Installing El Capitan On Older Mac

  • OS X El Capitan (10.11) on Unsupported Macs macOS Extractor and MacPostFactor are apps that guide you through patching and installing OS X El Capitan (10.11), Yosemite (10.10), Mavericks (10.9), or Mountain Lion (10.8) on your older Mac. This thread focuses on OS X El Capitan.
  • 14 solutions to common OS X El Capitan problems on Mac. Disable all of them and try installing El Capitan again. It could be an issue with older accessories or similar problems.

How To Install El Capitan

Hi, I have an old iMac mid 2007 running Leopard 10.5.8 and I upgraded the RAM to 4GB from 1GB.

I tried to install a new copy (clean install from USB booting) but can't do that.


Aug 03, 2015 Aug 3, 2015. I'm running El Capitan on a mid-2009 17' MBP (2.8Ghz C2D) and a mid-2009 13' MBP (2.53Ghz C2D). Both have 8GB RAM and neither has an SSD, though the drive in the 13' is a non-Apple 7200 RPM drive. Good performance from both. El Capitan and older Mac OS X are about to have a security certificate problem If you’re still running El Capitan, or any version of Mac OS X prior to 10.12.1, then you’re about to run into problems with some popular security certificates. What on earth am I supposed to do if I have an older Mac that is stuck on El Capitan? Or if I wish to use a version that supports older software/doesn't have all the bugs and IOS-isms of the current release? Glad I got organized last month and made a 64gb stick that installs almost version from 10.6 through High Sierra.

I've done the following steps:

  1. I created an USB bootable El Capitan installer
  2. I booted from USB
  3. I erased all the HDD content and I created a new partition
  4. tried to Install but I got this error: 'OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install.'


I don't know what can I do at this point.

How Do I Install El Capitan On An Old Mac


Thank you for all your help!

Posted on Nov 16, 2019 3:45 AM

The new OS X El Capitan features a new Split View, features in Safari, Mail, Notes, Maps, and Photos, and more. To get your hands on all this new stuff, you have to install the operating system on your Mac.

If you want to perform a typical OS upgrade, it’s easy. You download it through the App Store. Here, we’ll go through the steps of installing EL Capitan from Yosemite.

It’s about preparation

Before you install the upgrade, there’s a little bit of prep work you should do. Our article on how to get your Mac ready for OS X 10.11 El Capitan is what you should read before you proceed. It covers:

  • Compatible hardware and older versions of OS X
  • Verifying the health of your Mac
  • Installing updates
  • Backups
  • Encryption issues

Go read that article and come back here when you’re ready to go.

How to download El Capitan

Apple provides the El Capitan upgrade through its App Store. The download is a bit over 6GB, so you may want to download it at a time when you have other things to do—how long the download takes depends on your Internet connection and the amount of activity at the App Store. Or you can use your Mac while you wait, but be ready to save your work and quit when the download is done.

To download El Capitan, launch the App Store app in your Applications folder (or go to Apple menu > App Store). You’ll probably find El Capitan right away, especially if go to the App Store soon after the official release. Apple will probably have a banner at the top promoting El Capitan, but if you don’t see one, you can probably find it in the Free section in the far right column (you might have to scroll down to see it). And you can always do a search on El Capitan.

When you get to the El Capitan page in the App Store, click on the Download button. You may have to enter your Apple ID name and password, and after you do, the installer will download.

Copy the installer

When the download finishes, the installer automatically launches. Don’t click Continue in the installer just yet. What you may not know is that the installer is downloaded to your Applications folder and then deleted after the installation is done.

Installing El Capitan On Older Mac Software

If you ever need the installer again, you can get it in the App Store. But I like to make a copy of the installer. I often have to perform OS installations, so I make a bootable flash drive that I can use; it’s a lot faster than waiting for the download.

To copy the installer, you need to hold down the Option key as you drag the Install OS X El Capitan app in your Applications folder to the copy destination. If you don’t hold down Option, you’ll create an alias, not a copy.

Install El Capitan

How To Install El Capitan On Mac

OK, now you can click that Continue button in the installer window. (If the installer isn’t running, go to your Applications folder and double click the Install OS X El Capitan app.) You’ll be asked to agree and then confirm that you agree to the license agreement.

How to install el capitan

Install El Capitan On Older Macbook

The next screen will ask you to select the disk for the El Capitan installation. If you have one storage device with one partition, you’ll see it in the installer window. But if you have multiple storage devices and/or multiple partitions, you can select the one you want by clicking the Show All Disks button. Make your selection and click Install.

To continue, you must enter your username and password. The install will prepare to install, restart your Mac, and perform the installation. The Mac may restart again during the installation process. The install will take several minutes, so you may want to go for a walk, call your mom, take a nap, or catch up on chores while the software does its thing.

When the installation is finished, the Mac will restart and you’ll need to log in with your username and password. You may be asked if you want to send diagnostic data to Apple and that you need to log in with your Apple ID, and then a setting up screen will appear and go away. You’re done.

Want to do a clean install of El Capitan?

A clean installation is when you install the operating system on a blank storage device. You can do this by creating a bootable El Capitan installer, and then use it as the boot drive for your Mac. You run Disk Utility to erase your drive and then proceed with the El Capitan installation.

Once the installation is done, you use Migration Assistant to transfer your data from a Time Machine backup.

Install El Capitan On Unsupported Mac Pro

Why should you do a clean install? Maybe you partitioned your storage device and want to change the scheme. Or maybe you’ve installed and removed lots of apps over time and want to get right of any lingering software components—if this is the case, don’t restore your data from a Time Machine backup. Manually copy your files and reinstall your software.