If OS X El Capitan came preinstalled on your new Mac, you’ll probably never need this article until you decide to sell it. At that time, it’s a good idea to erase the disk and install a fresh copy of OS X for the next owner.
May 26, 2019 The problem with the 1,1/2,1 (2006-2007) Mac Pro is that the latest officially supported operating system is Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. In this article I will explain how to put OS X 10.11 El Capitan on your 1,1/2,1 Mac Pro. What you need:. NVIDIA 8000 series graphics card or better. Oct 24, 2019 Mac Pro introduced in early 2008 or later Xserve models introduced in early 2009. To find your Mac model, memory, storage space, and macOS version, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. If your Mac isn't compatible with OS X El Capitan, the installer will let you know. May 15, 2020 The El Capitan installer is downloaded to the /Applications folder, with the file name Install OS X El Capitan. If you have already installed El Capitan and wish to now create a bootable installer, you can force the Mac App Store to re-download the installer.
Apr 30, 2020 Backup Mac OS X and fresh install OS X. Some misery of slowness never ends which is why you should go for fresh installation of the OS X El Capitan. Though technical, but simple procedure of cleaning an old copy of sluggish and freezing Mac and replacing it with new one. This post best describes the clean installation of OS X El Capitan. Mar 16, 2020 So, a co-worker was doing maintenance on his old Mac Pro tower, and got stuck in Install, and won't come out of the Installer. It also says it can't find packages on the drive I think he was running either El Capitan or Sierra - not High Sierra.
If you’re thinking about reinstalling because something has gone wrong with your Mac, know that an OS X reinstallation should be your last resort. If nothing else fixes your Mac, reinstalling OS X could well be your final option before invasive surgery (that is, trundling your Mac to a repair shop). You don’t want to reinstall OS X if something easier can correct the problem. So if you have to do a reinstallation, realize that this is more or less your last hope (this side of the dreaded screwdriver, anyway).
In this article, you discover all you need to know to install or reinstall OS X, if you should have to.Reinstalling is a hassle because although you won’t lose the contents of your Home folder, applications you’ve installed, or the stuff in your Documents folder (unless something goes horribly wrong or you have to reformat your hard drive), you might lose the settings for some System Preferences, which means you’ll have to manually reconfigure those panes after you reinstall.
And you might have to reinstall drivers for third-party hardware such as mice, keyboards, printers, tablets, and the like. Finally, you might have to reregister or reinstall some of your software.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s almost always inconvenient. That said, reinstalling OS X almost always corrects all but the most horrifying and malignant of problems. The process in El Capitan is (compared with root-canal work, income taxes, or previous versions of OS X) relatively painless.
How to install (or reinstall) OS X
In theory, you should have to install El Capitan only once, or never if your Mac came with El Capitan preinstalled. And in a perfect world, that would be the case. But you might find occasion to install, reinstall, or use it to upgrade, such as
If your Mac is currently running any version of OS X except El Capitan
If you have a catastrophic hard-drive crash that requires you to initialize (format) or replace your boot drive
If you buy an external hard drive and want it to be capable of being your Mac’s startup disk (that is, a bootable disk)
If you replace your internal hard drive with a larger, faster, or solid state drive
If any essential OS X files become damaged or corrupted or are deleted or renamed
If you sell or give away your Mac
The following instructions do triple duty: Of course they’re what you do to install OS X for the first time on a Mac or a freshly formatted hard or solid-state disk. But they’re also what you do if something really bad happens to the copy of OS X that you boot your Mac from, or if the version of OS X on your Mac is earlier than 10.10 El Capitan. In other words, these instructions describe the process for installing, reinstalling, or upgrading OS X El Capitan.
You must have Internet access to complete this procedure.
If you’ve never had El Capitan on this Mac, the first thing to do is visit the Mac App Store, download El Capitan (it’s free), and install it. Once you’ve done that, here’s how to install, reinstall, or upgrade to El Capitan, step by step:
Boot from your Recovery HD partition by restarting your Mac while holding down the Command+R keys.
The OS X Utilities window appears.
Select Reinstall OS X, and click Continue.
The OS X El Capitan splash screen appears.
Click Continue.
A sheet informing you that your computer’s eligibility needs to be verified by Apple appears.
Click Continue to begin the process of installing or reinstalling OS X.
If you’re not connected to the Internet, you’ll be asked to choose a Wi-Fi network from the AirPort menu in the top-right corner.
The El Capitan software license agreement screen appears.
Read the license agreement and click Agree.
A sheet drops down, asking whether you agree to the terms of the license agreement.
Click Agree again.
Yes, you did just click Agree; this time you’re being asked to confirm that you indeed clicked the Agree button. If you don’t click Agree, you can’t go any farther, so I advise you to click Agree now.
Choose the disk on which you want to reinstall OS X by clicking its icon once in the pane where you select a disk.
If only one suitable disk is available, you won’t have to choose; it will be selected for you automatically.
Click the Install button.
A sheet asks for your Apple ID and password.
Type your Apple ID and password in the appropriate fields, and click Sign In.
Your El Capitan installation (or reinstallation) begins. The operating system takes 30 to 60 minutes to install, so now might be a good time to take a coffee break. When the install is finished, your Mac restarts itself.
If you were reinstalling El Capitan on the hard disk that it was originally installed on, or upgrading from Mavericks, you’re done now. Your Mac will reboot, and in a few moments you can begin using your new, freshly installed (and ideally trouble-free) copy of OS X El Capitan.
If, on the other hand, you’re installing El Capitan on a hard disk for the first time, you still have one last step to complete. After your Mac reboots, the Setup Assistant window appears.
Getting set up with the Setup Assistant
Assuming that your installation process goes well and your Mac restarts itself, the next thing you should see (and hear) is a short, colorful movie that ends by transforming into the first Setup Assistant screen (Apple Assistants such as this are like wizards in Windows, only smarter), fetchingly named Welcome.
To tiptoe through the Setup Assistant, follow these steps:
When the Welcome screen appears, choose your country from the list by clicking it once, and then click the Continue button.
If your country doesn’t appear in the list, select the Show All check box, which causes a bunch of additional countries to appear.
After you click Continue, the Select Your Keyboard screen appears.
Choose a keyboard layout from the list by clicking it once, and then click Continue.
If you want to use a U.S. keyboard setup, click the U.S. listing. If you prefer a different country’s keyboard layout, select the Show All check box; a bunch of additional countries’ keyboards (as well as a pair of Dvorak keyboard layouts) appear in the list. Choose the one you prefer by clicking it — and then click Continue.
The Select Your Wi-Fi Network screen appears.
Click the name of the wireless network you use to connect to the Internet, type its password, and then click Continue.
If you don’t see the network you want to use, click Rescan.
If you don’t use a wireless network, click Other Network Setup, and then choose one of the available options, or choose My Computer Does Not Connect to the Internet. Click Continue.
The Migration Assistant (also known as the Transfer Information to This Mac) screen appears.
Do one of the following:
Choose to transfer data, and then click Continue.
If this is a brand-new Mac or you’re installing OS X El Capitan on a Mac and have another Mac or Time Machine backup disk nearby, you can transfer all of your important files and settings by following the onscreen instructions and connecting the new and old Macs via FireWire or Ethernet cable.
Transferring data can take hours — that’s the bad news.
The good news is that once the data transfer finishes, you’re finished, too. In other words, you can ignore the steps that follow (which are only for brand new installations with no data to transfer).
Goodbye and good luck.
Choose not to transfer data, and then click Continue.
The Enable Location Services screen appears. Location Services allows apps such as Maps and services such as Spotlight Suggestions to gather and use data including your approximate location.
Select (or don’t select) the Enable Location Services on this Mac check box, and then click Continue.
The Sign In with Your Apple ID screen appears.
Do one of the following:
If you want to use your Apple ID with this Mac, type your ID (such as [email protected]) and password in the appropriate fields, and then click Continue.
If you don’t have an Apple ID or prefer not to use one with this Mac, click Don’t Sign In, and then click Continue.
To learn more about getting an Apple ID, click the blue Learn More link. In a nutshell, an Apple ID lets you make one-click purchases at the iTunes Store, iPhoto, or the Apple Store, and includes free iCloud membership.
The Terms and Conditions screen appears.
Read the Terms and Conditions and click Agree.
A sheet drops down to confirm your agreement.
Click Agree again.
The Create a Computer Account screen appears.
Do one of the following:
If you provided your Apple ID (in Step 6), select the Use My iCloud Account to Log In check box. Then fill in the Account Name (sometimes called Short Name).
Fill in the Full Name, Account Name (sometimes called Short Name), Password, Verify Password, and Hint fields.
This first account that you create will automatically have administrator privileges for this Mac. You can’t easily delete or change the name you choose for this account, so think it through.
You can’t click the Continue button until you’ve filled in the first two fields. Because a password is optional, you can choose to leave both password fields blank if you like. If you do, your Mac warns you that without a password, your Mac won’t be secure. If that’s okay, click OK. If you change your mind and want to have a password, click Cancel.
If you want a different picture, click the little picture to the right of your name (labeled “edit”) and do one of the following:
To take a picture of yourself with your Mac’s built-in camera, click the Take Photo Snapshot button. Then click Continue.
When the picture appears, you can change its size by using the slider control directly below the image and move it around in the frame by clicking your face and dragging. If you’re not happy with this snapshot, click Retake a Video Snapshot.
To select a picture from the Picture library, click the picture you want to represent you — the butterfly, dog, parrot, flower, or whatever — and then click Continue.
Click Continue to exit the Create a Computer Account screen. If you didn’t provide an Apple ID, skip to Step 13.
If you provided your Apple ID in Step 6, the Set Up iCloud Keychain screen appears.
Do one of the following:
Click Set Up iCloud Keychain. When the screen requesting your passcode appears, type your four-digit passcode, and click Continue.
If you’ve forgotten your passcode or don’t have one, click Forgot Code to Reset iCloud Keychain.
A verification code is sent to your iPhone or other Apple device.
Click Set Up Later.
If you choose this option, skip to Step 14.
Type the code in the verification field and then click Continue.
Wait a few minutes while your user account is created and El Capitan is configured for you.
The OS X Finder’s Desktop appears.
And that’s all there is to it. You’re done.
Mac maintenance and optimization are required to clean out system junk files, test memory, rebuild and recover hard drives and clear out the deep buried debris. Mac Maintenance applications will do this for you. Below are my picks for the best Maintenance software for Mac that’ll set your Mac working seamlessly should any trouble pop up.
1. Memory Clean for Mac: The best mac maintenance app
This mac maintenance app will boost your Mac’s memory and speed up things by flushing out the RAM. Mac OS X does the best possible work when it comes to managing RAM. So, the utility of RAM purging applications remains controversial.
But Memory Clean does more than just purging your RAM. It also displays your Mac’s full memory stats in the menu bar. It ensures that remaining processes and activities from recent app use do not hog up the RAM memory. It very clearly states what’s using up your RAM and in this, it stands out from Terminal. It can efficiently speed up your lagging Macintosh.
2. iStat Nano for Mac
When things are going awry and performance drops low, it becomes crucial to check out what’s going inside your Mac. Before iStat Nano, obtaining such never so simple as having it delivered to your dashboard.
It is a handy widget that’s free and easy to use, iStat Nano is redefining Mac maintenance. It displays almost everything from CPU speed, the internal temperature to remaining memory, connected drives, network traffic with battery status and much more.
This mac maintenance software is divided into categories sorted on the basis of functions. Clicking on any flips iStat Nano to reveal complete details. Everything happens instantly. The user interface is a charmer and extremely easy to operate. This is the technological stethoscope for monitoring your Mac’s vital signs.
3. iStat Menus for Mac
It is a tasteful and discrete spy that sits quietly in your Menu bar and monitors your Mac from inside out. Impeccably crafted to maximize user ease iStat Menus provide a vast range of information.
Temperature sensors cover everything viz. AirPort card, battery enclosure, and even power supply. Its control center provides room to switch each element on and off. It might clutter up your menu bar with all the monitoring features running at the same time.
Some of the info may not be useful for all the users. But all in all, it’s an elegant maintenance app, having which will only do you good.
4. gfxCardStatus for Mac: Mac maintenance app for graphics card
Power hungry graphic cards associated with high-graphic gaming systems can drain out the battery of your Mac within the blink of an eye! gfxCardStatus allows you to manually choose a particular chipset (out of nVidia) that you want to remain active.
This allows the other to inactivate and you end up with an extended battery life. You can actually see a rise in your battery life if you disable the nVidia card. But gfxCardStatus doesn’t switch between the chipsets automatically. You have to manually activate chipsets.
5. iDefrag for Mac
It defragments and optimizes your mac hard disk with style. It has now been updated to make it compatible with the latest versions of Mac OS X. You can select multiple files and defragment them at once. Defragmenting is crucial to speed up the accession of files, start applications and even start your machine.
The algorithm has been updated to provide a more comprehensible user interface and statistics. It has been improved to have better stability and a sassier outlook on retina display Macs. Its sophisticated algorithms make it the safest cleaning option. Plus it is compatible with the latest versions of Mac OS X.
6. iTool for Mac
It is multifunctional Utility application that provides comprehensive maintenance for your Macintosh. It has set high standards with its ease of use, efficiency and free maintenance utility that can keep your Mac in tip-top condition.
It is ideal for those who are looking for a Windows experience, being first-time Mac users. One of the simplest mac maintenance tools, it lists everything. So, all you have to do is go and click on the task you want to be done, like clean the ‘Internet’, ‘Restore’ Spotlight indexing to name a few.
You can automate tasks like clearing your Internet cache once a month, which can work when you’re away. It also allows users to force clean the trash once the tasks are completed. But it will not significantly enhance battery power.
7. OnyX for Mac
Simple yet, incredibly powerful maintenance tool. It works only with more recent versions of Mac OS X like Mountain Lion. It is absolutely free and keeps your Mac running in perfect order.
On the first visit, it’ll verify S.M.A.R.T. status of your disk to safeguard from future failure and analyze the structure of your volume. There is an in-built guide to help you through every process.
It allows you to set the number of parameters to check. It is one software that completely cleans your files including system, fonts and users. The automation section allows you to maintain, rebuild and clean your drive. But you will have to shut down other applications, for OnyX to work. Each version of Mac requires a different version of OnyX.
8. Cocktail for Mac
Mac Os El Capitan Requirements
It is counted among the best admin maintenance tool by a majority of Mac users. From clearing cache data to regulating sleep times and everything in between, there isn’t much Cocktail can’t do. Though, it more or less a Terminal replica, Cocktail’s GUI makes it much more popular and way easier to use.
Though understanding the proper working of the application remains a mystery even to some veterans, it has some features like switch on or switch off for journaling and network operations that cater well to major power users. It gives you ultimate control over how your dock works and OS interface related issues.
In other words, it covers all maintenance issues from networking to interface tweaks. It will give you full value for your money.
9. iFreeMem for Mac
It can significantly improve your Macintosh performance. IFreeMem can maximize free memory through the simple process of reducing inactive memory.
Most of the other apps freeze in between and become unresponsive giving time to the memory manager to work and claim back some of the inactive memory. With IFreeMem, you can easily avoid this and allow seamless working.