The usual cause is a simple one your Mac isn’t connected to your local network and the Recovery process is trying to access Apple’s servers to download the software needed for installation. It’s at this point that the Could Not Find error message is displayed. If the installer has a problem, you may find yourself forced to reboot and use the Recovery Partition or the Internet Recovery System built into your Mac. Normally, when you perform a clean install and erase the startup drive, you do so while running the macOS installer from another boot drive, perhaps a USB flash drive that you have cloned the installer to.

You may run across this error message when you’re performing a clean install of the Mac OS and have erased the startup drive. Try using Disk Utility’s First Aid capabilities to test and repair your disk, as outlined in First Aid: Verify and Repair HFS+, APFS Drives with Disk Utility.Ĭould Not Find Installation Information for This Machine Other possible causes include a damaged boot drive. This is a good reason to download the official copy from the Mac App Store or join the free public beta program if you want to try out a new version of the Mac OS early. The error message seems to occur most often when the Mac installer is downloaded from a third-party site. It may seem odd but the usual cause is a corrupt installer, and simply deleting the installer app and downloading a new copy will likely fix the issue. This message usually shows up as a sheet that drops down from the macOS or OS X installer shortly after you start the install process. With the backup recommendation out of the way, let’s get started with the error messages.Ĭould Not Write Installation Information to Disk You can find a large number of external enclosures, drives, and SSDs, as well as a portable and easily-carried-with-you Envoy Pro EX high-performance USB 3 or Thunderbolt bus-powered SSD storage. If you don’t have a backup system in place, I highly recommend investing in one before you install a new version of macOS. Having a Time Machine backup or a clone of your current system can be a lifesaver.

Some of the installation issues we’re going to mention can cause loss of data. Installation Issues Commonly Seen with macOSīefore we get too far along, I want to point out the obvious: don’t install a new version of the Mac operating system without having a current backup. With any luck, you may be able to either correct the issue, allowing you to finish the installation, or prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. In this guide, we will look at some of the installation problems that tend to occur with new releases of the Mac operating system.

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