to macOS High Sierra. 


Since you're unable to reinstall the Mac OS X Lion through Recovery, see if you can boot into Internet Recovery. To access Internet Recovery, restart your MacBook Air and hold down Option + Command + R. This will allow you to reinstall OS X Lion.


By reinstalling Lion you'll have access to the App Store and you can follow the steps to upgrade to OS X El Capitan: How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan


Once you have OS X El Capitan running, you can then upgrade to macOS  High Sierra: How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra


If you're unable to reinstall OS X Lion, you'll need to have access to another Mac to be able to create a bootable USB drive for El Capitan. This article will provide you with the steps to take to create a bootable installer: How to create a bootable installer for macOS


All the best!

Feb 12, 2020 8:37 PM in response to i_rina

Maybe as a community specialist you can ask the relevant department at Apple why so many people are

getting the same error of "Can't download the additional components needed to install Max OS X"

when trying to download Lion from the recovery servers. This error usually points to the certificate for the software

being expired. Now we know the certificates for many mac OS's expired in October 2019, but it looks like Apple

has not bothered updating the certificates on the software available on the Recovery servers.

As it is now almost 4 months since these certificates expired then it does seem inexplicable that people are still experiencing

problems downloading and installing OS's from Lion up to and including macOS Sierra.

Perhaps you could take some time to look over the Lion, El Capitan and macOS Sierra communities pages of the past few months to see how many people are experiencing these problems trying to download Apple operating systems

and then pass it on to the relevant department for assessment and hopefully get a fix in the near future.


Please note the error with the macOS Sierra downloaded from, How to upgrade to macOS Sierra - Apple Support

the Install macOS Sierra.app is unable to be used by the createinstallmedia command in Terminal to make a bootable

USB installer, it reports the error /Volumes/MyVolume is not a valid mount point. This is not a user error rather an error in the coding of the install app, too many users are reporting this error to be a failing on their part. I myself can makeUSB installers

for all macOS's from El Capitan, High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina, the only one that fails is Sierra, so maybe you could research that one. Note Apple released an updated version of Sierra in October 2019 with a new valid certificate and it is this version that causes the problem. Those of us who have pre October 2019 Sierra versions can make bootable USB installers without issue.


I look forward to your reply and answer.

Macbook Air 2011, upgrade to highest Mac OS X, but "can't download the additional components needed"

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