Unable to install macOS Catalina with bootable USB without macOS recovery partition

Question

I had deleted the macOS and macOS recovery partitions many months ago to increase the capacity for the Bootcamp Windows. Now I want to reinstall macOS via a bootable USB, but on booting into it, it gets stuck in the spinning globe screen forever.

My internet speed is pretty fast, I get no issues on other devices though. I tried unallocating some space out of the Bootcamp partition for internet recovery to install, but to no avail. Because of this, I am not able to go to recovery and enable boot from external disk.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

It turns out that it had nothing to do with the internet connection/firewall. I bought a Thunderbolt USB-C to USB-C cable, connected my laptop to another MacBook in Target Disk Mode, and wiped the entire SSD. After that, trying to install a new macOS, either via bootable USB or internet recovery worked just fine.

Answer 2

You will surely get this to work once your download completes from Apple servers. Things are busy with iOS 14 release, it if you can’t get this over several hours, take your Mac to a new network.

Internet recovery needs you to connect to some main servers - unfiltered access with no firewalls which can be problematic in some countries and some networks.

• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210060

Or have someone make you an installer if you trust them.

• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

The only other option is hardware repair if your device doesn’t erase when you correctly follow arch of the erase install steps.

• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904