Reinstalled OS X on 2009 Macbook Pro

[landont1991]

I'm sure there is a thread for this but my situation may be slightly different. I have a mid 2009 Macbook Pro. I bought a new one this year since it is essentially unable to be upgraded anymore. I replaced the hard-drive several years back and upgraded the RAM. It got me through the rest of college. I moved recently and a buddy that helped me move wanted it. I highly doubt it is even worth more than $100. I followed instructions on signing on out of everything. I used command option R and wiped the entire hard-drive. However, I had completely forgot that it wasn't the original hard-drive. It is failing to reinstall the copy of OS.

Message I am receiving: OS X could not be installed on your computer.
No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Which version of OS X are you trying to install/reinstall? Can you create a bootable install drive?

 

[landont1991]

Thank you for the response! It had El Capitan installed prior to wiping the hard-drive. I am unsure on how to create a bootable install drive.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Thank you for the response! It had El Capitan installed prior to wiping the hard-drive. I am unsure on how to create a bootable install drive.

You’re very welcome. As for the bootable install disk, follow the instructions found via the following link.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

 

[doogald]

If the copy that you downloaded of El Capitan is older than late-2019, see also this article: https://tidbits.com/2019/10/28/redownload-archived-macos-installers-to-address-expired-certificates/ for why you may need to re-download the installer.

I think that may be why the recovery partition is not working to install the OS: that the recovery partition was created before the signing certificates expired in October 2019. That happened to me with an iMac I was trading in around that time, and making a bootable installer allowed me to re-install the OS before I shipped the system back.