This lasted ages. I watched 'Pointless' on TV then was just going to stop the install but looked at the install logs and it was still adding to the log. Then it started to reboot and all was well. So this last second on the progress indicator took over 40 minutes. El Capitan appears to be working fine but has not yet had a thorough test. The installation was successful without any issue, and the Mac Mini is working perfectly fine until mid-October. All update was done. In October, I attempted to install MacOS Catalina through 'macOS Catalina Patcher' but no success (by both upgrade and clean install).
- Making install media with El Capitan (with access only to Recovery) Manually installing.pkg files. Making install media out of partial macOS installers (“not a valid OS installer application”) a. From the El Capitan download. Installer from Recovery/App Store (any macOS version) El Capitan installer can’t be verified.
- 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.
Installing El Capiton on an old Mac Book Pro today, I received the error:
As explained here, OS X 10.11 'El Capitan' fails to install because it is too old (the technical reason being that the signing certificate is no longer valid). But you can trick the OS X installer into thinking that it is 2017 and it will happily run without any errors.
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.
I checked Apple’s support Matrix (it is a very old macbook pro) at https://support.apple.com/kb/SP728?locale=en_GB and it was listed as supported.
After lots of Googling and investigation, I discovered that the date and time were not set to current, the macbook thought it was year 2000.
You can easily reset the time and date by following the steps below:
- Click Utilities on the menu bar
- Select Terminal
- Type date
- Confirm the date is wrong
- Type date 062112422016 (example: June 21st 12:42 2016)
- Exit terminal
- Click Restart
Once the Date and time are configured you will be able to install OS X.
Easy fix, for a ridiculous error!
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
Oh dear… When trying to install OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) you may encounter this message. This happens because the the installer certificates are no longer valid when checked against the clock of your mac.
El Capitan Could Not Be Installed In China
Don’t panic though as this is easily fixed using Terminal, so don’t restart immediately.
- Click Utilities on the menu bar
- Select Terminal
- Type date 062112422016
- Exit Terminal
- Click Restart
El Capitan Could Not Be Installed In Humans
When you restart the mac and try the installer again it will now believe the certificates are valid and will continue as it should.