A family member has messed about with my iMac which is 2009 vintage, originally with Snow Leopard, updated to High Sierra. I use it mainly as an archive, plus I like the quality of the hardware. Anyway, I want to continue using it as long as possible.
The said family member has somehow deleted all the programs and some essential utilities. I have Internet, but no Airport or Bluetooth. The Magic Keyboard and Mouse are not recognised. Time Machine flashes amber continuously. I cannot access system settings. I cannot log in
The system boots up using a wired keyboard and mouse, but The Safe Mode key shortcut does not work and neither do any of the other shortcuts. Only the MAC OS Utility screen appears. The option to reinstall High Sierra returns a ‘server unavailable’ error. The Time Machine option finds a backup, but it doesn’t load because the amber light persists. I have the original Startup disk, but although the reinstall works it fails halfway with a ‘Support files could not be loaded’ error.
I have a recent MacBook Pro, so I tried to temporarily download a High Sierra installer on to a flash drive, but the system just tells me it is not compatible with the MacBook.
I have verified/repaired the HDD and disk image in Disk Utility and they are both OK. The contents of the disk comprise only a ‘OSX Base System’ image of 2GB.
I entered the Terminal command to check software updates and got ‘command not found’. I’m thwarted at every turn. How to get out of this fix? Any ideas would be warmly welcomed.
The said family member has somehow deleted all the programs and some essential utilities. I have Internet, but no Airport or Bluetooth. The Magic Keyboard and Mouse are not recognised. Time Machine flashes amber continuously. I cannot access system settings. I cannot log in
The system boots up using a wired keyboard and mouse, but The Safe Mode key shortcut does not work and neither do any of the other shortcuts. Only the MAC OS Utility screen appears. The option to reinstall High Sierra returns a ‘server unavailable’ error. The Time Machine option finds a backup, but it doesn’t load because the amber light persists. I have the original Startup disk, but although the reinstall works it fails halfway with a ‘Support files could not be loaded’ error.
I have a recent MacBook Pro, so I tried to temporarily download a High Sierra installer on to a flash drive, but the system just tells me it is not compatible with the MacBook.
I have verified/repaired the HDD and disk image in Disk Utility and they are both OK. The contents of the disk comprise only a ‘OSX Base System’ image of 2GB.
I entered the Terminal command to check software updates and got ‘command not found’. I’m thwarted at every turn. How to get out of this fix? Any ideas would be warmly welcomed.
