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I bought a second hand 2018 Mac mini, went to do a clean install of Big Sur, wiped the drives as per instructions. The guy I bought it off neglected to tell me it was dual-boot macOS/Windows and now I can't boot from either Windows or the USB Big Sur installation thumb drive.

I've tried Internet Recovery but error 1008h indicates recovery didn’t start to load or let me erase things.

Is there like an fdisk utility that I can sort this out or another way around this?

bmike
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lee morris
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1 Answers1

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Your Mac may boot from Internet Recovery if you can go ta Different network so that may be the fastest to avoid the need any OS on an internal or external drive data whatsoever to boot to an installer that can erase and reformat the storage.

The details are linked above and the basics from Apple are below - choose erase when asked in the guide.

If no other network is available, you will need another OS to boot this hardware or another Mac and target disk mode to self rescue the situation.

bmike
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  • Hi, its error 1008h after waiting for internet recovery, my mac mini has the t2 chip on it, i didnt know it was set seemingly not to boot from external – lee morris Jan 25 '21 at 23:38
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    So I am hoping to speak to the guy I bought it off tomorrow, spoke to apple and they said that he may have not deleted the machine off his icloud account, hope that is the case, but if he bought it second hand then I am stuffed and out of pocket 800 bucks! If thats the case is there anything I can do to get my mac up and running? I am gutted as you can imagine – lee morris Jan 26 '21 at 00:20
  • Keep your receipts. Hope for the best @leemorris there are some efforts to jailbreak T2 but I would avoid that until you’ve exhausted all other options. https://checkm8.info/blog/jailbreak-mac-apple-t2-chip – bmike Jan 26 '21 at 01:12
  • Thanks bmike, yes hoping it wont come to that tbh, thanks everyone top forum! – lee morris Jan 26 '21 at 04:38
  • Yes @leemorris . I edited my answer to suggest a new network or target disk mode if you can’t take it in to a repair shop or tech support locally. – bmike Jan 26 '21 at 12:05
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    All sorted now thanks to good old apple second level support, thanks again for the help everyone, stay safe – lee morris Jan 27 '21 at 17:16
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    Feel free to edit the eventual solution over my answer or better place your answer to let people known the recourse / outline steps to fix it. @leemorris so glad you have it solved! – bmike Jan 27 '21 at 19:33