MacBook White Unibody froze when downloading High Sierra

tommyb

Hi,
I have late 2009 white MacBook Unibody and I was trying to download High Sierra but the computer froze when only 30% complete. I was told High Sierra would work on this machine, what could be the problem ?

John

Thanks for the post!

High Sierra should work on that machine. If you Google "High Sierra system requirements", the 2009 White Unibody MacBook is listed. You also know a machine is capable of the OS simply because the installer is running at all -- if it wasn't compatible, it would have told you before starting.

The answer to this question hinges on the details -- what does "froze" mean? Was the computer unusable at that point, or were you able to reboot and still use your previous operating system? Did it "freeze" while downloading the OS, or while installing the OS?

First I would try again. Make sure you are near your WIFI, since a weak connection can strain the computer's ability to do an upgrade. Plug into an ethernet cable if you have one, bypassing WIFI completely. Doing PRAM and SMC resets couldn't hurt. You don't need 4GB for High Sierra, but having only 2GB could take significantly longer, and in conjunction with other limiting factors could conceivably result in the computer "freezing". Sometimes a hard drive that is failing and therefore operating very slowly will fail a disk-intensive task like upgrading the OS, so that's something to think about if it "freezes" repeatedly, i.e. put in a different hard drive and see if anything changes.

Anyway, hope that helps! Let me know your progress, and any additional details if you have them!

John