This article explains how to install Windows 10 on an old MacBook running El Capitan. Apple made sure to make our lives difficult but installation is still doable.
Download the latest version of Malwarebytes for Mac. Note: If you are running OS X El Capitan 10.11, download this version of Malwarebytes for Mac. Locate the downloaded file Malwarebytes-Mac-4.x.y.zzz.pkg. 4.x.y.zzz represents the version number. In most cases, downloaded files are saved in the Downloads folder. Once you’ve done that, here’s how to install, reinstall, or upgrade to El Capitan, step by step: Boot from your Recovery HD partition by restarting your Mac while holding down the Command+R keys. The OS X Utilities window appears. Select Reinstall OS X, and click Continue. The OS X El Capitan splash screen appears. How to download and install Apple Music: With Me & Stay Up To Date on all my So. Go to the Applications folder. Open the program called “Install OS X El Capitan”. Follow the on-screen instructions. If this program is missing or will not run, then move it to the trash and empty the trash, followed by re-downloading it from the App Store. An alternative approach is to create a dedicated installation drive from the El.
Download And Install Mac Os El Capitan
Download the Windows 10 .iso file from your preferred location (MSDN, torrentz etc) and place the .iso file on the desktop.
Insert a USB drive in one of the Mac’s ports. This USB drive will be formatted so make sure that all its contents are backed up.
El Capitan Installer. Mac operating system’s twelfth major version is the El Capitan Installer (version 10.11). All the Mac computers which don’t have the privilege to upgrade to MacOS High Sierra or the computers that need to upgrade to El Capitan first, can download this twelfth version on the computer.
Launch the Disk Utility, select the USB drive from the list, then press Erase on the top of the window and make sure MS-DOS (FAT) format is selected. Then click Erase button to start the process.
Once formatting is complete, launch Boot Camp assistant and click Continue. Make sure all three options are selected as per below screenshot.
If the first option “Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk” is missing, please follow the article of the link to make it appears before continuing the process on this article.
Then click Continue again. If the .iso file is placed on the Desktop and the USB drive is FAT formatted, Boot Camp Assistant will automatically detect them as per screenshot below.
Download And Install El Capitan On Older Macbook
Click Continue again to manage the size of the Windows partition and then the installation process will initiate!
Once Windows 10 are installed, you will notice some key mac features like right click of the Track Pad are not working.
In order to install Boot Camp drivers, please follow the article “Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model“.
I’m trying to sell a 2009 MacbookPro. It’s the model MacbookPro5.5 and Apple supports macOS El Capitan 10.11 as latest available version.
I’ve wiped all data from the installed SSD and had to boot from an external disk. Now I’ve got two problems:
- I’ve only got a Mac with Big Sur and Apple Silicon. I cannot use the package installer from the download provided by Apple to create the installer App for El Capitan. However, I need access to the installer so that I’m able to use the createinstallmedia command.
- The 2009 MacbookPro is already wiped and has only access to the recovery mode. You cannot execute the package installer in Recovery Mode to extract the media.
Luckily I’ve found this blog post from Chris Warrick who explained how to extract the installer App from the package:
- Attach an external Disk which contains the downloaded pkg from Apple. You’ll need enough space on that Disk to extract the pkg and it needs to be writeable
- Open the Terminal from inside the Recovery Mode
- Go to the mounted volume
- Extract the package:
Now we can try to create the install media from the installer app. Make sure you’ve attach another disk which can be overwritten by the installer. In this example its named „MyBlankUSBDrive“:
The InstallESD.dmg image is missing, which we’ll need to add to the right location:
Now we’ll have a valid installation medium which can be used to start the installer from. You can reboot from that disk and should be able to install El Capitan.
However, I’ve encountered another annoying issue which caused the installer to fail:
El Capitan Installer cannot be verified
Oh great… On to the next commands you can try from the Terminal inside the Recovery OS:
installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target /Volumes/'XXX'where XXX is the name of the disk you’re installing to.- Wait for the installation to say it’s complete. You will not see any sort of progress display.
Great, you’ve got El Capitan installed! Apple had some issues with certificates and people found a way to either use the above commands for installation or you’ll have to tinker with your Macs time settings so that the signature is valid again. I would have expected that Apple resigned all installers so I wouldn’t have to use these commands at all but doesn’t look like they did.