Restore faulty 2011 iMac from Silicon Mac

[luk139]

I have got a cheap, used old 2011 iMac, which I intended to use as a Monitor.
However it came with a version of windows 10, rather than macos. It is in a constant bootloop and currently unusable.
I managed to get into the boot menu, with cmd+R however the drive seems to be faulty, since I can not reinstall macos from the menu. It tells me Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X.
Internet recovery doesnt seem to work aswell.
I have a silicon macbook and I didnt get high sierra patcher to run.
Is there any way? Any program, or ... something I can do on my silicon macbook, to create a boot drive to fix the iMac?
Worst case I can get a high sierra or mountain lion drive from ebay, but I somehow refuse to believe that it is impossible to create a macos stick on a mac, just because the cpu is different.

 

[Bigwaff]

Download Mist on your M-series MacBook.

GitHub - ninxsoft/Mist: A Mac utility that automatically downloads macOS Firmwares / Installers.

A Mac utility that automatically downloads macOS Firmwares / Installers. - ninxsoft/Mist

github.com

1. Get a 16GB or more capacity thumb drive and plug it in USB port of your M-series MacBook.
2. Launch Mist and give Mist full disk access.
3. Uncheck the "Only show compatible versions".
4. Scroll to macOS Catalina 10.15.7 (19H15).
5. Press the little disk icon. You will be prompted to select your thumb drive. This will create bootable macOS installer.

Shutdown your 2011 iMac. Plug the thumb drive into your iMac and start the iMac while holding down the Option key. Select the USB drive.

 

[luk139]

Thanks for the quick reply. I did everything in order until step 5 and then got this message. Is this a common error? If so, I couldnt find anything. Maybe you are more knowledgeable than me. Again.

ditto: /Volumes/042-45246/Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/SharedSupport: Operation not permitted

Mist has full disk access.

 

[Bigwaff]

• Did you format your USB thumb drive as GUID partition map and HFS+ Journaled?
• Did you quit Mist and relaunch it after giving Mist "Full Disk Access"? Try rebooting your M-series Mac and launch Mist again.

If you continue to run into the issue, you can run Mist from the Terminal using this command -

sudo open -a /Applications/Mist.app

 

[luk139]

Thanks for the help. The sudo thing worked, the program doesnt crash or give an error message, but I am stuck on this part. Now I have got a USB stick with that file, but that stick is not bootable and I can not execute that program on the stick. Yes it says big sur, but I definitely used catalina (as it shows on the symbol itself), I am not sure why that is the case. I retried it 2 times, and it says big sur every time. However, that is a different problem for me to sort out, it doesnt matter what version it is. If it isnt bootable, it isnt bootable.

 

[jlc1978]

I have got a cheap, used old 2011 iMac, which I intended to use as a Monitor.
However it came with a version of windows 10, rather than macos. It is in a constant bootloop and currently unusable.
I managed to get into the boot menu, with cmd+R however the drive seems to be faulty, since I can not reinstall macos from the menu. It tells me Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X.
Internet recovery doesnt seem to work aswell.
I have a silicon macbook and I didnt get high sierra patcher to run.
Is there any way? Any program, or ... something I can do on my silicon macbook, to create a boot drive to fix the iMac?
Worst case I can get a high sierra or mountain lion drive from ebay, but I somehow refuse to believe that it is impossible to create a macos stick on a mac, just because the cpu is different.

I had a similar issue and wound up reinstalling the original MacOS (High Sierra, IIRC) from a HD I had saved form an old Mac. I wonder if I could create a bootable USB drive from it.