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New Mac Mini, wiped the HD and cannot reinstall Lion

Hi,

I received my new mini that came with Lion, restored from a TimeMachine backup and realised i preferred to start off with a clean slate.

I tried to reinstall Lion from scratch (from network recovery) and accidentally deleted even the recovery partition (yes, i deserve a good slap).

Now i am not even able to reinstall Snow Leopard on the Mini (to then install Lion on top of it):

- the mini does not boot from external optical CD player (apple), and throws a kernel panic: appleintelCPUPowerManagement

- it does not boot from a bootable USB thumbdrive, same error as above

- internet recovery tells me: "this version of OS X 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer"

I do not know what to do now.

The only option i can think of is to use the mini in target disk mode and try to reinstall everything after connecting it to my macbook air. however i need to find adaptors from Fw400 to Fw800 (this is what the mini has) and from firewire 400 to USB to connect a firewire cable to my macbook air.

Does anybody have a better idea?

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7), July 2011

Posted on Aug 3, 2011 6:05 AM

21 replies

Sep 20, 2011 8:29 AM in response to keg55

That looks like what I mean. You can create a bootable USB or DVD from the InstallESD.dmg disk image that's tucked away inside the Lion Download. I can't test it out, as I don't have one of the new machines to work with. But I created a DVD for my MacBook Pro so that I could wipe my HDD and get a clean install when I upgraded.

bonimac

Level 1

24 points

Sep 25, 2011 8:46 PM in response to riccardomaclover

i have copied InstallESD.dmg to a usb stick, with diskutility, it shows up in startup disk, i'm able to select it, but my new mac mini server 2011 refuses to boot from it. No problem with my other Mac's.

internet recovery doesn't work for me. Shame on you Apple, not delivering a usb-stick with Lion to reinstall a mac mini (server).

Now i'm stuck.

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Sep 26, 2011 4:57 AM in response to bonimac

You have to burn the image to the USB thumb drive so it's bootable. And the InstallESD file you have has to be the hardware specific one for your Mac Mini. You can't use the App Store image on it since your Mac Mini came pre-installed with Lion.

bonimac

Level 1

24 points

Sep 26, 2011 5:06 AM in response to riccardomaclover

My image is bootable, but it's not hardware specific since i wiped the mini's HD's just like the topic starter.

Took me two day's of strugling with this before i realized i have to call apple.

Great 'progress' Apple, the internet recovery concept, for those who are lucky it works. Here in Belgium, with a good ethernet connection cable, it simply doesn't work.

Sep 26, 2011 5:26 AM in response to Daniel Ebeck

Quote from Daniel:

"Personally I think that Apple made a mistake in removing the optical drive from the mini, it's now far too limited. I understand why they did it".

OK Daniel. Why did they do it?

Personally I can only think of one reason, but I'd like to hear yours.

bonimac

Level 1

24 points

Oct 6, 2011 11:15 AM in response to riccardomaclover

i have resetted my airport extreme, now downloading with internet recovery works...

Then another issue came up. I don't have a monitor for my mini, it is connected to my TV. For installing Lion the resolution is to low... The button i need to click is out of the TV screen on the bottom. Can't hit it....

downloading build 11B2118 (mini & airport!) thrue torrent sites is the only way out. Then connecting the mini with FW800 to another Mac... From that other Mac finally installing on the mini...

New Mac Mini, wiped the HD and cannot reinstall Lion