iM 4,1-14,4 Old iMac Install OS

[ianmac50]

Hi all

I am a very green newbie. I had a Macbook at work about 7 years ago, just PCs since. I've just been given an old iMac (9.1, 2009, El Capitan) so I can test my web pages. Only problem is, the owner has pretty much wiped everything - no backup, Time Machine, or DVD with OS. All that boots is the OS X Utilities. Absolutely no idea where to go from here (perhaps the rubbish bin???) so if anyone has a thread on the site that I could look at, I'd be very pleased.

Ian

 

[Weaselboy]

I moved your post to the old Intel iMac section.

When you says it boots to the OS X Utilities, does it look like this?



If it does, you should be able to click Reinstall macOS and install the operating system.

 

[Amethyst1]

If the above procedure doesn’t work, you’ll have to prepare a bootable macOS USB installer using another system (easy if that’s running macOS, not quite that easy if it’s running something else) and use that to get the iMac back on track.

Another possibility is setting up a version of macOS that’s compatible with the iMac in a VM on another system and cloning that installation to the iMac‘s drive.

If all else fails, you can, uh, try to get your hands on a retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard installation DVD and, assuming the iMac‘s optical drive still works, first install that and then look into getting a more recent version of macOS installed.