When trying to reinstall Lion OS on new mid 2011 Macbook Air, error msg 'This version of Mac OS X 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer' comes up. What should I do to reinstall?

I can certainly packup the 2011 InstallESD.dmg but I think it would take some time to upload. I think the best thing here is instructions and guides on how to create an offline restore.

Few questions.

01: Is there any clone utilities available that can be ran from USB to allow a restore from a ready made .DMG file?

02: How do you create a bootable Base System?

I think here what would be great for MacBook Air Mid 2011 users is to be able to use a USB clone utility to boot into the USB to restore the full Mac OS X drive Partition + Recovery Partition. This is the answer we really need I think. I have tried so many ways.

I also too use my MacBook for Work/Home so can't offord much downtime.

Agreed - I do time machine backups on the network and did a superduper backup to a 32gb flash drive. You can actually boot from the flash drive and reinstall from there although it would be slow-sledding. Still nice to have.

Here is a good link guys, how to make a USB Bootable Recovery Tool.

http://www.coolestguyplanet.net/make-a-boot-disk-from-os-x-lion-using-the-recove ry-partition/

some people sitting in the apple and control and clean our messages

they dont know have a duty to help us

dear steve jobs

plz help us

Here is a good link guys, how to make A Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Bootable Flash Drive.

http://www.trickyways.com/2011/07/how-to-make-mac-os-x-lion-10-7-bootable-usb-fl ash-drive/

If this works I will share the InstallESD.dmg pulled from the Internet Recovery (CMD + R).

idroid84 wrote:

If this works I will share the InstallESD.dmg pulled from the Internet Recovery (CMD + R).

Build 11A2063 ?

Correct. I have just created a USB Boot with the InstallESD.dmg. Going through the motions now installing OSX from USB. I have turned off Internet connection to ensure it wasn't getting anything from online.

Fingers crossed.

Victory to report, I think

I 'paid the price, and went into standard recovery mode (cmd-r on reboot). With my ISP it said it was going to take about 5 hours to download (would hate this if I had to do this all the time!).

Instead of installing to the regular internal disk, I pre-formatted a 16gb USB drive as macos, journaled. Select the partition tab, and make sure you are guid partition map. Double check partition.

After the download completes, it will reboot, so catch it before it reboots. After the download, as soon as reboot starts (screen goes black), I yanked out the USB, and hit power.

I then rebooted to normal hard disk. Now it gets murky, as I did a couple things. First I had to reset PRAM ( look in huge earl help ). Then I used the esd.dmh as source image to a 8gb USB ( I wanted to save what I created above ). I booted into recovery mode again (cmd-r). I did this ti get to disk utilities to reformat the internal disk. Took a big gulp when I did this. I then set startup disk to my USB, and rebooted. I may have had to reset PRAM again too.

The reboot worked. I selected install lion into internal disk. Away we went. Resetting pram, was key to get it to kind of getting it restarted in the right 'mode'.

I'll try reproducing. Ask questions.

My only issue now is, when I reboot into recovery mode (holding cmd-r down during reboot), I get a spinning globe with a message saying "starting recovery process from network, this may take a while". It then presents a drop down box to select wifi, trouble is, the drop down list isn't populated with every hotspot it sees, just 2 or 3 that seem to be alphabetical. There is an option to enter ssid and pw, but it won't accept any combination.

Now, here is the odd part. If I reboot, and hold the alt/option key down, I can boot into the recovery partition. Weird.

hey! I need to re-install lion on my new mbp..But my wifi is down and i wont be able to do an offline restore..plus i would make a usb drive thing but i dont have an extra..(rediculous, huh?) Do i call up apple customer service and tell them that so they can give me a restore usb?

I would post links but I have had 2 warnings now so I am sorry not allowed too.

Try Youtube, "os x lion build 11A2063"

Ross, I assume that was a rhetorical post? If you wifi is down, having access to anything droid or I may have put online don't do you any good either, right? My guess is the subtle point you are trying to make is, why the heck, didn't apple provide the same historic install media for our mba's? Sigh....

Ps out of scope question. How much space does disk utility say is on your main partition, after the rebuild?

idk..im new to laptops..im old..lol

I'm old too :-) What the heck - keeps us sharp!

Does anyone tried USB Thump Drive with Lion from Apple? Does it work on new MBA 2011?