El Capitan Boot

Here's how you can create a Mac OS X El Capitan bootable USB flash drive. OS X El Capitan is finally here, and if you're looking to install Apple's new desktop OS fresh from the ground up, then. Mar 23, 2021 For details about your Mac model, click the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, choose About This Mac, then choose More Info. These Mac models are compatible with OS X El Capitan: MacBook (Early 2015) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer). I was facing a stalled boot (stuck at end of apple bar) on MBP 13 and 15 running El Capitan but also Yosemite. I tried all the classical SMC, PR NVRAM, single, re-install, with absolute no success So I ended up re-installing clean, migrating and it worked but only for a while šŸ™ Your solution fixed it for good on Yosemite and El Capitan.

It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don't support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you're in luck, because it's not hard to make one.

As with last year, there are two ways to get it done. There's the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Here's what you need to get started.

  • A Mac that you have administrator access to, duh. We've created El Capitan USB stick from both Yosemite and El Capitan, but your experience with other versions may vary.
  • An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 driveā€”it makes things significantly faster.
  • The OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
  • If you want a GUI, you need the latest version of Diskmaker X app. Version 5 is the one with official El Capitan support.
  • Diskmaker X is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.

The easy way

Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and run the Diskmaker X app. The app will offer to make installers for OS X 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11, and it should run on OS X versions all the way back to 10.7ā€”support for 10.6 was dropped in the most recent release.

Advertisement

Diskmaker X has actually been around since the days of OS X 10.7 (it was previously known as Lion Diskmaker), and it's still the easiest GUI-based way to go without intimidating newbies. If you're comfortable with the command line, it's still possible to create a disk manually using a Terminal command, which we'll cover momentarily.

Select OS X 10.11 in Diskmaker X, and the app should automatically find the copy you've downloaded to your Applications folder. It will then ask you where you want to copy the filesā€”click 'An 8GB USB thumb drive' if you have a single drive to use or 'Another kind of disk' to use a partition on a larger drive or some other kind of external drive. Choose your disk (or partition) from the list that appears, verify that you'd like to have the disk (or partition) erased, and then wait for the files to copy over. The process is outlined in screenshots above.

El Capitan Boot

The only slightly less-easy way

If you don't want to use Diskmaker X, Apple has actually included a terminal command that can create an install disk for you. Assuming that you have the OS X El Capitan installer in your Applications folder and you have a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted USB drive named 'Untitled' mounted on the system, you can create an El Capitan install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.

sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction

The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the OS X installer but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection.

Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade El Capitan as you normally would.

Introduction

This project is a new and updated branch of the Yosemite tree and is targetted at OS X 10.11 El Capitan with SIP support, automatic installer detection and fake board-id injection for unsupported models of the MacPro and MacBook Pro.

Download

All downloads of boot.efi should be done from this project page. All other sources are unsupported.

Capitan

El Capitan Boot Drive

Download your copy of the prebuild (32-bit) version of boot.efi for El Capitan (compiled on Microsoft Windows 10 with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015) with a black background and white Apple logo now, and verify the download by entering (either one) in a terminal window:

Or download the one for legacy hardware, with a grey background and logo for your Mac Pro and verify the download by entering (either one) in a terminal window:

Note: If the output is different, then your copy of boot.efi should not be used!

Compilation

Don't want a prebuilt copy of boot.efi then compile the source code yourself, with either Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 or 2015. The latter requires you to update the solution files, but that should be done automatically in the MS Visual Studio IDE.

Note: See also Compiling-Instructions

Thanks To

El Capitan Boot

This project would not have been possible without the help of Peter Holbrook, Mike Boss and a number of other people. Peter did all compiling and Mike ran dozens of test builds that Peter pushed out over at forums.macrumors.com Awesome work guys. Job well done!

I'd also like to thank everyone else whoh helped with testing our nightly builds. Thank you so much!

Help

If you need help with the setup then please visit this macrumor thread. Developers, or people who need help with compiling boot.efi themself, can visit this macrumors developer thread.

Note: I myself don't own any unsupported Apple hardware with a 32-bit EFI implementation, so I can probably do not much for you, but there may be others to help you.

Bugs

Bugs can be reported here

El Capitan Os X

Note: Please provide a clear step by step procedure to reproduce the bug. Thanks.

License

El Capitan Bootable Usb Windows

My work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License and as such you must add a link to this license. Even if you only use a download link. Also note the term 'NonCommercial' because I don't want to see my work end up anywhere else but here.

El Capitan Bootable Usb Download

Note: 'Tiamo' released his work under a BSD-3-Clause license

Disclaimer

El Capitan Boot Menu

Download

Copyright (c) 2014-2016, by Pike R. Alpha ā€“ All right reserved.