Erasing My MacBook Hard Drive

That means your hard drive has been erased, and you're now booting from the recovery HD. Proceed to reinstall OS X.

Actually your disk is now eraced. You did it correct. Now just reinstall yoru os.

It can take some time if you do a secure erase, but otherwise, it should happen pretty quickly. If you can't connect to wifi to reinstall the OS, try connecting to ethernet.

If you can't connect it to Wi-Fi, let's consider this. Can you connect any other devices (iPhone, other computers, etc) to the network? Also, when did this issue start?

Remember, there is a bug where if you boot in to the system recovery drive you cannot connect to any wifi network as voiceover will crash, at least it did when accessing that menu. I reported this but don't normally install from there Internet as I have a bootable disk I use instead. I wrote up a chapter on my newest eGuide on how to do this. Contact me privately for more info.

You did not register your apple id for app store downloads so you would not be in this situation? I see no way to fix this unless there is a way to register through the recovery console.

In the OS X Utilities table, select "Get help online." Safari should open as it normally does in the OS.

If you're connected to the internet, go to http://supportprofile.apple.com. Sign in with your apple ID and select add products under the my products heading. You will need your Macbook's serial number to register.

Register your product with apple support at the address given in the prior post. I just c heaned up my profile as I saw stuff in there I no longer own.

1. Go to the first menu item which will be apple
2. Click about this mac
3. Hit vo right until you get to the serial number field
4. Vo shift c on the long field of number and letters. This will coppy the text to the clipboard.

Good luck

Can you not log in with the apple id at all? This is why a boot disk with osx el capitan on it is a good thing, this way you need not go on line. I wrote a chapter on how to do this Here is the chapter in full. For those interested. For those that want to check out my book go here.

creating a boot thumb drive for your brand new Osx El Capitan Installer

The following is modified from this link.
Suppose you want to install from scratch and your mac's hard drive for some reason won't let yo do it via the recovery console. Suppose you just want to reformat your mac and start over, or sell it. This final chapter will walk you through creating a bootable thumb drive that will help you do just that.

What you will need

You will need a flash drive that is at least 8 gigs or higher. You will also need about 15-30 minutes on your hands to wait for the process to complete. You might also need a cup of coffee while you wait. Joking of corse.

steps.

First, you will need to if you did not already download the osx 10.11 installer from the app store. This is about a 6 gig download. See the upgrade chapter on how to do this. A side note to the reader here. If you have any important content on the flash drive, move it somewhere else. The drive will be erased of all of its content.

Next connect your USB flash drive to your mac. If you are using a different medium such as an external drive, connect that.

Next hit command plus shift plus c from the finder and hit enter on your new connected drive. After this, name it untitled. This is easier to type, and has no spaces. See the next step.

Now it comes time to launch the terminal. don't worry you don't have to know 100 percent what you are doing. This is going to be a simple copy and paste command.

• Launch the terminal. Type Command Shift u from the finder, navigate to the terminal and either click, or type command down arrow to open the app.
• paste in the following command. Remember we renamed the drive "untitled"
  • sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app –nointeraction
• Hit enter, then enter in your admin password. The sudo command tells the computer you are temporarily God and it is doing things your administrator account is not normally aloud or in most cases able to do.
• Hit after you enter in your password, hit enter. and wait. Now would be the time to grab that cup of coffee and finish it in about 15 minutes.

When your prompt comes back, that is, when you see for example Sarah's' mac or what ever you saw before pasting in the command you are done. Feel free to rename the flash media to something useful, but remember to rename it untitled if you ever want to update your boot disk. for the convenience of the reader I've included a script with this guide. You can download the script and paste it in to your home directory, launch the terminal and simply type a period, then a slash followed by the script name. Remember to include the extension at the end or the command will die a violent death. and you will need to reenter the command again. You will be asked for your admin password once you type in the command and hit enter. just as if you typed in the command from above. Note should the script fail type the following in to the terminal.

chmod 755 ./updateos10.11.sh

Then press enter. After that try the script again. You will get your password prompt after which the script should work.

exit

The above steps might seem daunting to the beginner but I promise that these steps are as easy as pie, or what ever you want to have while you wait for this process to complete. This is my 100 percent promise.

Hi.
I would have tried a hard disk clone using an app called super duper. I've used this on several occasions! I personally recommend cloning over time machine backups because, let's say, you then have to restore your mac because you deleted everything, you can boot off the external drive, open super duper, from the external drive of course, and restore that way.

Why do you have to register your product? I always skipped that step. As for the error downloading the OS, why can't you just enter your Apple ID to verify that you want to get El Capitan from the app store? hOw can another Apple ID be assigned to the computer? This is interesting. Then again, I don't have any used macs that have recovery. I have a used 2006 Mini running Snow Leopard, but that obviously can't use recovery.

What Mac Model is it? I think the late 2008 MacBooks are the only ones that can go past Lion. Was your computer running Lion or Mountain Lion? If it was Mountain Lion, you should be fine for El Capitan. What message do you get when attempting to restore in recovery? I'm beginning to think if it's trying to restore Lion, it won't work since you haven't purchased Lion. If that's the case, I'm not sure how to help. If you really don't feel like fiddling around with the machine, you may just want to take into Apple and have them install something on it. I'm getting the feeling this thing only goes up to Lion.

If it is Lion, you could try buying a Lion USB drive. I'm not sure if those are sold anymore, but if you could get your hands on one of the Lion drives they used to sell, you could simply boot from it and install OS X. That's probably cheaper than having Apple repair it.

edit

After posting this, I looked on Amazon for a drive. Here is one I found for $39. You may want to buy this or find it cheaper on Ebay or something. Regardless, I think this would be a good investment since you now have an OS X install disk you can use if stuff happens.

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Mac-Lion-Thumb-Drive/dp/B0089FELB2

Well, I guess that flash drive won't work. You could buy Mac OS X Snow Leopard from Apple for $20. Alternatively, you could install Windows on that computer. Interestingly, I hear that those old MacBooks are still very capable of running modern versions of Windows. I'm not sure if you have to use Bootcamp to install Windows if you could just do it directly. I'm not sure how to help you further. You may just get another Mac like the Mac Mini.