I was preparing to give away my old MacBook Pro. I reinstalled the good old HDD of back then and wanted to run the system recovery to provide it as a fresh system (and thereby clearing the HDD content).
Device spec
This is a MacBook Pro from mid 2012, using an Intel Core i5 CPU. HDD is 500GB. Laptop has a memory extension but that’s not really relevant here.
The HDD contained macOS Sierra.
Incompatible Wifi
Launching the by-Internet recovery (Command-Option-R during boot), it asks for Wifi network credentials. However it doesn’t manage to connect to my 2.4GHz Wifi using WPA2 PSK.
Incorrect date
If by Internet does not work, let’s try the embedded recovery (Command-R during boot), it tells that it will check if the device is entitled… And then stops with an error.
Opening a terminal screen and running « date » shows a totally bogus date.
Fixing that date with the Unix « date mmddHHMMyyy » command helps.
But installation starts but after ages (claimed to be « 5 minutes left » for at least one hour), it says « -405 seconds remaining » and seems stuck.
By-Internet installation
Connecting to the network using a RJ45 connection, I launch the by-Internet recovery (booting with Command-Option-R). After a while, it boots in the macOS Catalina recovery app. Clicks and clicks later, it copies files to disk and finally reboots (a couple of times) to end in the normal macOS first time setup screen.
Unable to accept license agreement
Choosing country, connecting to the Wifi (that even works now), … screens follow each other until I get to the License agreement page. Two contracts are summarized, each with an expand link. At the bottom of the screen a « Back » button and a greyed out « Forward » button. No matter what I do, it stays greyed out. And until I manage to go over that screen, installation is blocked.
Googling the issue, I find someone saying you need to boot in Safe mode (holding Shift key during boot).
That does not work !
What works is:
- move back to previous screen
- click on « use different ids for iCloud, iTunes, … »
- on the configure iCloud page, click « Set up later »
and from there the installation continues normally.
Final touches
When login is possible, one notices that although it was recovered from the Internet, the OS installed is not up-to-date. Another 30 minutes is needed to get the latest macOS Catalina 10.15.7 on it.
Voilà! Ready to serve someone else…
