About 6 months ago I had Apple's help updating my late 2011 i7 quad MBPro from Mavericks to High Sierra (last available OS for it). I had upgraded the RAM to 16 and changed the 750gB spinning HDD to a Samsung EVO 500gB SSD. Everything was fine for a few months.
Then one day I clicked on "accept update(s)" or similar alert and it seems like the App Store tried to put Mohave onto my machine ... which it should not have even offered. The install failed/crashed and it kept trying (upon restarting) until I learned the trick of holding down Option during startup and selecting "Mac HD" rather than the installer icon.
I lived like that ... with my working 2011 running High Sierra ... and required the Option key thing every time I cold-started/rebooted ... to Option/select booting from the Mac HD and not the installer package.
Then a few days ago I got on the phone with Apple and they tried to find the installer (screen sharing) in order to remove it ... but could not find it. Finally they asked if I had a current backup. I told them I had a current Time Machine backup. They asked if I minded if we erased the HDD (SSD) and install High Sierra "clean". I said well if that's the only way, let's do it.
We erased the SSD and proceeded to download the High Sierra installer from the Apple server. It said it would take about 15 minutes. It stalled at 2 minutes remaining. We tried various things ... changing from wifi to LAN cable ... taking the laptop to a friend's place (different internet provider) ... and always stalling at 2 min. remaining in the download portion of the operation.
Apple arranged an appointment with the local Apple Store genius bar. I spent several hours there a couple days ago with them trying to install High Sierra from their local server. No matter what they tried, High Sierra would stall during the download. They were SUCCESS at putting "Sierra" onto it. But were not successful at upgrading from that to High Sierra. The same "stall" occurred.
They ran a diagnostic on the 2011 MBPro and it passed everything. The last thing they suggested before I sadly left was that "maybe" it was the SSD ... and that if I still had the spinning 750Gb HDD (I do), I could bring that in and they'd see if it would install High Sierra on that !!
I definitely don't want to go back to a spinning 5400 RPM HDD ! I did go out and buy a new 1T Samsung SSD (EVO) to see if it was that particular 500GB Samsung EVO that was a problem. I installed the 1T last night and phoned Apple this morning. We went through the same thing all over again. I had erased/formatted the drive last night and they checked to make sure that was good. But again it stalled at the 2 minutes remaining in the download portion.
The Apple tech told me, politely that it looked like it wasn't their problem !
Any suggestions come to mind? Thanks
Then one day I clicked on "accept update(s)" or similar alert and it seems like the App Store tried to put Mohave onto my machine ... which it should not have even offered. The install failed/crashed and it kept trying (upon restarting) until I learned the trick of holding down Option during startup and selecting "Mac HD" rather than the installer icon.
I lived like that ... with my working 2011 running High Sierra ... and required the Option key thing every time I cold-started/rebooted ... to Option/select booting from the Mac HD and not the installer package.
Then a few days ago I got on the phone with Apple and they tried to find the installer (screen sharing) in order to remove it ... but could not find it. Finally they asked if I had a current backup. I told them I had a current Time Machine backup. They asked if I minded if we erased the HDD (SSD) and install High Sierra "clean". I said well if that's the only way, let's do it.
We erased the SSD and proceeded to download the High Sierra installer from the Apple server. It said it would take about 15 minutes. It stalled at 2 minutes remaining. We tried various things ... changing from wifi to LAN cable ... taking the laptop to a friend's place (different internet provider) ... and always stalling at 2 min. remaining in the download portion of the operation.
Apple arranged an appointment with the local Apple Store genius bar. I spent several hours there a couple days ago with them trying to install High Sierra from their local server. No matter what they tried, High Sierra would stall during the download. They were SUCCESS at putting "Sierra" onto it. But were not successful at upgrading from that to High Sierra. The same "stall" occurred.
They ran a diagnostic on the 2011 MBPro and it passed everything. The last thing they suggested before I sadly left was that "maybe" it was the SSD ... and that if I still had the spinning 750Gb HDD (I do), I could bring that in and they'd see if it would install High Sierra on that !!
I definitely don't want to go back to a spinning 5400 RPM HDD ! I did go out and buy a new 1T Samsung SSD (EVO) to see if it was that particular 500GB Samsung EVO that was a problem. I installed the 1T last night and phoned Apple this morning. We went through the same thing all over again. I had erased/formatted the drive last night and they checked to make sure that was good. But again it stalled at the 2 minutes remaining in the download portion.
The Apple tech told me, politely that it looked like it wasn't their problem !
Any suggestions come to mind? Thanks
