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No Recovery Partition, cannot reinstall El Capitan

I'm just curious about this, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer.


I was just messing around with an iMac 2008 20" and attempting to create a dual boot with El Capitan. I was able to resize the partition and create a second partition for the other OS I wanted. But somehow, there was some kind of error during the installation of the other OS that obliterated the macOS partitions, including the recovery -- meaning command+R/command+option+r don't work and I got the ? folder icon at one point.


Additionally, since I had bootable media for the secondary OS I wanted to to put on, I tried to install it in order to get some use out of the machine, but it failed to install (for some reason unknown), and now I don't even get the ? folder icon when I turn it on. Seems there is nothing left of macOS to work with.


I am wondering if there is any way to reinstall macOS, even if it has to be done from scratch. Is there any way to get bootable El Cap media? I don't have access to the App Store, as I don't have any other Macs. Would recovery media from another Mac (say, a friend's) work? Is there *any* workaround for this, or is this unit just junk now?


I should also mention that this particular iMac has a damaged DVD drive, so installation discs for Lion are not going to work, even if I had them -- the computer was given to me, I didn't buy it.


Any insight would be useful.

iMac Pro

Posted on Jan 9, 2021 10:18 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 10, 2021 2:30 AM

How to Get an older version of macOS and make a bootable installer This will require access to another Apple Computer that is able to run El Capitan. Once this is done - Bootable Installer. With Installer USB attached, boot using Option key immediately at startup. Presented with options and choose Disk Utilities and Total Erase the destination drive and format with the requirements for El Capitan

Now, please read from this thread about the Certificates of El Capitan are expired and need to change dates to pre-expiration of Certificate over Here before attempting the installation


Best of Luck

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 10, 2021 2:30 AM in response to briankmowery

How to Get an older version of macOS and make a bootable installer This will require access to another Apple Computer that is able to run El Capitan. Once this is done - Bootable Installer. With Installer USB attached, boot using Option key immediately at startup. Presented with options and choose Disk Utilities and Total Erase the destination drive and format with the requirements for El Capitan

Now, please read from this thread about the Certificates of El Capitan are expired and need to change dates to pre-expiration of Certificate over Here before attempting the installation


Best of Luck

No Recovery Partition, cannot reinstall El Capitan

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