So I quit Startup Disk and went back to Disk Utility, and I tried running First Aid on both Macintosh HD and OS X Base System. Startup Disk could not gather enough information on the selected disk. You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. Clicking restart, as one might expect, yields the following error message: Wait for the process to finish before restarting your machine. Click the First Aid button to start fixing your drive. So I thought I’d try quitting OS X Utilities without reinstalling OS X and see what happens.Īfter clicking on Choose Startup Disk, I get a blank list to choose from, with a restart button. From the left pane, choose your MacBook Pro hard drive. But when I hit continue, it gives me an error message:Īn error occurred while preparing the installation.

Here, select Disk Utility and click Continue to get. Now, you’ll be taken to the macOS Utilities screen. Hover the cursor over Options and click on Continue. This will take you to the Startup Disk and Options screen. I restarted with cmd R to load OSX Utilities, and I used Disk Utility to wipe Macintosh HD, overwriting it three times and formatted as OS X Extended (Journaled).Īfterwards, after successfully connecting to my Wi-Fi, I clicked on Reinstall OS X, and it’s giving me the option to set up El Capitan (the OS X that’s installed, and from what I can tell, the latest that can be installed). Keep pressing the power button until you see Loading startup options right below the Apple logo. I’m helping someone with their old laptop (17”, mid-2009, if that matters).

Os x utilities on startup