Tinribs

Yeah - sorry if the original message is garbled - I tend to think faster than I type.... All the projectors are connected to a wall port using VGA. The cables from MAC/PC to the wall ports are also VGA but connected to PC via an HDMI adaptor and to MAC via a Mini-DP adaptor. In all cases the projectors have two VGA inputs and most have two VGA ports on the wall as well. In the cases where the rooms do not work then neither VGA input on the wall port will work when using the HDMI adaptors but work with the Mini-DP.

Hi All, This one is a bit odd. Our school uses a range of iMacs (from iMac 9 upwards) as PCs by running Windows via bootcamp. Nearly all the classrooms have a ceiling mounted projector connected to the computer via a VGA cable plus mini-display adapter. All works fine. We are replacing the 9s and 10s with actual PCs running Windows. These are HP all-in-one machines that only have HDMI video output. The majority of these work fine but we currently have five rooms that refuse to connect projector to PC. The same cables and PCs work fine in other rooms (running the same or different projectors). If I move the PC in a room that works fine to a room that doesn't then that PC will not connect to the projector in that room even if I move the cables as well. Putting the old iMac back into a room that does not work with a PC works fine. The only differences that I can see between the two are HDMI to mini-display port and/or possibly drivers but that will not explain why the same PC in a different room with the same or different projector setup will work. Is there a difference in signal, voltage or anything else between Mini DP and HDMI that could explain this. In one room even replacing a different iMac wouldn't work - it had to be the exact same iMac that was in the room before we fitted the computer.. Any ideas??

We have success! Thanks to Arthur who provided me with dmg files for various versions of the OS I managed to create a booting USB of Yosemite that actually installs. All I have to do now is physically move 300 Macs from the basement up three flights of stairs to the IT office for the builds. Thanks to all for their suggestions..

Unfortunately we only have El Capitan in our purchase list and we definitely don't have any original disks....

But when I tried to do just that from the app store I got an error stating that my OS was too new and it wouldn't do anything else. If there is a way around that I would be grateful....

OK - most of the iMac 9s we have are windows 10 only. We have no firewire cables. Is there a way to install Mac firmware from Windows rather than MacOS? If not then I'm looking at installing Mavericks instead and I'm having a hard time finding a download of that outside of the App store and I can't get it that way as I have no Macs with an earlier OS than Mavericks....

Indeed. I get this: System: Apple iMac "Core 2 Duo" 2.66 20-Inch (Early 2009) *This system fully supports the last version of OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" and OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" except for Power Nap and AirPlay Mirroring functionality (which also requires an Apple TV 2nd Gen or later). It also supports the last version of OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" and OS X 10.11 "El Capitan" -- including Mac-to-Mac AirDrop capability -- but no other advanced features are supported, including Metal graphics acceleration. It is not capable of running macOS Sierra (10.12) or subsequent versions of the macOS at all.

Thanks again all. Unfortunately we're not at the cloning stage yet. The sudo script appears to have worked but when I boot from the stick I get the apple logo and the progress bar for a bit then I get the grey no-entry sign again. It's looking like these Mac 9s are not even El Capitan compatible despite my research suggesting they are. They're 2009 vintage from what I can tell and the information from http://www.everymac.com suggests that they should run El Capitan. If I have to go back to the previous OS things are looking pretty bleak as far as their usability is concerned. Any suggestions?

OK - so that is now going.. I guess it will take a while. Once done, and if it works, I'll need to keep a copy of that USB for when I start building the 9s in earnest. Is there a way to clone the USB to a file that I can "re-clone" back to the five USB sticks I have been given for this whole job? That will have to be done in Windows 10..

OK - so maybe I should have explained that these refurbished macs will not have any internet access at the school due to firewall restrictions and them not being on any domain/network etc. So I'm having to do all the downloading on a windows 10 pc. I do have a version of El Capitan.dmg on the PC that I have transferred across to the High Sierra Mac (on the desktop). Assuming that the dmg file I have is genuine how do I get it in a state so the sudo command will work?

OK - thanks for the suggestions. We only have High Sierra Macs here. I have tried the links supplied by 3s-gtech but I get the "the OS is too new" error when I try to download it. SO basically to get that method working it looks like I need a Mac running El Capitan or earlier before I can download a version of El Capitan.... Any one got any suggestions??

Unfortunately the Mac 9's we have do not support internet recovery mode and they also do not have the HD based recovery partition (wasn't deemed necessary as they have been used to run Windows and not MacOS) That's not an option for us here. You can't even upgrade the EFI firmware on this model because it's so old...

Hi All, My school has a lot (300) of old iMac 9 and 10s that they have replaced with PCs. They want to give the old Macs away to students etc. The plan is to install vanilla MacOS and just hand them out. It's my job to replace the OS (currently Windows 10 via Bootcamp) with plain ol' MacOS. Mac 10s are easy - I've created a bootable USB stick with High Sierra (the latest OS that will boot from USB on this model) and everything installs nice and easy - takes about 20 mins per Mac. Mac 9's however, are proving somewhat troublesome. Firstly the latest OS they will boot from is El Capitan. So I've created a bootable USB stick the same way as the for the Mac 10s but using an El Capitan DMG file. Issue is that when I boot to the start up device menu (option key on boot) the USB stick does not show up. If I boot with the High Sierra USB stick at least that shows up but that gives a grey no-entry sign when I attempt the install which, I am told, means the OS will not run on this CPU. So, given that the USB sticks are formatted and created the same way (using trans mac on a Windows PC) why does one work and the other not? I've tried different Macs and different USB sticks but no joy. If anyone can think of how to fix this or of an easier way of doing this I would be grateful. Also if anyone has a reliable and safe site from which to download an alternative (to the one I am using) version of El Capitan.dmg that would be nice - just to eliminate the possibility that the file I'm using is screwed in some way. I got mine from here: Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 DMG Image Free Download - ALL PC World TIA Mark P.

OK - so that gives the same error. Nothing in any event logs on the client. I then tried running the app manually and silently (which I hadn't done before) locally. In this case absolutely nothing happens. Nothing appears in task manager and no errors in any logs. There's even supposed to be an HP installer log that appears in C:\windows\INF and that doesn't appear. It's looking like the drivers don't like the -s switch to run silently. Another anomaly I've noticed (that I missed before) is that if you run the setup locally the driver prompts that the installation will replace an older version that is already installed and it lists the installed drivers as the one that I'm actually trying to install that I know AREN'T installed. Searching the registry finds nothing and none of the relevant driver files or the control panel icon are present... Still no idea why one of the machines actually worked...

Thanks for the reply Pete, All the machines have the same AV software so that wouldn't explain why one worked and the others didn't and I suspect the AV would cause issues if we ran it manually which we know works. Haven't tried the PS remote thing but that's because I wouldn't know how so if you could advised I will give it a go.

HI All, Just got a load of new computers to replace an ageing inventory. Got an image working in SCCM and built 140 of them before we noticed that the graphics driver included in the HP Softpaq that we used to create the driver package was the wrong one. This has been resolved in the image now so any newly built machines will work. However we now have 100+ machines with the base MS graphics installed. I have created an application using the Intel driver setup with -s (for a silent install) and deployed it to all the machines. Not going that well. As of nine this morning 75 have failed with the same error 0x7 "The storage control blocks were destroyed". The problem is that one of the machines has worked. So there are 83 machines that have attempted the installation - 7 already had the driver installed (manually once we discovered the issue) 75 failed and 1 success. All machines are identical (HP ProOne G400 4) and have exactly the same image installed and the same level of BIOS. If you run the installation manually it works fine. If you run it manually from the downloaded application in the CCMCache folder it works fine. There is nothing in any event log and the CCM logs just report the same error as on the SCCM console. If one hadn't worked I would just assume that this cannot be done over SCCM and settled for having to do the job manually (at ten minutes per computer a lot of time) but as one has worked I need to know why 75 have failed!! OS is 64 bit Win 10 If anyone can help please let me know - I can post logs if required... TIA