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I wanted to clear room on my computer, so I restarted the computer with cmd+r keys and opened OS X Utilities. I erased my drive and wanted to reinstall OS X El Capitan. After I agreed to the terms then selected my drive I signed into the Apple store. I put the confirmation code in from my phone and it said “This item is temporarily unavailable Try again later”. I tried restarting it and trying then shutting it down and trying but it still won’t work.

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  • 1
    Try internet recovery (cmd+option+r)
    – NoahL
    Commented May 28, 2018 at 21:46
  • The article that escape-e referenced had the answer for me: I used a different Apple ID when I had that machine (I gave it to my mom). Once I supplied the old credentials, the installation worked as expected.
    – craig
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 12:14
  • So, after 2 years you found a solution ?
    – Loris Foe
    Commented Sep 1, 2020 at 20:38

4 Answers 4

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This process worked on 2022-05-08

I was trying to do a clean install for an Early 2009 27" iMac. The recovery console listed El Capitan as the available OS, but trying to do an Internet-based recovery continually failed with a message similar to "Couldn't Install. No viable modules"

I tried to follow suggestions on other sites, but the "Download old versions of Mac OS" threads are no longer valid for El Capitan. It appears that Apple has removed El Capitan from their installer download page -- they only have the Safari-only update feature, which did not meet my needs.

I stumbled on a secondary thread that someone mentioned Apple removes support for these downloads when the security certificates expire. That made sense to me so I had an idea to set the computer's date back to a time that the security certificate would have been valid -- and that worked!

Here is the actual procedure that worked, using the Internet-based Recovery:

  1. After start chime, hold CMD+Shift+R until the start up progress bar shows
  2. When the Recovery Console is shown, click the WiFi icon in the top-right and join a valid network
  3. On the top-toolbar, select Tools -> Utilities -> Terminal
  4. With the terminal open, set the date back. I used the command: "date -u 0101000013" to set the system date to 01-01-2013 00:00
  5. I then clicked the Reinstall El Capitan from the Recovery Console Menu.

Where before it would fail after about 22% completion, this time it completed successfully without any intervention. I was then able to enter the Select Country Screen and continue completely with the setup. Once installed, the date can be changed back.

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Process:

  1. I created a USB disk with a bootable El Capitan as per this documentation.
  2. Plug-in your USB key on a turned-off computer.
  3. Start your Mac, press immediately OPTION (aka ALT)
  4. Select the Orange icon (aka a USB stick) labelled El Capitan. If it does not detect it after 10 sec and you only see your hard-drive. Try another USB port and wait 10 sec again. Often it appears then.
  5. Once booted, select your language
  6. NOW, CRUCIAL, FIRST THING. Select the "Get HELP Online" item which will open Safari. Then type https://icloud.com, log in with your itunes credentials. Once logged in, close Safari. (You might need to go the top menu to exit Safari).
  7. Back to the main menu window. Click on the "install OS X" item, follow instructions and it should NOT ask you for itunes anymore and therefore not timeout with "This item is temporarily unavailable. Please try again".

Key points:

  • You have to go to Safari FIRST. Don't try to install and see the "temporary unavailable" bug and then try the Help/Safari trick. It will not work. Reboot and redo the process with Safari first then the Install.
  • I am unsure, but you might need to wipe the whole disk to not have any partitions available (that means Recovery HD and Macinstosh HD, using the default names)

PS: The above work for me on a Macbook Pro 2009 and Maverick but I could not reinstall Maverick due to an itunes login to old and incompatible with the security code that Apple uses now... Hence straight to El Capitan which supports the security code (via the https://icloud.com login;). That said, in hindsight, the same trick could have worked with Maverick too using the recovery partition...

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I ran into this issue myself. NoahL's comment is spot on: try Internet Recovery (Command+Option+R).

I was trying to reinstall macOS on a laptop. The on-disk recovery kept giving me this error message after I gave it my AppleID in the reinstall wizard:

This item is temporarily unavailable.
Try again later.

I retried two weeks later, and still got the same error. I found this thread and tried out Internet Recovery and I was able to reinstall macOS.

Note: I had to erase the disk with Disk Utility before Internet Recovery would let me reinstall macOS, because the version on disk was newer than the version that will be installed.

(I don't know why Internet Recovery doesn't just offer the latest macOS...)

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If you are getting the answer to this question, dear friends, here's the answer: I hope it will help you.

  • The first thing you will know is the right thing; device is using the apple ID you used previously. you may receive this error because of a different apple ID. if you don’t remember your old apple id, please format it with usb in the last article.

  • Check the time of your device first. If the time date is wrong, open the mac terminal and correct the time date with the date command. If the date is incorrect, you’ll also often get the following error: An error occurred while preparing the installation, Try running this application again. these two errors may be due to time-date error.

  • Try opening your apple account at icloud.com in the online help on the setup screen.

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