Clean Install of macOS 10.11 El Capitan

Installing El Captian is no longer straight-forward.

  • download the official installer from here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886
  • create a bootable installation USB drive
  • make sure the date is current and correct
  • start the installer, this will create the recovery partition
  • during reboot, remove the USB drive
  • the installation might fail. make sure to set the date back to 2016
  • reboot and continue installer
  • after subsequent reboot, finish creation of user account
  • log in, install udates, done