Reinstalling Lion (or other) on a 2011 MacBook Air

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Level 1

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Reinstalling Lion (or other) on a 2011 MacBook Air

I have a mid 2011 MacBook Air that I was running High Sierra on (the highest I could update to), I wanted to give it to my sister, as her iMac died, but when I went to reinstall to wipe my data off I found I could not reinstall Lion. I know I did just that about four years ago when I bought an OWC 500 GB SSD for that purpose. Apple has since discontinued Lion. However, you can still download a Lion .dmg from Apple. When I opened it, however, an error read that I could not install without a certificate. Does anyone know how I can get a certificate? Do Third Party vendors sell Lion installers on Flash drives? There is no DVD player so onlne or flash is the only way to go. Also, I have to start with Lion before I can work back up to High Sierra (or maybe El Capitan is fine for her purposes). Could I possibly install Ubuntu or some other Linux?

I have M1 and M3 Macs now, so I don't need the machine. Thanks!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 19, 2024 6:42 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 19, 2024 8:05 PM in response to bluetortilla

Boot Recovery using Option-Command-R to load the latest supported macOS version for the Mac.

Use macOS Recovery on an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support

…this should load macOS 10.13.

If you cannot get that Recovery path to load macOS 10.13, then create a macOS 10.13 installer on another Mac, and transfer that installer to and boot that installer on the to-be-transferred Mac:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Do not start up the newly-installed Mac past the “Hello, Welcome to Mac” stuff.

Also, relinquish your ownership using the if-you-no-longer-have-your-Mac path here:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,068 points

Oct 20, 2024 11:51 AM in response to bluetortilla

The Lion DMG files are either update patches or perhaps the full Lion installer, but they all require macOS to already be installed on the laptop. If your laptop shipped with Lion, then there is no way you can use the Lion DMG installer since that is the earliest OS supported.

To add to @MrHoffman's excellent post.....to create a bootable macOS USB installer will require access to another compatible working Mac from 2007 to mid-2018. Which bootable macOS USB installer you can create with the other compatible Mac depends on its exact model. Generally you need:

macOS 10.13 -- a Mac from Late-2009 to mid-2018
macOS 10.11 -- a Mac from 2007 to 2015

You can use the information in the following article to confirm which versions of macOS are compatible with various Apple hardware.....the other compatible Mac can currently be running any version of macOS:

https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

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