Unable to create a fresh install of Mountain Lion

Question

Level 1

8 points

Unable to create a fresh install of Mountain Lion

Hi All,

I upgraded to Mountain Lion from an install of Lion on release date, all worked fine. However, I thought it might be time to complete a fresh install.

So today, I booted into the recovery partition and erased the main OS partition to start again. When I click to install a fresh copy, I received the message that Mountain Lion is checking with the servers to make sure I'm an authentic user (I cannot remember the exact wording).

Then, the following error appears.

[IMG]http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff84/shot2bits_bucket/photo-1.jpg[/IMG]

This is the pic from the recovery console.

[IMG]http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff84/shot2bits_bucket/photdgfo.jpg[/IMG]

I've tried to reformat the drive again but the same error occurs. Really frustrating. Rob.

Posted on Aug 6, 2012 10:16 AM

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Answer 1

Therabyte

Level 4

1,075 points

Aug 6, 2012 10:58 AM in response to shot2bits

The recovery partition does NOT have the Mountain Lion installer. And if you try to install from Internet Recovery, then you will get Lion not Mountain Lion.

You need to boot Lion or Mountan Lion from an external disk and have the Mountain Lion installer app on that disk.

Or you can prepare a bootable USB stick with the Mountain Lion installer, using Disk Utility.

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Answer 2

Aug 6, 2012 10:59 AM in response to Therabyte

Not true. You can boot from Internet Recovery (command-R) and you can then erase the boot drive and go from there.

Note in Internet Recovery you're booted from the Internet (i.e. over the network) and not from the boot drive. You can erase it. You may need to select the volume to erase, and not the disk, or else vice versa. One of them you can erase and have a clean go at things: I've done it on my 2011 MacBook Pro.

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Answer 3

Therabyte

Level 4

1,075 points

Aug 6, 2012 11:28 AM in response to William Lloyd

You're right and I was wrong. I thought Internet Recovery was only able to recover the factory installed OS X version.

@shot2bits: You CAN install Mountain Lion from Internet Recovery. It should ask for your Apple Id to validate the purchase.

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Answer 4

shot2bits Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 6, 2012 11:42 AM in response to shot2bits

Hi All, I don't think you can use Internet recovery on Mountain Lion unless you have the the late previous gen MacBook Pro. If you do a Google search you'll see that Internet recovery is only available (regardless of which key combo you hit) if the recovery isn't there. You have to remove it somehow.

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Answer 5

Aug 6, 2012 12:19 PM in response to shot2bits

Only MACs and Macbooks listed here can do internet recovery....

Any MACS under 2010 can not do internet recovery..

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Answer 6

shot2bits Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 6, 2012 1:30 PM in response to Bimmer 7 Series

Mine is on the list but command+option+R doesn't work.

I'm pretty stuck as the laptop was ordered with Lion preinstalled so I have no copy. And for whatever reason, the restore process on Mountain Lion is not working on my machine.

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Answer 7

Aug 6, 2012 5:44 PM in response to shot2bits

I thought it was command+R not command+option+R to get to the Recovery Disk.

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Answer 8

Aug 6, 2012 5:49 PM in response to Bimmer 7 Series

Ouch, as "level 5" you should know it's "Macs" not "MACs" 😉

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Answer 9

Aug 6, 2012 6:01 PM in response to William Lloyd

Nice. Didn't know we're getting graded here for our grammar. Then again, I'm the one with no issues with my "Mac"

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Answer 10

shot2bits Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 7, 2012 1:55 PM in response to shot2bits

Hi All, is nobody able to suggest anything to help here? As said, I cannot force Mountain Lion to boot to the Internet even using the Command+Option+R (Command+R only works if you have no restore partition). In theory, the recovery from Internet should work as I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 15 2.2 but... it's not.

All said and done, I still have the recovery partition as per the screen shots in my first post so I should be able to restore Mountain Lion. I've erased, mounted, unmounted etc but getting that same error.

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