I Restored My Imac, But I Can't Install Moutain Lion As It Says I Haven't Purchased Lion. This Is Because I Went From Snow Leopard Straight To Mountain Lion. PLEASE HELP

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I Restored My Imac, But I Can't Install Moutain Lion As It Says I Haven't Purchased Lion. This Is Because I Went From Snow Leopard Straight To Mountain Lion. PLEASE HELP

So my mac is pretty much useless becuase i can't install mountain lion after a restore of my mac.

I have an imac late 2008 which i bought second hand. It only had Leopard OS X. So I bought the Snow Leopard OS X discs and installed them. I then bought Mounain Lion Straight from the app store and downloaded that.

However I recently decided to restore it for extra space. So i restored it fine and then attempted to reinstall Mountain Lion. Then a message popped up saying that 'This Apple ID has not purchased Lion' meaning that i can't now install Mountain Lion.

I then inserted the Snow Leopard disc and then it would not give me the option to install it on my hard drive and there was a little yellow caution sign on the picture of the hard drive.

I am stumped for ideas now and REALLY NEED SOME HELP 😟

Thanks,

Fin

iMac

Posted on Feb 3, 2013 3:59 AM

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Answer 1

Shootist007

Level 6

16,703 points

Feb 3, 2013 4:18 AM in response to foofinners

If you installed Leopard that is why you can't install Mt Lion. The system Must be running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to upgrade to Lion or Mt Lion.

If you only erased the Macintosh HD partition then you left the Mt Lion Recovery HD partition in tact on that system. At startup hold down the Command+r keys to boot to the Recovery HD Partition. From there erase the Macintosh HD partition and then select Reinstall Mac OS X. It should then download Mt Lion and ask you for the Apple ID that was used to purchase Mt Lion.

The Reason Snow Leopard might not be installing is because of the Recovery HD partition. To get rid of that you must First Re-Partition the drive As One Partition. Then install Leopard then SL (Or Snow Leopard from the start) and then update it to 10.6.8. Once that is done you should be able to log on to the Mac App Store and Re-Download Mt Lion.

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Answer 2

foofinners Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 4, 2013 2:16 AM in response to Shootist007

Hi,

Thanks 🙂

How do I repartition my imac?

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Answer 3

Shootist007

Level 6

16,703 points

Feb 4, 2013 2:31 AM in response to foofinners

You use Disk Utility from a Boot source other then the built in hard drive. Like from a CD/DVD disc or USB thumb drive.

Boot the system from one of your OS X install DVDs and open Disk utility. Select the internal drive name, the TOP most entry, and click the Partition Tab. Select One Partition from the Partition Layout section and click Apply.

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