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<blockquote data-quote="Rod" data-source="post: 1874880" data-attributes="member: 204485">You said you downloaded the El Capitan installer and put it on a USB flash drive and tried to boot from that unsuccessfully.Did you create a bootable installer on the USB stick or just put the downloaded installer on the USB stick as downloaded?That will not work.&nbsp; You must use either Terminal or a third party app like DiskmakerX to create a bootable macOS installer from the downloaded installer you got from the app store.You can still do this on your MacBook and the simplest free app I have found for the job is InstalDisk Creator from macdaddy.ioOnce you have that, turn off your iMac, plug in the USB stick and boot holding the Option key.&nbsp; You will then have access to Disk Utility and Installer as expected. Assuming you don't have a hardware problem you should be able to erase and reinstall the El Capitan OS but I don't understand how you backed up your data.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Rod, post: 1874880, member: 204485"] You said you downloaded the El Capitan installer and put it on a USB flash drive and tried to boot from that unsuccessfully. Did you create a bootable installer on the USB stick or just put the downloaded installer on the USB stick as downloaded? That will not work. You must use either Terminal or a third party app like DiskmakerX to create a bootable macOS installer from the downloaded installer you got from the app store. You can still do this on your MacBook and the simplest free app I have found for the job is InstalDisk Creator from macdaddy.io Once you have that, turn off your iMac, plug in the USB stick and boot holding the Option key. You will then have access to Disk Utility and Installer as expected. Assuming you don't have a hardware problem you should be able to erase and reinstall the El Capitan OS but I don't understand how you backed up your data. [/QUOTE]

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