Q: Install disk for iMac won't install
I have a Mid-2011 iMac which I'm prepping for resale. It had been upgraded to Lion. But, I believe, no further. I cleared the drive and wanted to reinstall the OS and apps. Installing from the DVD got me the grey screen problem. So, I booted into Snow Leopard (the OS it shipped with) from an external drive. Then I tried to install the OS from the DVD which came with the machine. I got the message:
mac os x snow leopard cannot be installed on this computer
How is that possible? It was the install disk for this computer. What can I do?
I tried just installing Lion. That went fine. But, I couldn't install the apps which came with the machine.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Posted on Oct 23, 2014 11:54 AM
What were you booted from when you erased the hard drive? You should not erase it first and then try to boot from the install disk because - since you said Lion was able to be installed - the hidden recovery partition is still there so it will not allow an earlier OS.
FWIW, you cannot sell it with Lion installed as any OS or app obtained at the app store is tied to the original Apple ID forever, but they're also not transferable. The new owner would never be able to update apps or reinstall the OS.
So, did you try inserting the DVD and then hitting the C key while restarting or the Option key while restarting? Will either of those allow you to choose the install disk?
If that does not work (I've seen several posts regarding this issue - you might want to do a search here), then see if you can do a clean install of the Snow leopard disk on an external. Once that is done, plug in the external drive, choose to boot from it, install CCC or SuperDuper, then use that Disk utility to erase your internal drive (again), and then use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone that entire system back. That works as I've tested that several times.
Posted on Oct 24, 2014 11:20 AM
