Wiped macintosh HD while trying to reinstall OSX lion

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Level 1

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Wiped macintosh HD while trying to reinstall OSX lion

Ok. I need help. I wanted to to a factory restore of osx lion on my Mac mini as it is going to my mother to use. So I downloaded the restore utility app and put lion onto a USB drive as per instructions. Then I wiped the HD drive using disk utility from the recovery start up option. Then I thought I was doing the right thing and seemed to have restored the HD with the USB drive. This didnt work. So I decided to go with the long slow option and download osx again using the reinstall option. The problem is the only drive showing (which is now called Mac OSX Base System) is locked so i can't install on this. There are no other options. What can I do?

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Dec 27, 2012 2:15 AM

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Answer 1

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Dec 27, 2012 5:02 AM in response to Bexnz

If you shut the system down, power off, then reboot it, does it still show as locked?

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Answer 2

Bexnz Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 27, 2012 4:07 PM in response to BGreg

Have shut down and powered up. Now it says cannot find installation information for this machine.

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Answer 3

ausonau

Level 1

30 points

Dec 27, 2012 5:56 PM in response to Bexnz

Hi Bexnz.

You do not necessarily need to have a Recovery USB image, as Mac OSX Lion and Mountain Lion has its inbuilt recovery system.. All you have to simply do is, when you first turn on the computer. Before the apple logo, is to press and hold on 'command and r'. It will go to a display when you follow the procedures, there should be a popup menu saying if you want to recover. Alternatively go to the menu bar and look around for the recovery option.

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