Why can I no longer install OS X Sierra?

Mac
#1

I have 2 USB flash drive OS X Sierra installers that I have used many times in the past to install Sierra but I can no longer seem to install on my mid 2012 15" MacBook Pro which want to downgrade from High Sierra.

The installer boots, I can reformat the hard drive but when choosing to start the installation of OS X nothing happens - the install process does not seem to start it just hangs and does nothing.

I have tried both USB sticks and confirmed that I do not have this issue on another machine - any ideas?

#2

Doesnt HS change the disk format in some way? Maybe reformatting doesnt get it back to “normal”… that being a format that Sierra will understand.

#4

Good luck. I’m refusing to upgrade to High Sierra. I just cant see the point of changing things that much. Also my hardware is probably not going to gain much benefit from it, since its so old. The newest is 2012.

#6

Put the drive in an external case and erase it. it shouldn’t matter what format it is in. OS X (back in the way back days) used to be able to install on a bunch of different disk formats (on PPC Macs) including Apple Unix A/UX disk format.

These days it will throw up an error and not let you go any further (which I don’t understand from the perspective of Unix file systems) which I have gotten to with previously NTFS formatted drives. This is just a technical annoyance of using a Mac.

As a former pure Unix user this frustrates me a little but its not gonna be the end of my world. It just makes it annoying where the OS X when you want to access EXT formatted disks. File systems should be a choice, not something pushed on you.

#8

Sometimes “no error” can be observed in the console by reading the logs. The console will often show you something or another.

There is a tricky way to resolve your issue whereby you can boot to the installer and pull up the Unix Fdisk and Mount commands to get to your disk, but I really wouldn’t recommend this for newbies to the Unix CLI. Playing around with Fdisk if you don’t know what you’re doing can either unwittingly format the wrong partition or screw up your disk entirely if you get the cylinders wrong on the disk or some such.

The more seamless way to do it is just to use disk utility to erase and format the disk. This may not come up as an option during the installation using the disk utility version on the OS X installer disk though. It’s much safer just to wipe everything including the partition table from a live OS X install.

Failing that if you want to be really stubborn you can probably nuke the entire disk and all of its partition table using a Linux live CD such as Ubuntu. This will also give you a GUI tool where if Linux will if not recognise the disk format will at least allow you to nuke the disk back to being a blank partition table.

Your issue is not with the disk itself its with the fact that for whatever reason OS X has put in no backwards compatibility for the disk format that High Sierra uses with Sierra running Macs. This reminds of the old days with HFS and the ubiquitous “wherehaveallmyfilesgone.txt” message for HFS+ formatted disks except worse.

At least in those days you would get an explanation wrapped up in the HFS wrapper to tell you what the deal is with the new disk format and that you needed Mac OS 8.1 or newer to use the Disk. But by that comment you can probably tell I’ve been running Macs for around 20 years now and now we don’t get a warning, we just get a disk format that is not readable on older Macs. A situation that is overlooked and not well thought out.

#9

I do recall there was an issue with install USB sticks “timing out” causing installs to error out (although if I remember correctly it is with an error of some sort. By timing out I mean they have an expiry date and if your computer time is later it just doesn’t work. The simple fix was to jump to the command line and set the date back to an earlier time when the installer was valid (like when you created it).

Plan B, re-create the stick off a fresh download and try again.

#11
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#12

And the earlier versions are in the ‘Purchased’ tab of the App Store app.

#15

The installer has to pull the data from the akami repository. I can’t see why it would not be on there, but hey its Apple, they may well have pulled the repo off their servers. Shouldn’t have but what do I know?

You could test this theory by looking at the full file size of OS X Sierra to see if its the full installer. Seems pretty silly if they can’t let Apple users go about their daily business, but this is the Tim Cuck era now.

#16

I did a bit of a google and I could be thinking about this issue (which shouldn’t effect Sierra being released after that).

Being the resident tech support person (as well as being a hoarder from waaaay back) I actually have installers going all the way back to 10.5 - Leopard. Usually sitting in a folder with the latest (sometimes all of) the Combo updates too.

I haven’t had call to use any of the older installers in a long long while, but storage is cheap enough that I still have them.

I’m pretty sure I also have all the installers for Windows going back to V1.0… including ME if you ever want to punish yourself :stuck_out_tongue: Nothing like firing up that Windows 95 CD and watching Buddy Holly by Weezer… ahh the memories!

#17

I must have the same habits as you. Folders full of OS installers. Add a few Linuxes as well.

1 Like
#19

Actually, Sierra doesn’t appear in the Purchsed tab anymore. Up until El Capitan that was the case, but with Sierra and High Sierra Apple has changed their system, so it doesn’t appear as a purchase. Very annoying.