MacBook Pro A1286 Mid 2009 Will Not Boot From USB

[fonefreakz]

Hi Guys,

I have a customer that purchased a second hand MacBook Pro A1286.

The person that sold it to her deleted the OS from the drive. There was no DVD or media with it.

I made a bootable USB drive with El Captain on it. The USB drive works ok, as I tested it on a MacBook Air.

The problem is on the MacBook Pro A1286, when I press the option button, it does not take me to the boot manager. It just goes to the internet restore. I am using the standard keyboard on the MacBook.

Are these older models able to boot from USB?

Thanks heaps

Dazza

 

[harryb2448]

It is a 2008 model and is capable of running up to El Capitan OS X.11.6.

Did it boot nthe MBA and where did El Capitan come from? If it is from the App Store and you used a recognised method of making the bootable thumb drive, such as Diskmaker X, the problem maybe with the MBP or its hard drive. Thumb drives are better as the chances a ten year old notebook's DVD maybe shot.

 

[ferrarr]

Why not use Internet Restore?

Did you try the Recovery partition, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314?

edit: Yes, it will boot from USB.

 

[pigoo3]

To the best of my knowledge...Apple computers before 2010 cannot do Internet Recovery:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202313

@OP. I would verify that the USB ports on this computer are working properly. Could try a USB keyboard or USB input device.

- Nick