Can't use internet recovery

You indicate that you may have Snow Leopard disks (10.6.7). Why not reinstall Snow Leopard and then reinstall Lion?

Ciao.

Well I'll explain things a bit.

You have three partitions on your boot drive.

1: EFI (hidden)

2: Macintosh HD

3: RecoveryHD (hidden)

You can hold option command r at boot time and this loads Internet Recovery from Apple's servers.

You can hold command r (no option) at boot time and this loads RecoveryHD from your #3 partition.

Both Interent and RecoveryHD have Disk Utility to erase partitions and install OS X, however Internet Recovery should be able to do the entire drive of all partitions.

Now I don't know exactly what you did, but if you used Disk Utility to erase the #2 partition, then OS X, files and programs are all gone.

RecoveryHD has the ability to reinstall the current OS X version over itself to fix it.

If you want to go the 10.6 disk route and reinstall 10.7 from the AppStore then follow this and be sure to erase the ENTIRE drive of all partitions when you c or option key boot from the 10.6 disk.

How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6

How to revert your Mac to Snow Leopard

Oskar2901 wrote:

My SuperDrive is broken 😟

Then either use RecoveryHD to reinstall 10.7 Lion (command r boot) or find another Mac or working external optical drive and make a boot Snow Leopard USB thumb drive from the 10.6 disks.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-create-a-bootabl e-usb-to-install-os-x/

You can get the drive replaced or use an external drive. If the latter, place the install DVD into the external DVD drive and start the MBP holding the option key.

Ciao.

Message was edited by: OGELTHORPE

ds store, greetings;

ds store wrote:

You can hold option command r at boot time and this loads Internet Recovery from Apple's servers.

Not an option if the MBP originally came with 10.6 or earlier.

Ciao.

Good to see you on the forums. 🙂

OGELTHORPE wrote:

Not an option if the MBP originally came with 10.6 or earlier.

Actually, it MAY be an option if the MBP qualified for a firmware update to add Internet Recovery (Command+Option+R keys). I had a 2010 MBP preinstalled with SL and after a firmware update that came out after Lion was released, the MBP could boot to Internet Recovery and download/install Lion.

Oskar2901,

Try ds store's suggestion for Internet Recovery which is to reboot using the Command+Option+R keys until you see a spinning globe. If those keys DO work; then the OS X Utilities Menu should show you what OS you can reinstall (Lion or Mountain Lion).

Don't restart using the Command+R keys if you had Mountain Lion installed as this will only allow you to download/install Mountain Lion since you would be booting into Mountain Lion's Recovery HD not Internet Recovery.

It is an option to get to the Online Internet Recovery system but, and this is a BIG BUT, if your Mac did not come with Lion or Mt Lion Preinstalled from the factory you can't use OIR to reinstall a version of OS X you bought from the Mac App store. OIR is reserved for Macs that came with Lion or Mt Lion from the factory.

There is no Apple ID authentication system on the OIR system.

Now if he had Lion installed and had access to the Recovery HD partition on his drive then he could reinistall Lion.

If he presently has Mt Lion installed on his drive then the Recovery HD partition would allow him to reinstall that.

Which is why the OP is getting the prompt to reinstall Mt Lion. He has or had Mt Lion installed.

The Built in Recovery HD partition only allows you to reinstall the currently installed OS X version, Lion, Mt Lion and soon to be Maverick. Whichever OS X version the Recovery HD was made from or updated to.

keg55 wrote:

OGELTHORPE wrote:

Not an option if the MBP originally came with 10.6 or earlier.

Actually, it MAY be an option if the MBP qualified for a firmware update to add Internet Recovery (Command+Option+R keys). I had a 2010 MBP preinstalled with SL and after a firmware update that came out after Lion was released, the MBP could boot to Internet Recovery and download/install Lion.

keg55 wrote:

OGELTHORPE wrote:

Not an option if the MBP originally came with 10.6 or earlier.

Actually, it MAY be an option if the MBP qualified for a firmware update to add Internet Recovery (Command+Option+R keys). I had a 2010 MBP preinstalled with SL and after a firmware update that came out after Lion was released, the MBP could boot to Internet Recovery and download/install Lion.

Certainly there is no harm trying. It may work, it may not. I do appreciate your experience.

Ciao.

LowLuster wrote:

It is an option to get to the Online Internet Recovery system but, and this is a BIG BUT, if your Mac did not come with Lion or Mt Lion Preinstalled from the factory you can't use OIR to reinstall a version of OS X you bought from the Mac App store. OIR is reserved for Macs that came with Lion or Mt Lion from the factory.

Please see this firmware update which I mentioned in my prior post. Some Macs that did not come with Lion preinstalled did get a fireware update that added Internet Recovery for Lion. So, it really depends what model the OP has.

And now when I don't have a working OS, I assume, that I can't install tthe update right?

Right. We still don't know what model MBP you have either to know if there was a firmware update like my 2010 MBP had.

So, you can only do what OGELTHORPE suggested to get back to Lion. Since your SuperDrive drive is not working you'll need to use an external USB CD/DVD drive or replace it to reinstall Snow Leopard.

I don't quite understand how your system's Recovery only allows an install of Mountain Lion and you asked in your original post about how to purchase it? Did you not purchase Mountain Lion as an update over Lion? Did you have two partitions on your internal drive? One with ML and the other with Lion and from within ML you deleted the Lion partition?