El Capitan Could Not Be Installed On Your Computer

Tonight after a routine MacOS update (10.13.2) disaster struck and my Mac got stuck in an update boot loop. After a few hours of panic, reading online and trial & error I managed to resolve it. Here’s what I did in the hope it also helps someone else.

Steps

From the “MacOS could not be installed on your computer” screen:

  • Press and hold “option” key and click restart
  • In the “Startup disk selection” screen, use the arrow keys to select your main hard drive (not the MacOS update)
  • Wait for your Mac to boot normally
  • Download the latest combo update directly from Apple. (this is a full system image, not an incremental update)
  • Open and install the update
  • Grab a snickers, this will take a while
El Capitan Could Not Be Installed On Your Computer

El Capitan Could Not Be Installed On Your Computer Without

My environment: 2017 Macbook pro 15” Touch Bar with MacOS 10.13.1 (High Sierra) installed and tried to update to 10.13.2 using the App Store.

El Capitan Unable To Install

If this was helpful to you, consider buying me a coffee or thanking me at @molsjeroenon twitter!

El Capitan Could Not Be Installed On Your Computer System

The above image came from an attempt to install El Capitan. I just got the following message. Nov 12, 2019 I was repeatedly getting 'Could Not Be Installed on your computer no packages were eligible for install' using both the internet el capitan install and this USB install. Thank you MIKX using terminal date just got me going!! OS X Could not be installed on your computer El capitan is already installed try to reboot The problem is i never installed an hackintosh on these pc, im on skylake on mobo msi z170a gaming pro. Mukhtar Jafari April 24, 2016 at 4:20 PM. “Fix the time and date before installing” or something like that.