Hi Folks, I can't get Recovery HD to open when I restart / start my MacBook Pro whilst holding down Command and the R keys. I have tried at least a dozen times. Any suggestions?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)
Press and hold option until you are presented with boot devices. The Recovery HD will be among them. You can select and boot from it in this manner.
Press and hold option until you are presented with boot devices. The Recovery HD will be among them. You can select and boot from it in this manner.
It is possible the Recovery HD partition has been erased or damaged, preventing you from starting up from it. Some MacBook Pro's support the Internet Recovery feature that let you start up from a copy on Apple's servers instead.
See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 for more info about this, & http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4904 for a list of Macs that have firmware updates available to add this feature.
Also note that a command-option-R startup will force a Mac with this capability to use the server copy even if the local one exists.
Thanks Guys, I tried holding option whilst booting up but only was presented with my disk and not the Recovery HD. Seems my MacBook Pro is too old (2009) for Internet Recovery. I am guessing I will have to do a re-install or reformat? Disk Utility prompted my to use Recovery HD when I ran a Verify Disk procedure....
hemelm wrote:
I am guessing I will have to do a re-install or reformat?
Yes, reinstalling Mountian Lion should recreate the missing Recovery HD partition. See this CNet article for an in depth discussion about that. (It is about Lion, not Mountain Lion, but the same considerations apply.)
Also, for future use, you might want to consider using the Recovery Disk Assistant to create a bootable copy of the Recovery partition on a small USB drive. This won't help you now (because you must have an existing copy of the partition on your Mac it can copy to the USB drive) but it could be handy if you ever find yourself in this situation again.
I had this problem but discovered that my keyboard was plugged into a 3rd party card instead of directly into one of my MacPro's dedicated USB ports. Plugged it in there and problem solved!!
Same problem with my MacPro (early 2008) and keyboard connected to Cinema display. Plugged keyboard directly into the front of the machine and it worked. Thanks!
Some Macs can have internet recovery installed on them:
What should I do if I find a used machine without the original CDs?
Ditto. Only worked when plugged directly into Mac. Thanks for the tip.
Hi Michelle,
I am having a similar issue where my command + R or Command + Option + P + R isn't working. Mine is a MacBook mid 2009.
I am not sure what you guys mean by plugging directly into the Mac? Do I need to openup my MacBook Pro to do this? Please help as I have tried many things over the past week and nothing has worked out. All I am trying to do is to recover my documents from my timemachine backup.
Thanks
You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.
They are referring to plugging the keyboard directly into the Mac.
What OS version are you using?
Please how can I removed it
Recovery HD doesn't work when I hold Command and R on startup / restart. I am running os x10.8.4
