Last week, I as faced with abusive trackers on my windows installation on a MacBook Pro 13inch 2015 and had to format the SSD to clean all the mess and garbage! To add to the challenge I had forgotten my ICloud password and I only have with me is an android smartphone. How can I install MacOS and windows on the Macbook ?
1 Answer
To do a clean install on a MacBook Pro 2015 retina, first is needed to download the installation DMG file from a website you trust. However, and since I didn't have iCloud access, I needed to be an older version of MacOS: el Capitain. Also, since I was on android I had to download a ISO rather than a DMG file.
To create the USB boot disk, I bought a micro usb to USB adapter so I could plug my USB drive to the android smartphone. Installed on the android smartphone the USB 2 ISO android App, available to download here
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mixapplications.iso2usb&hl=en&gl=US
and Burned the ISO to the USB drive.
To enable boot on a MacBook Pro when powering up is needed to hold the Option key, and since the SSD was empty, no boot selection is shown, so is better to plug a USB drive with a LED to check if is indeed loading.
Next you need to follow the installation wizard one time, until you're faced with login into iCloud or an error message saying that there is no packages available. Reboot into diagnostics by press and hold the option key after powering. When Loaded, select on the top menu, the Terminal option to change the date.
Below you see what the command should be for your current time and date – April 12th 2021 08:13. To avoid trouble with timezones, we will use UTC time instead (April 12th 2021 06:13). Which means, you can just enter it exactly like this:
date -u 0412061321
Enter the command and hit return. You can then check if it was set correctly by running the first command again. If the date was wrong, it was likely that which caused the error, and after you quit the terminal it should be able to install OS X just fine.
if installing el Capitain, you will need to change the date back to 2015.
Reboot again, and start the installation procedure, at the same time, and since the password recovery procedure on iCloud takes 24h or more, plus the recovery procedure didn't worked on my android phone (regardless of browser). My advice is to open a new temporary fake iCloud account. http://www.iCloud.com
You will be needing a fake credit card number and a fake email account the rest o the details you can use your own. After creating the account you need to fill the billing details, name and address and save it at the end. However is not enough. Next is needed to install the Apple Music App for android, available here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music&hl=en&gl=US
login with the recently created fake iCloud account and accept the terms and privacy. This is important, or else El Capitain won't let you continue the installation procedure on the macbook Pro.
After, you can finally install the MacOS el Capitain on a macbook pro.
When its done, proceed to the windows installation, by first starting to create a empty partition on the SSD the partition utility available on the lauchpad.
Download Unetbootin, to create a bootable USB from a 64bit windows ISO available to download on the internet.
https://unetbootin.github.io
You don't need to download bootCamp drivers as windows can install most of them from the windows update. However, you will need to find the drivers for the wireless card (on my case a BroadComm) so you can connect to the internet after the windows installation finishes.
And you're setup a dual boot on a macBook pro with only an android phone and a USB stick!
Total time needed on a 512kbps connection is 2 days. if you don't have both OS ISO files.
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…or you could have just done it all from Internet Recovery. Your date issue was because you were using an out-of-date El Capitan installer. You could also have just used bootcamp to remove the old windows then re-install new & cut all the rest entirely.– TetsujinCommented Apr 12, 2021 at 9:00
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@Tetsujin, internet recovery was not possible, first because its a brand new SSD without bootloader or internet recovery. And even if I had that, I was on a slow internet connection and connections that take too much time downloading tend to get dropped by Apple. To be on the safe side, is better to download files with auto-resume capability Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 10:29
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Internet recovery doesn't need a formatted drive, you can do that as part of the process. Anyhow, the simplest method wouldn't have involved having to reload macOS at all, let alone having to download some untrusted out of date installer.– TetsujinCommented Apr 12, 2021 at 10:32
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well.... one can always download the DMG image file from Apple... Commented Apr 13, 2021 at 7:50