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Trouble doing clean install of El Capitan

I have an old Macbook air that I'm trying to do a clean install of the system software (El Capitan) on. I erased the hard drive, booted in recovery mode, went to reinstall the system software and got the following error after downloading was finished:


"OS X could not be installed on your computer

No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again."


After looking around the forums I saw that the way around this is to set the date to mid-2017 via the terminal. I did that, went to Reinstall OS X, and now after it says


"To download and restore OS X, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple."


I click continue and then get,


"An error occurred while preparing installation. Try running this application again."


So I'm stuck unable to install the system. I also tried installing from internet recovery, but got an error there too.

MacBook Air

Posted on Jan 23, 2021 2:23 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 24, 2021 7:00 AM

Will defer to @Eau Rouge but perhaps the solution is to create a USB Installer of El Capitan. Once done - will have to do the Terminal Time / Date 2017 thing to get it installed as per @Eau Rouge instructions.

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7 replies

Jan 23, 2021 11:37 PM in response to mitchell.sam

Did you follow this procedure,


The certificates for several of Apples OS's expired in October 2019, Apple have been very poor at getting these updated on 

their Recovery Servers with valid certificates. 

This may be the problem you are experiencing. 


Try this workaround, we are going to set the time and date on your mac to a date previous to the expiry date of the certificates.


Connect your mac to your router via cable, not WiFi


Boot to your Recovery HD, click on Utilities in the menubar select Terminal.


Make sure WiFi is switched off, it can reset the date back to today.


Enter a new date, for example or just copy and paste


sudo date -u 011421002017


press Return

enter your password

press Return


If Terminal returns an error saying sudo : command not found, then try again without sudo.


Now try downloading the OS.

If this works then when the OS is installed and booted up you can Open System Preferences> Date & Time

and reset the time back to today.

Trouble doing clean install of El Capitan

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