This article does not address the errors that occur when attempting to install Lion or Mountain Lion, e.g. "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X" or something about Can't verify this installation please re-dwnld fr iTunes

Thanks for your reply on this. You are correct, I was very tired when I wrote this. The other error was "This copy of the Install OS X Mountain Lion application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading"

Then it says to download it again from the app store. Which I have done many times. When I had Lion running on the Macbook Pro during this rebuld process with a clean install and I had had several of these messages and downloaded several times putting the old download of ML in the trash. Then I thought I should empty the trash so there is no copy on the drive. All but one emptied saying it can not delete because it is in use.

I shut down the computer to reopen and try to delete, and it would no longer start up in Lion. Would not even show the white screen with the apple. Started on the usb and it showed drive problems, so I erased the drive again and tested ok. But to be safe I put a new SSD drive in and formated it OS X Journaled.

At this point there was no operating system to use app store so tried again with the SD card with the boot drive and OS X ML Install on.

Install still fails with: "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X"

I formated the drive OS Extended Journaled. Which is as I understand the way to format for an OS X install. One partition on the interal drive, other than the recovery partition that I think happens on OS X install or is it part of OS Extended Journaled?

I have no backups for this computer. It is my wifes and it seems that some kind of virus corrupted her drive, then after I had it working again on Lion it had been quiting Safari unexpectedly. It seemed stable... then when timemachine was doing a new back up it crashed and from that point it also said the time machine disk was in need of repair, and is not repairable. I will looking deeper into the possiblity of data recovery from this drive later as I have at least her most important files on the server.

I just want to get a clean install on a newly formatted drive that's it. 🙂

I may have the Snow Leopard disks, I am not sure in my last move if I kept them and can check a box or two to see. So I may try this depending on if the disks can be found.

I was having similar problems installing Lion and thought it was my drive. Althogh when I bought the SSD I also picked up a drive dock. Then I installed Lion onto the 7200 rpm 750G Seagate Momentus that was having some trouble, although it is only a few months old. I was able to install from a new Lion download on my iMac to this drive. This is how I was able to get the Macbook Pro to run. Since it seemed to be going well, I thought to install ML directly from the app download onto the MBP. That is when all the ML install trouble started. 😟

So I can probably get the Lion to install this way again to a drive for the MBP. I was wondering since I have the download for ML on the iMac (not yet installed, and not sure if I want on my main iMac) perhaps it will work to install ML to the SSD drive in the dock, then put it into the MBP. What I don't know is what that may do to my settings or Lion operating system on the iMac that is doing the install?

Yes, thanks for the article on creating a ML install drive. I have read this and used it to create the install drive.

It shows the SSD is a GUID Patition Table, with the disk image showing Mac OS Extended (Journaled). So this seems to be OK. I repartitioned it anyway being sure to choos the Partition option GUID.

So if I install the "OS Installer app onto the device" I still need an operating system on which to run it. I do have the SD card with yet another freshly created Mac OS X Install ESD on the single partiton of the 32 GB SD card. Before I had it on a separate partion of the SD card and it seemed to run, but I have tried with the single partion and still get "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X"

I noticed that it always says "Reinstall OS X" in the OS Utilities program that runs when starting on the OS Install drive. I hope it is not expecting to find bits of a previous install?

I just ran the install again after repartitioning and got the same: "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X" at the 3 min. mark which is usually around where it fails.

Another thought is that I could create just the OS Recovery disk without the whole ML install on it using the RecoveryDiskAssistant.dmg so that it request the apple ID and downloads for the install which is a lot slower, but it may work?

I did find the Snow Leopard disk and may give that a try as you said in your first response.

Do you have the Snow Leopard (10.6) install disk? Having done so much, I suggest doing a clean install of Snow Leopard (with no other removable devices connected, that is, without USB flash drive or SDHC card), update it with the Combo updater, then launch App Store and attempt to reinstall Mountain Lion (just skip Lion at this point).

What is the "Combo updater" ? I just click Install. 1st time failed, 2nd time failed "Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer! The Installer encountered and error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Click Restart to restart your computer and try installing again. 😠

It does not appear that RecoveryDiskAssistant.dmg is available for Mountain Lion as I had suggested earlier. So it looks like my last option is to try installing from the iMac to the MBP SSD drive which may have issues? Or perhaps I can get lion back onto the MBP with the Lion Install. I went through many attempts to get lion on the MBP and as I mentioned the only way I was able, due to the same error ML is having "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X", was to install Lion from the iMac to the MBP drive.

Ohh, wait what you said earlier may work if I just put the ML installer onto the drive and boot it up on the MBP to see if the installer will run. I will give that a try. 🙂

Scratch that of course I cannot install ML on the same drive as the start up disk. Not sure what I will do next to get ML onto this MBP. ... 😐

Good Morning,

I really like this clear response. It is very clearly written and easy to follow and understand.

Yesterday I tried step 1. only with the addition of zeroing out the drive when erasing the drive. This is using the SL disk utilities. Then attempted to install and it failed the message was slightly different than last time, in that it said it could not install all the components necessary. (I do not recall exact words).

I am now zeroing the drive out again and will see just by chance if it will work to install SL and continue with the steps you have listed if the install takes.

I do not know of what could cause it to fail...perhaps the dvd drive missed on block when reading data for the install or is there a possibility of another component in the MBP that could not be functioning correctly?

Regarding connecting the internal drive from the MBP to my iMac in the drive dock. I did in fact succeed at installing Lion to the Seagate 750 GB drive, put it back into the MBP and booted up.

Then set the user settings, copied files from the server and basically had all running. Since this was going so well I thought I could download Mountain Lion from the app store, which I did. I had not set any Apple ID in Users/Groups, so this may have been part of why the ML install was giving the message not able to verify. It had told me to download again. I did this a few times and perhaps two out of maybe 3 times I put ML installer in the trash before redownloading. Later I had the thought that the Trash had not been emptied with ML Installer inside may be a part of the hang up on the installation. So I emptied the trash, but it could not delete one of the ML Installers saying it was in use. So I restarted the computer in an attempt to not have the ML Installer in use, and that was the end of the working OS X Lion on the MBP. It would not start up, not even the white screen with the Apple, not even the "?" simbol in the folder.

So this may have been related the the ML Installer still in use that screwed up something or related to the fact that the OS X Lion was installed on the iMac to the start up drive for the MBP.

As a last ditch possible work around, I am willing to try a direct install of ML to the MBP Internal SSD and see if it is able to start up before taking the MBP into an Apple Authorized repair shop in town. I have no Idea what they can do that I haven't other than changing the mother board? We have no Apple store here 😟.

Thanks.

I don't recall if the Seagate had an intact recovery partition at the time. I think I have reformatted that drive and disk utility was reporting errors that could not be repaired. I may check that disk and see.

I would like to use the SSD in the MBP. It is showing 9 more min until the SSD is zero erased and will give SL another go.

Regarding the iMac creating MBP start up disk: I also later had the thought about repairing the disk permissions once I put the drive back into the MBP. Not sure if I should run it before I do the system set up or perhaps before, just go straight to recovery partition repair permissions then reboot and see what happens.

I will post the result either way for the completness of this discussion.

Result on SL install attempt 3:

"INSTALL FAILED

Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer

The Installer could not copy the necessary support files.

Click Restart to restart your computer and try installing again."

This MBP has 2 - 4GB memory simms that were installed a few months ago. I seem to recall when I first bought this MBP the max memory upgrade was 4 GB with 2 ea. 2 GB sims, which I did install in 2010. Then this year saw that 2 ea. 4 GB simms could be installed. I don't know if it is related, but SL being an older system perhaps it causes an error? I will try again with the original simms before I attempt the not recommened installation from the iMac to the MBP start up drive.

Update...

Okay after putting the original 2 GB simms back into the MBP, erase HD and running SL install it completed!

1. Erase MBP internal HD and install Snow Leopard on it from your SL disk. Start up from SL disk, first choose Disk Utility and erase the internal HD. Then install SL. Set up user account -- yours, your wife's, whatever desired.
2. After SL installed, boot MBP from internal HD. Download Snow Leopard Combo Update and install. Repair permissions and restart. From System Prefs choose Software Update and check for additional updates. Apply all, restart, repair permissions, repeat until there are no more updates to install.
3. Launch App Store and sign in with same Apple ID used to purchase Mountain Lion on your iMac. (If you have already signed in with a different Apple ID you will need to sign out first.)
4. In App Store, click Purchases, and Mountain Lion should appear. Click the button to install it.

Step 2.

After Combo update I was not able to repair permissions until after restart, then permissions repair completed.

Installed 7 updates... Complete

Step 3. Complete

Step 4. (Correction) Mountain Lion appears. Click DOWNLOAD.... Complete

Step 5. Install Mountain Lion....Okay this is the big one after the past week (full time not going to work, just get up in the AM and trying every possibility that may resolve the issue untill all possiblilites are exhausted) of attempting to get the operating system running on this Mac. .....

- Started the ML install, it has restarted the computer after just a minute or two....

- Restart complete opened to Install OS X screen... Time remaining: About 33 minutes....31, 30, 20, 17, 10...

Restart Chimes! - SUCCESS! 😀 🙂 😉

Thanks so much for your help on this!

I will look further into the 2 ea 4 GB memory simms to make sure they are correct for this mid 2009 laptop.

(Corsair Apple 8 GB Dual Channel Kit DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) 204-Pin DDR3 Laptop SO-DIMM Memory CMSA8GX3M2A1066C7 ) or maybe they have some kind of error in them?

Your support ROCKS !

Oh yes for the record the 8 GB memory did show up in the System Profiler before attempting the SL install it showed the 2 ea. 4 GB simms installed and yet they still did affect the installation of SL or any othe operating system for that matter.