Macbook Pro Won't Let Me Download To Remote Disk

You usually have no problem waiting in line to get services. But when it comes to using your Macbook Pro, it may be another story.

If course, if you're really pedantic like me, you'd remove all media from the optical drive and USB ports, zero the hard drive, power off, zap the PRAM, reset the SMC, and then boot from Internet Recovery to do the OS install. That's factory fresh right there, my friend. The only thing it won't have after all that is the new computer smell.

For me, I hated it when the applications I use became unresponsive, not to mention that when the entire system froze up. Although I was told that patience is a virtue, somehow I just don’t have it with my beloved MacBook.

Let’s look at some of the things you can do when Mac Recovery Mode is not working on MacBook. Method 1: Use Internet Recovery to Reinstall macOS. If you have a corrupted or missing recovery partition, you can still reinstall your macOS or OS X via the Utilities tool. If this happens, you no doubt want to fix the problem as soon as possible. Taking your Mac into an Apple Store is always an option, but a repair appointment can take time and money.

How about you? Does your MacBook Pro sometimes freeze or hang up for no reason? Or the spinning beach ball often appears?

If this has happened to you, be aware that your MacBook Pro may have some issues. But, there are always fixes out there.

I’ve grouped all MacBook freezing issues into four different scenarios (thanks to our reader Carol’s feedback). Find the one that applies to your situation and follow the guide to fix the issue.

Scenario 1: An app is frozen (you can move cursor)

Details: this kind of apps usually demand a lot of system resources to process. For example, Adobe Photoshop, iMovie, or sometimes the web browser you use Safari. When you click around, the app just hangs with the cursor spinning like a pinwheel. The application won’t respond to any commands.

Reasons: the app may be waiting for other hardware resources to become available, or the software may have a bug that drops itself into a calculation loop.

How to Fix:

  1. If you haven’t saved your work, wait for a few minutes. It may become responsive again (hopefully).
  2. Otherwise, simply force quit the app. To do so, go to the Apple logo on the top left corner, click on it and select the “Force Quit” option. Then highlight the unresponsive app, and click “Force Quit” to exit.
Macbook Pro Won

You can also press “Command + Option + Esc”, it does the same thing.

Warning: a force quit on a running Mac application may cause you to lose any content that hasn’t been saved. Be cautious before you take this action.

Scenario 2: macOS totally freezes (you can’t move cursor)

Details: the whole system becomes completely unresponsive. You are unable to use the keyboard to type, the mouse cursor is unable to move as you want, the same screen seems just hang there for good. Sometimes you also hear the loud noise coming from the fan (if you are using an old MacBook with an HDD inside).

Reasons: It happens on rare occasions, but the issue could result from over-used system resources, MacBook Pro uptime too long, hard disk errors, etc.

How to Fix:

  1. You’ll have to do a hard reboot. Press the power button for 3-5 seconds to force a shut-down of the computer. Press it again to restart.
  2. Clean up your MacBook hard drive and fix potential disk errors — you can do this quickly using CleanMyMac.

Note: if this happens while you’re updating to latest macOS, the progress bar keeps hanging at 99% (or only one minute remaining), you’ll have to quit the update. A working solution is: first upgrade your MacBook to an ealier version, then update to the latest version.

Scenario 3: MacBook Pro keeps freezing randomly

Details: Your Mac just freezes without any signs and it happens every few hours or days. One second your MacBook is working perfectly fine, the other second everything just hangs up — the cursor won’t move. If you were watching a video, horizontal lines cut through the screen. It seems the only solution to make it work again is to hold the power button to reboot.

Reasons: your MacBook’s hardware has problems — for example, you just installed extra RAM improperly or the System Management Controller (SMC) has some issues.

How to Fix:

1. Reset SMC and RVRAM. Learn how to do so from this MacWorld tutorial video.

2. If the random freezing still happens, take your MacBook Pro to an Apple Genius Bar or a local computer shop and have a geek run hardware diagnostics. Then fix the issues based on their suggestions.

Scenario 4: Mac cursor freezes while opening a specific app

Details: Your Mac cursor would freeze (for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 mins) when you launch apps like Photos, Time Machine, Adobe Photoshop, etc.

Reasons: You’ve enlarged the Mac cursor.

How to Fix: Adjust cursor size to normal.

  1. Click on the Apple logo on top left, select “System Preferences.”
  2. Then click “Accessibility” > “Display.”
  3. You’ll see a window (as shown below), navigate the cursor size bar and adjust it to normal size.

Final Words

Due to the complex nature of computer issues, sometimes it’s inevitable that you may encounter other scenarios not introduced here. I’d appreciate it if you can kindly share your stories here. Anyway, I hope this troubleshooting article has helped you unfreeze your Mac, and that the rotating beach ball won’t come back.

Any further questions, leave your comment below.

Apple’s new macOS Mojave doesn’t support the old Macs prior to 2012. It was a shocking news for me too.

You may also like to read the following posts:

I have an old, not for me actually, MacBook Pro which I purchased at the end of 2010. I was expecting Apple won’t drop the support of Mojave for MacBook Pro 2010 model, at least not for this time. But I was wrong. The latest Majove doesn’t support it too.

There is no need to worry. Even the oldest Windows 95 can be installed on Mac computer. There is a solution to every problem.

I don’t want to upgrade my MacBook Pro right now, especially when a new model is rumored to be released in next month.

Another choice for me was to buy a graphics card which supports Metal. In fact, it was the most feasible solution for to get installed Majove on my unsupported Mac right now.

Metal is natively supported by all Macs introduced since 2012. It means the following Nvidia, AMD and Intel family cards are compatible.

-Intel HD Graphics 400, Iris 5000 & 6000 family

-Nvidia GT 600M, 700M family

-AMD R9 M family

To check which GPU (graphics processing unit) is installed on your Mac computer, click on the Apple icon in the top left corner and then click on “About This Mac”.

There are a number of third-party vendors which sell graphics cards with integrated Metal support specifically designed for Mac computers. While searching for a compatible graphics card, I found that I could install Mojave on my MacBook Pro Mid 2010 model by using a software known as macOS Mojave Patcher Tool. Kudos to DosDude1 who developed tested, and released it as a free app.

By using this software, we could install the latest macOS version on early 2008 Macs.

Here is the step by step method to run Mojave on unsupported Macs.

The whole process can be divided into four parts.

  • Part 1. Getting all the required things
  • Part 2. Downloading the macOS Mojave Installer App
  • Part 3. Making a bootable Mojave USB drive
  • Part 4. Installing and Patching Mojave OS on the unsupported computer

We will discuss each part in details in the following paragraphs.

Part 1: Requirements to Run Mojave on Old Macs

Four things are required to get macOS Mojave installed on your forgotten-by-Apple Mac.

  1. Your Mac computer

It could be an early-2008 or newer Mac Pro, iMac, or MacBook Pro. The following models include under this category.

– MacPro3,1
– MacPro4,1
– iMac8,1
– iMac9,1
– iMac10,x
– iMac11,x
– iMac12,x
– MacBookPro4,1
– MacBookPro5,x
– MacBookPro6,x
– MacBookPro7,1
– MacBookPro8,x

It could be late-2008 or newer MacBook Air or Aluminum Unibody MacBook. The following models include under this category:

– MacBookAir2,1
– MacBookAir3,x
– MacBookAir4,x
– MacBook5,1

It could be early-2009 or newer Mac Mini or white MacBook including the following models:

– Macmini3,1
– Macmini4,1
– Macmini5,x
– MacBook5,2
– MacBook6,1
– MacBook7,1

And it could be Xserve2, 1 and Xserver3, 1.

  1. A USB drive in 16GB size or above
  2. macOS Mojave patcher tool. Download it here.
  3. A copy of the Mojave software.

Part 2: Download macOS Mojave Installer Software

MacOS Mojave software can be downloaded as an Installer App from Mac App Store using the computer which supports Mojave.

If you don’t have Mojave supported Mac, you can download the Mojave Installer App using patcher tool. Open the macOS Mojave patcher tool. If it doesn’t open and says it is from an unidentified developer, right click on the tool’s icon and click on “Open” from sub-menu and then enter your Mac’s Admin name and password. After the verification, you can open it with the left double-click.

If you don’t remember your macOS password, here are the solutions to reset it.

Go to Tools in the Menu bar and then hit “Download macOS Mojave”.

I recommend using the built-in downloader tool because it will download the latest and the compatible Installer app.

Mojave Installer app is about 5-6GB in size and it may take some time depending on the speed of your internet.

If the internet connection interrupts while downloading the file, don’t worry. The downloading process will resume where it left. Simply download the Mojave software again but point it to the same location where you were already downloading and saving the installer app.

Part 3: Create a Bootable Mojave USB Drive

In order to create a bootable Mojave USB Installer drive, follow these steps.

Step 1: Insert 16GB or above USB drive into your USB port of your Mac.

Step 2: Open Disk Utility and erase the USB drive in OS X Extended (Journaled) format. Give a proper name before erasing. I gave the name “macOS Mojave” to my USB drive.

If you are new to Mac, get the basic information about how to make a Partition, erase the current partition and how to make a bootable USB drive.

Step 3: After the drive is erased, open “macOS Mojave Patcher” tool.

Step 4: Point the Patcher tool to the downloaded Mojave Installer app which is downloaded in Part 2.

Macbook Pro Won't Let Me Download To Remote Disk Imager

Step 5: Now select the target USB drive you just formatted.

Step 6: Hit the “Start Operation” button on the patcher tool and let it make the USB bootable with Mojave.

Step 7: It will show “Complete” when the process is done.

Part 4: Installing and Patching macOS Mojave

In this fourth and final part, we will install and patch the macOS Mojave on our old Mac computer. Follow the steps below to complete the remaining procedure.

Step 1. Restart your computer and hold down the “Option” key as soon as the Mac starts up.

Step 2: Select the USB drive, which was named as “macOS Mojave” as the startup disk.

Step 3: If you want to upgrade your current macOS to macOS Mojave, simply use the continue button to proceed and follow step 5. But if you want to install it on another partition or want to erase the current partition first, then follow the Step 4.

Step 4: Open Disk Utility from the bottom left panel.

Select the volume you want to erase. Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Or if you have got late-2009 and later machines with SSD drives, you can also use APFS format.

If you don’t want to install Mojave on current volume, you can also create a new partition and install it there. Mojave takes approximately 18GB space on hard drive. So at least make a 25GB partition to test the new macOS.

If you want to use it for all routine work, set the partition size according to your needs.

Step 5: Select the volume and press “Continue” to begin the installation process.

Step 6: The installation process takes about 20 minutes to complete. When it is done, reboot your Mac back into installer drive while holding down the “Option” key again.

Step 7: This time select “macOS Post Install” app from the bottom left panel.

Step 8: Select the model of your computer and the volume on which you installed Mojave and then click the “Patch” button. The tool will automatically select the required patches according to the model of your computer.

Step 9: Press the “Reboot” button when the patch is complete.

Step 10: The computer will reboot with macOS Mojave installed on it.

Step 11. If it doesn’t work properly on the restart, boot your Mac back into the installer USB drive, select macOS Post Install again, and this time also select “Force Cache Rebuild” option. Once the patch is complete and the cache is rebuilt, reboot.

Macbook Pro Won't Let Me Download To Remote Disk Converter

Step 12: Upon restart, complete the setup process and start using your Mac with a Mojave operating system.

Macbook Pro Won't Let Me Download To Remote Disk Download

Happy Mojaving!!

For additional information and to know more about the known issues, please visit DosDune1’s website. He is an awesome guy.

Macbook Pro Won't Let Me Download To Remote Disk Windows 10

Note: You will see a new “Patch Updater” app in the Applications under “Other” folder. It will alert you when new patches are available for your computer.

Your Mac will get the future Mojave updates as other supported computer do. If you don’t see the updates, or your computer doesn’t work properly after applying the update, use the step 11 of Part 4 to enable all patches.