Can't install OSX el capitan, stuck on installation screen

"El Capitan disk has an embbed security certificate that has expired in 2016.

Just change your system date, let's say to 01/01/2015, install El Capitan, then change the date back to today."

When that message appears, go under disk utilities, click "terminal," and once that pops up, type "date" and hit enter. The date will probably appear as incorrect (mine was set at the year 2000). Type date again and then type in the correct date in the format MMDDHHYYYY (month, day, hour, year) and hit enter. Then try installing again. It worked for me!

"This happened again with an Apple Store upgrade of El Capitan here in 2019, which is really incompetent behavior on Apple's part.

I fixed it by setting the system clock in terminal to 12-31-2015 using terminal once it was stuck in its upgrade loop, which allowed it to continue despite its expired certificate in the upgrade image. It resync'd the clock back to the normal time during the upgrade process."

"What did you do the backup to and how was it done? How was the El Capitan obtained? Have you been getting beach balls before this started?

My first thought on this is that it is probably a bad hard drive/IR cable and I would replace it with a new one from a 2012 model."

If you have a friend with a Mac you could try connecting it to yours via a FireWire cable and put your system in Target Mode. That way you can salvage your important files just to be on the safe side here onto an external HD.

"I’m (of course) the one poor sod out here that none of this date reseting is working for…

Picked up a mid 2009 MacBook Pro 17”. It has the latest firmware on it. It came with El Capitan installed and I hadn’t realised it was a slightly older model that I couldn’t upgrade.

I’ve tried everything imaginable to get this %#*@ thing back to El Capitan but nothing works.. I get this same infuriating message every time. I ‘m going to bin the bloody thing in a minute!

I’ve tried dates between 2015 and 2018 nothing… same same same…

I’ve run the installer from a bootable USB drive. set the time and date numerous times in terminal.. nothing works."