Hi guys,
Sorry, this will probably be more of a read than necessary but I don't want to leave any details out.
First of all I couldn't find anything that helped me resolve my problem through my searching, so I'm posting to see if I can get any answers. If I break any rules in this post be sure to let me know as I won't have known until I'm told.
I was given a Mac by my mate in a trade deal that he'd bought recently from a local pawn shop. It worked no worries, but then when he used the Mac's factory reset option to give it to me, it wouldn't boot anymore. As I couldn't erase my hard drive while the Mac was booted from it, I ended up downloading a .DMG for High Sierra from an external website (dodgy I know, couldn't figure how to get an official image from the Apple website using Windows) and made a bootable USB using TransMac, but the Mac said the .DMG was damaged and couldn't be used. Here's where I believe my biggest fouled up was; when erasing the hard drive while running off the install USB, I chose to erase it as AFRP, then read right after it's not supported by High Sierra. I have a spare hard drive that I replaced it with and formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled) but I can't get into MacOS Recovery now, unless it's off the USB which doesn't allow me to use the Internet-based MacOS installer as it just tries to use the damaged USB install. This is where it really confuses me, because like I said I don't normally use Macs; whenever I try to boot into the Recovery with Command+R (or Windows+R) it boots into Clover, which a couple quick searches led me to believe it's a tool normally used in Hackintoshes.
I'm probably just missing something really simple or something, but I thought I'd ask before I try anything else and dig a deeper hole. Finally, I'll list the Mac specs below:
A1311 Model iMac 21.5"
Core 2 Duo E7600 @3.06GHz
8GB DDR3 SODIMM (originally 4GB I believe)
320GB hard drive (not original, as I found no thermal sensor on the hard drive when removing it. At least, I think that's how that goes.)
Any responses are greatly appreciated, as I wouldn't mind giving garageband a go again sometime!
Sorry, this will probably be more of a read than necessary but I don't want to leave any details out.
First of all I couldn't find anything that helped me resolve my problem through my searching, so I'm posting to see if I can get any answers. If I break any rules in this post be sure to let me know as I won't have known until I'm told.
I was given a Mac by my mate in a trade deal that he'd bought recently from a local pawn shop. It worked no worries, but then when he used the Mac's factory reset option to give it to me, it wouldn't boot anymore. As I couldn't erase my hard drive while the Mac was booted from it, I ended up downloading a .DMG for High Sierra from an external website (dodgy I know, couldn't figure how to get an official image from the Apple website using Windows) and made a bootable USB using TransMac, but the Mac said the .DMG was damaged and couldn't be used. Here's where I believe my biggest fouled up was; when erasing the hard drive while running off the install USB, I chose to erase it as AFRP, then read right after it's not supported by High Sierra. I have a spare hard drive that I replaced it with and formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled) but I can't get into MacOS Recovery now, unless it's off the USB which doesn't allow me to use the Internet-based MacOS installer as it just tries to use the damaged USB install. This is where it really confuses me, because like I said I don't normally use Macs; whenever I try to boot into the Recovery with Command+R (or Windows+R) it boots into Clover, which a couple quick searches led me to believe it's a tool normally used in Hackintoshes.
I'm probably just missing something really simple or something, but I thought I'd ask before I try anything else and dig a deeper hole. Finally, I'll list the Mac specs below:
A1311 Model iMac 21.5"
Core 2 Duo E7600 @3.06GHz
8GB DDR3 SODIMM (originally 4GB I believe)
320GB hard drive (not original, as I found no thermal sensor on the hard drive when removing it. At least, I think that's how that goes.)
Any responses are greatly appreciated, as I wouldn't mind giving garageband a go again sometime!
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