I inherited a 2011 iMac from my now passed on Grandmother. It is running on Lion. I wiped the hard drive and tried to reinstall the OS through Command R but it requires the original Apple ID, no way to get that. I tried other commands when opening and the only one that opens is Command R, no Shift Option Command R. If you reboot onto the recovery drive and choose Reinstall OS X, provided you have an Internet connection it’ll download El Capitan from the Apple Servers. Reply Bandit Bill.

• Reinstalling Os X El Capitan Mac
• Reinstall Os X El Capitan Not Working

1. Recovery USB drive works even if your internal hard drive is damaged. It provides you with all the tools you my need to troubleshoot problems, reinstall OS X, repair the hard drive and restore from a Time Machine backup. If due to certain circumstances the recovery partition is not created during installation you can use Mac OS X recovery USB.
2. But to install or reinstall a recent version of OS X, you must either download a non-bootable installer from the Mac App Store or (via OS X’s invisible, bootable recovery partition) download 6GB.
3. Bootable USB Stick - macOS X El Capitan 10.11 - Full OS Install, Reinstall, Recovery and Upgrade.

When OS X shipped on a DVD a good number of years ago, you always had the convenience of a bootable installer—an OS X installer that could be used to boot your Mac if its own drive was having problems. But to install or reinstall a recent version of OS X, you must either download a non-bootable installer from the Mac App Store or (via OS X’s invisible, bootable recovery partition) download 6GB of installer data from Apple’s servers during the installation process. In other words, you no longer have the same safety net or convenience.

Creating the bootable OS X El Capitan installer will erase the USB flash drive you're using. Before you proceed, make sure you have a backup of the flash drive's contents or that you don’t care that the data will be erased. Reinstalling OS X System Software on a Mac with Recovery Mode. It’s a good idea to back up the Mac with Time Machine before beginning this process. Even though this method aims to only reinstall OS X system software on the Mac, things could still go wrong and it’s always better to lean on the side of caution and make file backups beforehand.

Because of this, I recommend creating your own bootable El Capitan (OS X 10.11) installer drive on an external hard drive or USB thumb drive. If you need to install El Capitan on multiple Macs, using a bootable installer drive is faster and more convenient than downloading or copying the entire installer to each computer. If you want to erase the drive on a Mac before installing El Capitan, or start over at any time, you can use a dedicated installer drive to boot that Mac, erase its drive, and then install the OS (and subsequently restore whatever data you need from your backups). And if your Mac is experiencing problems, a bootable installer drive makes a handy emergency disk.

(OS X Recovery lets you repair your drive and reinstall OS X, but to perform the latter task, you must wait—each time you use it—for the entire 6GB of installer data to download. At best, that’s a hassle; at worst, it’s hours of waiting before you can get started.)

As with previous versions of OS X, it’s not difficult to create a bootable installer drive, but it’s not obvious, either. I show you how, below.

Keep the installer safe

Like all recent versions of OS X, El Capitan is distributed through the Mac App Store: You download an installer app (called Install OS X El Capitan.app) to your Applications folder. In this respect, the OS X installer is just like any other app you buy from the Mac App Store. However, unlike any other app, if you run the OS X installer from that default location, the app deletes itself after it’s done installing OS X.

If you plan to use the OS X installer on other Macs, or—in this case—to create a bootable installer drive, be sure to copy the installer to another drive, or at least move it out of the Applications folder, before you use it to install the OS on your Mac. If you don’t, you’ll have to redownload the installer from the Mac App Store before you can use the instructions below.

What you need

To create a bootable El Capitan installer drive, you need the El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store and a Mac-formatted drive that’s big enough to hold the installer and all its data. This can be a hard drive, a solid-state drive (SSD), a thumb drive, or a USB stick—an 8GB thumb drive is perfect. Your drive must be formatted as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume with a GUID Partition Table. (Follow this tutorial to properly format the drive if you’re using OS X Yosemite or older. If you’re using OS X El Capitan, use these instructions.)

Your OS X user account must also have administrator privileges.

Apple’s gift: createinstallmedia

In my articles on creating a bootable installer drive for older versions of OS X, I provided three, or even four, different ways to perform the procedure, depending on which version of OS X you were running, your comfort level with Terminal, and other factors. That approach made sense in the past, but a number of the reasons for it no longer apply, so this year I’m limiting the instructions to a single method: using OS X’s own createinstallmedia tool.

Starting with Mavericks, the OS X installer hosts a hidden Unix program called createinstallmedia specifically for creating a bootable installer drive. Using it requires the use of Terminal, but createinstallmedia works well, it’s official, and performing the procedure requires little more than copying and pasting.

The only real drawback to createinstallmedia is that it doesn’t work under OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard—it requires OS X 10.7 Lion or later. Though it’s true that some Macs still running Snow Leopard can upgrade to El Capitan, I think it’s safe to assume that most people installing OS X 10.11 will have access to a Mac running 10.7 or later.

(If you absolutely refuse to go near Terminal, an El Capitan-compatible version of DiskMaker X is now available, although I haven’t yet had the chance to test it.)

Making the installer drive

1. Connect to your Mac a properly formatted 8GB (or larger) drive, and rename the drive Untitled. (The Terminal commands I provide here assume that the drive is named Untitled. If the drive isn’t named Untitled, the procedure won’t work.)
2. Make sure the El Capitan installer (or at least a copy of it), called Install OS X El Capitan.app, is in its default location in your main Applications folder (/Applications).
3. Select the text of the following Terminal command and copy it. Note that the window that displays the command scrolls to the right.
4. Launch Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities).
5. Warning: This step will erase the destination drive or partition, so make sure that it doesn’t contain any valuable data. Paste the copied command into Terminal and press Return.
6. Type your admin-level account password when prompted, and then press Return.
7. You may see the message “To continue we need to erase the disk at /Volumes/Untitled. If you wish to continue type (Y) then press return:” If so, type the letter Y and then press Return. If you don’t see this message, you’re already set.

The Terminal window displays createinstallmedia’s progress as a textual representation of a progress bar: Erasing Disk: 0%… 10 percent…20 percent… and so on. You also see a list of the program’s tasks as they occur: Copying installer files to disk…Copy complete.Making disk bootable…Copying boot files…Copy complete. The procedure can take as little as a couple minutes, or as long as 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how fast your Mac can copy data to the destination drive. Once you see Copy Complete. Done., as shown in the screenshot above, the process has finished.

Reinstall Os X Mojave From Usb

El capitan mac os iso. Createinstallmedia will have renamed your drive from Untitled to Install OS X El Capitan. You can rename the drive (in the Finder) if you like—renaming it won’t prevent it from working properly.

Reinstall Os X From Bootable Usb

Booting from the installer drive

Reinstall Mac Os X From Usb

You can boot any El Capitan-compatible Mac from your new installer drive. First, connect the drive to your Mac. Then, restart your Mac (or, if it’s currently shut down, start it up) while holding down the Option key. When OS X’s Startup Manager appears, select the installer drive and then click the arrow below it to proceed with startup. (Alternatively, if your Mac is already booted into OS X, you may be able to choose the installer drive in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, and then click restart. However, sometimes OS X installer drives don’t appear in the Startup Disk window.)

Reinstall Macos From Usb Without Losing Data

Once booted from your installer drive, you can perform any of the tasks available from the OS X installer’s special recovery and restore features. In fact, you’ll see the same OS X Utilities screen you get when you boot into OS X Recovery—but unlike with recovery mode, your bootable installer includes the entire installer.

Warning: Please follow these instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage or information loss that could result from following this guide. Also, note that installing OS X on PC is illegal. Please buy a real Mac if you're satisfied with your Hackintosh. This guide is for evaluation purposes only.

Requirements

• An Intel-based PC with UEFI bios
• A USB flash drive with at least 16GB capacity
• A dedicated hard drive (SSD highly recommended)
• A computer running OS X (10.9 or later) for preparing the installation USB flash drive

I chose to avoid the UniBeast installer (by Tonymacx86) because of its commercialized nature, as described here. Here is a vanilla guide to installing El Capitan on your PC!

Preparing the USB Installation Drive

First things first. We need to prepare a USB thumb drive that will contain the installation files as well as the bootloader and custom kexts for our specific Hackintosh build.

Download El Capitan from the Mac App Store

Head over to your existing OS X environment running 10.9 or later and open the Mac App Store.

Search for 'El Capitan' and click Download. The download is completely free if you're running OS X 10.9+.

Wait for the download to finish (this could take some time).

Format the USB Drive

Open Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities and locate your USB device. Make sure you've backed up anything important on that drive as it will be erased forever.

Select it, and then on the right, click the partition tab.

1. Click Curent Layout and change it to 1 Partition.
2. Set the Name to USB.
3. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
4. Click Options and select GUID Partition Table.

Click Apply to format the drive.

Copy the Installation Files to the USB Drive

Now that we've downloaded the installation files from the Mac App Store and formatted our USB drive, let's copy the installation files to it.

Run the following command in the Terminal (Applications/Utilities):

The command will run a script inside the Install OS X El Capitan application that will copy the installation files to the USB drive.

This process takes about 15 minutes. Go out for a quick run, or a hamburger, or both. When you come back, it should have finished.

Installing a Bootloader

If you tried to boot from the USB drive as is after the previous step on a PC, it wouldn't work. We need a bootloader that makes it possible to boot OS X on x86 and x86_64 PCs.

There are 3 popular bootloaders to choose from.

• Clover
• Chameleon
• Chimera

I went with Clover as it seems to be the most popular choice among other El Capitan installers, mostly for the following reasons:

Clover is an open-source EFI-based bootloader created on Apr 4, 2011. It has a totally different approach from Chameleon and Chimera. It can emulate the EFI portion present on real Macs and boot the OS from there instead of using the regular legacy BIOS approach used by Chameleon and Chimera. For many, Clover is considered the next-gen bootloader and soon it will become the only choice since BIOS in being replaced by UEFI in every new motherboard. One big feature of Clover is that iMessage, iCloud, the Mac App Store works along with Find My Mac, Back To My Mac and FileVault since Clover can use the EFI partition. (Read more)

Install Clover on Your USB Drive

Installing Clover on your USB drive is relatively easy. It involves running an installation wizard and selecting some options.

Download the latest Clover installer from here.

1. Run the installer.
2. Click Continue twice.
3. Click Change Install Location and set it to your formatted USB drive.
4. Click Customize and check the following options:
   
   • [x] Install for UEFI booting only
   • [x] Install Clover in the ESP
   • [ ] Drivers64UEFI
     • [x] OsxAptioFixDrv-64 - fixes memory map created by AMI Aptio EFI. Booting OS X is impossible otherwise.

1. Click Install and wait for the installation to finish. It shouldn't take more than a minute.

Copy Essential Kexts to the USB Drive

Next, we'll need to copy some kexts (kernal extensions, similar to drivers on Windows) to the USB drive.

• FakeSMC.kext - open source SMC device driver/emulator developed by netkas. Tricks OS X into thinking it's installed on Apple hardware. Absolutely required for Hackintosh installation.
• NullCPUPowerManagement.kext - disables AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext which may cause kernel panics when you try to boot from the USB drive. It's optional, copy it only if you get an AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement-related kernel panic.
• ApplePS2Controller.kext and AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext - adds support for PS2 devices (such as PS2 keyboard/mouse). They're optional, copy them only if you still use PS2 devices.

Download these files from here and copy them to the EFI mounted volume at /EFI/Clover/kexts/10.11/.

Reinstalling Os X El Capitan Mac

Now that the installation USB drive is ready, let's install OS X El Capitan!

Boot from the USB Drive

Restart your computer and boot from the USB drive (Press Esc/F8/Del to access the boot selection menu).

Use the arrow keys to select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan (It should be selected by default). Press the spacebar and select Boot Mac OS X in verbose mode. Verbose mode means that you'll be able to see exactly what's going on under the hood as OS X attempts to boot up its installer. You'll be able to see the exact error message if booting fails.

Press Enter and cross your fingers. Clover will now boot the installer from your USB drive. This could take some time, in my case, it takes around 5 minutes (Don't worry -- the startup time is around 5 seconds after installing on an SSD).

Did it fail?

It's more than likely that the boot will fail. Don't panic (ha-ha), as kernel panics usually mean that you forgot to copy an essential kext to the EFI partition. Look up the exact error you're getting before the boot log comes to an end and search Google for a solution.

Once you find an additional kext that your system needs, you'd attempt to copy it to the EFI volume, only to discover that it's gone! Not to worry, it's just unmounted and hidden. Follow this guide to mount the hidden partition, and then, follow the Copy Essential Kexts section above to copy it to the USB drive's EFI partition.

Format the Target Hard Drive

Once the installation wizard boots, the next step is to prepare the hard drive that you want to install OS X on.

Click Continue, followed by Disk Utility.

Select the target drive to install to (not the USB drive!) and click the Erase button. Make sure to back up anything important on that drive, as it will be deleted forever.

1. Set the Name to El Capitan.
2. Set the Format to OS X Extended (Journaled).
3. Set the Scheme to GUID Partition Map.

Click Erase to format the drive.

Install OS X to the Target Drive

Reinstall Os X El Capitan Not Working

Exit the Disk Utility and click Install OS X.

Click Show All Disks and select the drive you just formatted to install OS X on it. Finally, click Install.

The process takes about 25 minutes. Be patient. For me, it hung at the end ('1 second remaining') for around 5 minutes. Don't be tempted to reset or cancel the installation.

When that's done, the system will reboot. Make sure to boot from the USB device again, and select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan once again, in verbose mode. The installation is a two-part process that continues once you re-boot into the USB drive.

Finally, after about 25 more minutes, OS X El Capitan should be successfully installed on the target drive.

Boot into El Capitan via the USB Device

After the second reboot, boot from the USB device once again, but this time, select Boot OS X from El Capitan, and select verbose mode.

Press Enter and cross your fingers again. If all goes well, you'll be presented with the setup wizard:

Take a minute to set up your new Hackintosh. Once you're done, there are a few things you need to do to finish off the installation.

Reinstall Clover on the Hackintosh Drive

In the previous step, we used Clover on our USB drive to boot our Hackintosh. This is fine, but most of us aren't going to keep that USB drive plugged in forever. Let's make it possible to boot El Capitan independently by reinstalling Clover on it.

Go back up to the Install Clover on Your USB Drive section and follow the steps again, but this time, select your El Capitan volume instead of the USB drive.

Once again, copy the essential kexts to the EFI partition that shows up after installing Clover.

Finally, make sure to add Clover EFI boot options which is possible by pressing Clover Boot Options in the Clover boot window (if there are 2 boot options -- find the one for your SATA drive). I literally spent 3 hours figuring out why Clover would not boot when I disconnected the USB drive before I figured out that I need to manually add the EFI boot options.

Now you'll be able to boot directly from the El Capitan hard drive, as it should be!

Audio and Networking

If you're lucky, audio and networking will work right out of the box. If not, you're on your own from here. You'll need to research your exact hardware (by using System Information in Applications/Utilities) and searching Google to find the right kext or installer to make it work on El Capitan.

Clover Themes

The default Clover theme is pretty ugly (no offense). Check out this theme database to improve Clover's appearance.

This is YosemiteLogin by xenatt:

Enjoy!

That's it! Enjoy your new Hackintosh, and if you absolutely love it, consider buying a Mac!