You must repartition the drive and remove all traces of the prior owner. If the MBA came with Lion or later pre-installed then do this:

Clean Install of Sierra or El Capitan on a Clean Disk

Hey my names Isabella and I need help with my iMac it’s the 2013 one and my problem is that when I try to reinstall elcapitan it says this item is temporarily unavailable. I just purchased a used MacBook Air from a seller. I believe it is the 2011 model. After receiving it, I went into recovery to reinstall Mac OS X 10.7, but a message popped up saying 'This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later.' After I entered in my Apple ID. I even tried entering in the seller's Apple ID but I got the same message. The good news is that I have a MacBook Air 2020 that works perfectly fine, but we can't seem to install OS X El Capitan 10.11 on it because it keeps saying 'update not found. The requested version of macos is not available.' On the Mac App Store.

Reinstall Os X El Capitan Error This Item Is Temporarily Unavailable

The recovery menu offers to install Lion mac os, but it fails with message 'This item is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later' or smth like that and I'm stuck with no mac os x. I have another macbook laptop, which has tiger 10.4 operating system and I can't make a bootable usb with that old mac because it doesn't support most of the.

This Item Is Temporarily Unavailable El Capitan Reinstall Free

1. Restart the computer. Immediately after the chime hold down the Command-Option-Rkeys until a globe appears.
2. The Utility Menu will appear in from 5-20 minutes. Be patient.
3. Select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button.
4. When Disk Utility loads select the drive (usually, the out-dented entry) from the side list.
5. Click on the Erase tab in Disk Utility's main window. A panel will drop down.
6. Set the partition scheme to GUID.
7. Set the Format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
8. Click on the Apply button, then click on the Done button when it activates.
9. Quit Disk Utility and return to the Utility Menu.
10. Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

If it came with Snow Leopard or earlier pre-installed then do this:

Snow Leopard Erase and Install

If possible be sure to back up your files.

1. Insert Snow Leopard DVD into the optical drive and restart the computer.
2. Immediately upon hearing the chime hold down the C key.
3. Release the key when the Apple logo appears and wait for the loading to finish.
4. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities' menu. After Disk Utility loads select the out-dented disk entry from the side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive size.) Click on the Partition tab in the Disk Utility’s right window. Set the number of partitions to one (1) from the drop down menu. Click on the Options button and select GUID, click OK button, set the format type to MacOS Extended, Journaled. Finally, click on the Apply button.
5. After formatting has finished quit Disk Utility. Continue with the OS X installation and follow the directions.
6. When the installation has finished the computer will restart into the Setup Assistant. After you complete the Setup Assistant you will be running a fresh installation of Snow Leopard. Open Software Update and install the recommended updates.
7. If you are planning to sell or give your computer away, then do the following: After you reformat your hard drive and reinstall Snow Leopard, the computer restarts to a Welcome screen. To leave the Mac in an OOTB (Out Of The Box) state, don't continue with the setup. Instead, press Command and Q keys to shut down the computer. The Setup Assistant will guide the new owner through the setup process after he/she turns on the computer.
8. Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1. You can then download and install your own copy of El Capitan or Sierra.

Mar 17, 2017 7:59 PM

This Item Is Temporarily Unavailable El Capitan Reinstall Using