Fresh install on MB Air 2008

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Fresh install on MB Air 2008

I have a MacBook Air 1,1 (early 2008) that I bought with Snow Leopard and was able to upgrade to Lion just fine.

Now I swapped out the hard drive with an SSD and I'm having trouble getting the OS installed on the bare drive. I have Lion on a USB drive and it boots but won't install. I get the gray screen with the big gray circle with slash.

I'm not sure why that's being rejected. I am trying to get Snow Leopard on there and try the upgrade to Lion later but I can't find an installer I can but on a USB drive to do the install.

Any ideas how to get the OS on a fresh drive on a MacBook Air 1,1?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Sep 21, 2012 4:28 PM

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Answer 1

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Sep 21, 2012 7:07 PM in response to ggulik329

Have you brought up Disk Utility to partition the SSD? If not, nothing can access it. Bring up it up, click the SSD on the left, click the partition tab, tell it how many partitions (most use one), give it a name, format should be OS X Extended (journaled), click options and be sure it's GUID format, click OK, then click apply. You should be able to access it after setting up the partition.

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Answer 2

ggulik329 Author

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Sep 22, 2012 4:01 AM in response to BGreg

How do I boot into a Disk Utility to do that if the drive doesn't already have an OS on it?

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Answer 3

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Sep 22, 2012 4:50 AM in response to ggulik329

When you boot into Lion off your USB drive, does it bring up a menu bar that has a Utilities item on it? Disk Utilities would be under that.

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Answer 4

ggulik329 Author

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Sep 22, 2012 5:09 AM in response to BGreg

I don't get any menu like that. When I hold down Option I get the hard drive adn the USB drive. I choose the USB drive and it starts to boot within moments the Apple logo changes to a gray circle with a slash.

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Answer 5

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Sep 22, 2012 7:13 PM in response to ggulik329

Ugh ... new plan ... see this Apple note on installation from another mac. It may actually be easiest to go to your local Apple store and have them reload the operating system.

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