Mountain Lion install failed and now can't access HD

I have same problem everyone else seems to have. ML downloaded OK, but when it went to install, it went from estimated time of 37 minutes, to 19 minutes to "Install Failed". I have tried most of the tips offered on the Internet to no avail. I am stuck. Can't access my HD, won't boot, in effect my Mini is bricked. Sounds like Moble Me all over,,,Steve must be spinning in his grave. I will delay "installing" on my new Retina MB Pro for the time being.

Same here. Now my MBA is totally stuck, will try to install ML to an external drive tonight and report back if there is any progress. Good luck all.

I'm having the same issue with my 2011 mini server. I can't even boot into Lion until the issue is resolved.

Same here - what a disaster

Im left with an aluminum brick. So much for the Apple level of Quality....

Spent two days and several thousands of dollars of our corporation's time trying to solve this problem. Cheaper to just buy a bunch of new PC's and go with Windows for the future.

Too bad. Been using Apples since Apple 2 and 128 K Mac. (which I still have).

Apple seems to think that we are all true believers that can ignore the financial cost of this mess. Sorry, have to cut losses and switch.

If your main concern is to get files out of the main harddisk (Macintosh HD, probably)

you may try the following:

1. Get a 8G thumb disk (or any SD card which is USB connectable) and plug into your Mac

2. Go to Disk Utility and retore the InstallESD.dmg to the USB disk (Using the restore function of Disk Utility)

3. Restart the machine, press and hold "option" key until you see the boot drive list

4. Choose to boot from your USB disk

5. Start "Terminal", cd to /Volumes, you should be able to see the Macintosh HD right now, and copy whatever you need to an external drive, all you need is some simple command-line skill.

6. After that you are safe to format the drive and do a fresh install.

I found this method to get to the internal HD data when i was trying to un-brick my MBA last night, but i don't think it is a proper solution because it is not an upgrade, it is a fresh install. i am still trying to solve the problem without having to install everything all over again. I am at work now and can't touch my MBA until tonight. Hope that I can solve it properly and will keep you people update if there is any news.

Good luck all!

PS: Apple should really come out and give us a official solution, rather than we have to try it with our own risk, especially when we are discussing in a offical forum.

did clean installation but stuck on blue indicator then rebooted now i cant install anything on eventhough i try to reinstall 10.7, it keeps saying " can install osx please reinstall". and now try to "erase free space" let see what happen...

I understand your frustration but trust me, Windows is another deeper ****.

Now "There was a problem installing Mac Osx" Try reinstalling....come on Apple

Hi all,

I had this exact same problem after installing ML on my MBP - 2011 early edition. After spending all night trying to solve this, I was able to come up with a fix which worked for me and I can now log back into my laptop. You will need your apple DVD though.

So here it goes:

1. Put the DVD into the laptop and restart it holding down the C button.

2. Choose the language and instead of clicking on continue, top of the screen you should see the different options, so go to utilities and choose startup disk. Choose your HD and it should reboot to your original OS. Only downside to this is that you will need to redownload the ML OSX whenever next you want to upgrade.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

will try ur method once my "secure erasing disk" done...is that norm having 311MB even after i erase everything on the HD??

thanks...

I tried a version of Famaman's trick and I was able to go back to lion without losing anything.

I'm using a new mini without an optical drive so I couldn't use a CD, but I did have a USB with Snow Leopard on it from an older MacBook. I booted from the USB but I wasn't able to select a start up disk (nothing showed up) so I opened disk utility. My lion instal would mount and disk utility said I had to repair it first. I ran the repair function and it told me I had errors that it couldn't repair. But this did mount my lion install which then allowed me to select it using Framamans trick. I'm successfully up and running with Lion now. On its first boot I got a progress bar when the apple logo originally shows, it took a while, but everything's back.

I reinstalledeverything and mowback to lion.

Asking myself should i try to install ml again or wait for apple to bring out a version that isnt riddled with problems.

Early 2011 Mbp i7 15" 8gb

SOLUTION:

Having run into the same problem, I found that Disk Utility could not repair Macintosh HD.

I rebooted holding option, and the only two bootable volumes available in the boot loader menu were "OS X Installer" and "Recovery HD". I booted from The Recovery HD which is the old Lion one. It's version of Disk Utility was quite happy to repair my volume, update the boot partition info, and get me back to a fully functional Lion OS with all my files and software intact.

Definitely a buggy start to Mountain Lion.