My 2017 15" MacBook Pro gives a flashing question mark every time I try to update to a newer OS. The install process looks completely normal until it restarts for the last time and boots up to a flashing folder. When I look in recovery I see my SSD and the MacOS Base System, first aid on either of these does nothing. From startup disk within recovery I see no available disks. Starting while holding option shows the ssd as EFI Boot, and booting this shows a slightly different installer that also fixes nothing.
I am able to internet restore to Sierra if I want, so I keep doing that and I've tried updating to High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina, all of which have had the same issue. I've reset ram and SMC, I've done clean installs and reinstalls on each operating system with and without first aid on every visible drive beforehand, the only way I can get the laptop to boot is by doing an internet recovery back to Sierra, at which point it works perfectly. Fully erasing the hard drive and attempting clean installs of each OS have also not worked through either internet installation or usb installation. I've tried some terminal commands recommended for this type of problem but I can't remember exactly what they were (several were about mounting and remounting drives). I'm not comfortable or familiar with the terminal at all.
I don't care about data recovery or anything like that, I just want a newer OS because Sierra is no longer compatible with a game my friend plays a lot. At this point I'm kind of at a loss. I'm a windows person fixing this for a friend, so the fact that a clean install didn't work is kind of jarring. Any help or advice is appreciated, thank you.
