Trying to reinstall Lion- What am I doing wrong?

Okay, first off, there is no Lion Install Disc. There is a Recovery HD that can be booted from by pressing the 'R' key when powering on your machine. Once you are booted into the Recovery HD you will be able to install Lion. If you have a new MBP with the Recovery HD already pre-installed it will automatically boot to the Recovery HD by holding 'R'.

SHOULD IT FAIL to boot into Recovery HD by holding 'R', the next option is to hold down the 'Option' key and select Recovery HD from the boot picker or select 'Install Lion' from the Internet Recovery option. Either way, that is how you can reinstall Lion after erasing your Hard Drive.

As long as you did not Partition your drive, you will be able to restore from the Recovery HD, otherwise you will need to use the internet recovery installer.

AFAIK, there is no Lion install disc, there's only the Recovery HD. To boot with that, use CMD+R.😉

As the others have said there is no install disc except if you at some time created one from the download InstallESD.dmg file.

And if you used Disk Utility from another boot drive, external, to Re-Partition or Erase your internal drive what you have done is wiped out the Recovery partition.

But there is still Internet Recovery.

When you start the system hold down the Command and the R keys, Command+r, and if there is a recovery partition on your internal drive it will boot to it. If there isn't a recovery partition on the drive then the system knows this and connects to the Apple servers to boot the computer from the internet. You need to have the system connect to the internet and it is best to use a Ethernet cable and not WiFi.

Good Luck.

Thanks for the CMD! I can never remember it! I always try to go into SUM by just doing S sometimes because using Macs is usually that easy! 😀

When trying to boot from the internet recovery system you must hold down the Command+r key until you see a globe in the center of the screen.

This only happens if there is no Recovery partition on the internal drive.

If you have not held down the Command+r keys long enough it will try to boot from the internal recovery partition.

So give it one more try.

If that fails and you have a semi working OS installed on the drive try doing software update and look for a Firmware update.

Not all Mac's can use the Internet recovery system. But Apple has updated firmware for some Mac's that will include this option.

Here is a list of Mac's that can use internet recovery

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4904

GoldMiner wrote:

Tried to boot w/R pressed, got the blinking folder w/the ? mark.

Tried to boot w/Option pressed, get the arrow (cursor) in a gray screen. Can move it but nothing happens.

Tried to boot w/CMD+R pressed, got the blinking folder w/the ? mark.

Tried to boot w/CMD+R pressed, connected to the internet via the Ethernet cable, got the blinking folder w/the ? mark.

Then, I surmise the Recovery HD is borked or missing. The easiest way to tell if it's missing is to run this command in the Terminal (copy & paste it into the window that pops up and hit the return ke), relaunch Disk Utility, and select Debug->Show every partition.

defaults write com.apple.diskutility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

If the Recovery HD is present, you'll see it when you relaunch DU:

GoldMiner wrote:

BTW, I think there is a Lion disk install (or at least I think you can call it that):

That describes how to create one for your own use, but it's not anything provided by Apple, so when people mention a Lion install disc, it doesn't exist as other Apple OS install discs do.😉

Baltwo you tried the SL install and it seems it worked?

As to the OP all he really need to do to see if the RHD partition is ther is to open terminal and type

diskutil list

and it will give you all partitions on every drive in the system, even external drives.

GoldMiner wrote:

Apparently at some stage I partitioned the HD, or done something else that wiped off the Recovery HD.

Any suggestions now?

AFAIK, you'll have to revisit the App Store and DL and install Lion. If you're machine came with Lion preinstalled, then all I can suggest is to call AppleCare and let them explain how this new, but wonky, delivery system works for you.

Shootist007 wrote:

Baltwo you tried the SL install and it seems it worked?

Yes, the reissued SL security update v 1.1 works.

As to the OP all he really need to do to see if the RHD partition is ther is to open terminal and type

diskutil list

and it will give you all partitions on every drive in the system, even external drives.

That's another way, but activating DU's debug menu makes it permanent.

Thanks for the update and thanks for the info on DU.