Lion recovery won't work

Try starting in safe mode by holding down the shift key after the startup chime. Keep holding down the shift key until you see the Apple logo and spinning gear. That will disable startup items, verify/repair your startup drive and clean some caches.

Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

This Knowledge base article will tell what happens when starting up in safe mode and what functions it disables.

Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

Restart normally. If that works, you might want to persuse Applications > Utilities > Console to see if it was complaining about any third party software when your Mac started misbehaving oddly. If it was you should uninstall that software or update it to a Lion compatible version.

You don't click after you hear the startup chime, you only press and hold the shift key until you see the Apple logo and the spinning gear. After that you will see a progress bar below the spinning gear as safe mode goes about its maintenance tasks. Safe mode usually doesn't take over five minutes but it might take quite a bit longer if it makes more than one pass at repairing the internal HD.

Command-R works within a few seconds for me. I wouldn't give it over a minute to work. It doesn't do automatic maintenance routines like safe mode does.

Hi Federico,

If you can start in safe mode, go to preferences -> start up disc and select your internal disc. In my case, after install Lion the sppinning ball appear for hours and never stop. I startup my MacBook Pro in safe mode select my startup disc, and work for me.

Regards