There was a problem installing Mac OS X

Never occurred to me that PRAM was the issue. I thought it was the USBdrive, or the hidden partition. (I had a power failure during the first installation.) I have clones of my SL partition and Bootcamp partition, and must have erased the internal drive, and cloned these two partitions back at least 4 times over the last two days! Also, downloaded the Lion Instal all 4 times. (I know, now I have a copy of that on the clone.) Anyway, thanks, thanks, thanks.

- Doug

PS, As writing to PRAM to install OSX is a completely new trick for Apple, its not a obvious solution. Especially when installing from a burn of Lion to USB stick is not really a Apple supported method. Combine this with a cryptic error message and poof, a lot of confusion.

This worked for me. I couldn't reinstall with my USB distribution that I bought from Apple. I couldn't reinstall with command-R recovery mode. I boot with command-shift-P-R to reset the NVRAM and reinstall worked. Thanks!

This worked for me too.

Have just spent hours trying to circumvent, reinstall and climb over the hurdle...

Only wish I have tried on here a little sooner...

10 minutes to go before my machine is back up... PHEW!

Thanks. 🙂

Message was edited (typo) by: RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ

I would never normally say this, but I love you!!! 😉 You have made my weekend, I have been having this problem and thought I was going to end up back in an Apple shop and paying for some sort of repair or service.

ML re-installed cleanly!

Awesome.

austingaijin, you are an Apple saviour!

Best.

MB

Thanks so much for the answer! This exactly solved my question. I read about reseting NVRAM before related to this issue - but I didn't realize it could help - because usually NVRAM is suggested to reset in any issue. So I didn't believe it could do.

My situation was following:

I decided to upgrade my MacBook Pro 2008 from Lion to Mountain Lion. Downloaded it from the App Store and started. But when it rebooted it was complaining on damaged drive - actually the drive was in good and not actually damaged as then tested in original Lion again.

The installator was loading on every run and always failed. Then I run Disk Utility and did restored permissions and fixed the disk. - After this done - it loaded original system instead of installator - strange to me as well.

After trying to rerun installation from the Lion several times and came up with the above situation - I decided to format Macintosh HD (I have Time Machine backup). This didn't help - attempt to do clean install with the created USB flash drive was lead to the error above.

Now I finally found this answer and now the installation from USB flash drive works!

I really not understand why something in NVRAM was stopping from doing installation! But I want to say many thanks for you help posting this question and answer!

Thank you soo much for your tip austingaijin, it did solve the issue at hand and now I am in the process of installing Lion on my Mac Pro.....

Whoever thinks that this tip does not work, well, they are wrong....thanks indeed

Cheers

Thank you, thank you, thank you

I have been pulling my hair out !!!!

I thought I did everything correctly. Downloaded the install.app, created a boot USB, tested it, copied all my data, verified it!!, checked and double checked before I reformatted my hard drive. Went to a boot and got that "There was a problem....."

I tried everything but no success then I found your reply and bingo, worked first time.

very many thanks

Cemlyn

You're a genius - this worked for my Mac Mini after two people tried to help me and failed. I at least checked the log file after the install failed, and found the error - that led me to your solution.

Thanks!

I have this problem after fitting new hard drive. Reset both PRAM & SMC to no avail. Interestingly when booting up and using option/alt the installer goes straight into "installing". From memory I thought there were other parameters that had to be set first such as language etc. I am trying to install Lion and have used 2 different install media but both give the same result.

Invest $29 on a copy of Snow Leopard, then do the rest.

wait 4 help or they will remove you msg you have to say only good things about apple im back to leopard 10.6.8 untill 10.7.4or 5

Same issue and this worked for me as well. Thanks austingaijin!

OK, so you don't need 10.6 etc, but one of your 2 computers does need it?

Whatever

AWESOME! Thanks so much for the info. Worked perfectly!

-Kevin