Q: OSX Mavericks - "An Error occurred while preparing the installation.  Try running this application again."

The data thing work for me as well. Thank goodness.

Same message here too: OSX 10.9.1 MacBook Air apple support - (long story very short).

also cycling "waitng for root device" in verbose mode)

Boot with CMD-R

Run DISK UTILITY

Select Macintoh HD (shown greyed beneath Macintosh HD)

Select UNLOCK (I have Filevault in use)

RUN Repair permissions (which previously I oculd not do not having seen the unlock icon because Mac HD was greyed out)

Restart from apple menu

Voila - system came back up.

Setting the date in terminal fixed the issue for me. I spent about an hour pulling my hair out trying to figure out why it wouldn't get past this message.

Boot to the recovery HD

Go to terminal and use the date command

it works like this:

Date MonthDayHourMinuteYear

so March 1st 2014 at 12:30 would go as such:

date 0301123014

type 'date' by itself to confirm that you have set the date and time correctly, then quit terminal and try installing again.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

thank you lasdavegas

saved me a lot of hair pulling!

this error was driving me nuts

this fix should be included in the main FAQ of every mac OS help forum

Resetting date/time in terminal worked for me too. Thanks.

PLEASE HELP !!! I tried to change the date in Terminal but it said:
"settimeofday (timeval) operation not permitted"
could someone PLEASE help, this is very urgent, trust me. Would be of enormous help. Thanks.

What are all the steps you performed up to that point?  What's the exact command you entered in Terminal?

hi !! Thank GOD you're here !!

I went to Terminal in I'm on Snow Leopard atm. I type 04 08 18 42 2014 with no spaces.

Because it's 18:42 here, or 6:42pm (I also tried 0642 for the 'hhmm').

And I got the same response each time.

By the way, my Macbook is called 'MacBook Yo' and the first line says: MacBook-Yo-2, dunno what the '2' stands for, maybe an issue with who I'm typing as ?

I suspect that your problem is the environment where you're running that command.  As illustrated by this video, you need to run the command in a Terminal session invoked within the installer.  If what you're doing is to run the command in a Terminal session invoked under Snow Leopard, that won't work.

By the way, when someone asks you to tell "the exact command you entered", please do just that.  When you reply that "I type 04 08 18 42 2014 with no spaces," that can't possibly be the case, if for no other reason than that you left off the command name.

You also didn't respond to my request for "What are all the steps you performed up to that point?"  That could have let me confirm my suspicion that you're running Terminal in the wrong environment.

sorry I'm being incompetent. And indeed you're right, I had no idea Terminal could be "run in different environments" !...I was just opening Terminal in a standard way, or in Snow Leopard as you say. I'll see if I can do it within the Mountain Lion setup. Thanks !

is there a command in Terminal to make within the Mountain Lion enviornment ?

Thanks.

Just follow the video.  When the installer is running there should be a "Utility" menu with an entry for Terminal under it.

If you really mean Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), is there a reason you're trying to install that instead of going straight to Mavericks (OS X 10.9)?

well thanks for all the help man. Really appreciate it.

I absolutely need to upgrade to at least Mountain Lion 10.8. for a very important program I just got and can't install. I heard Mavericks had lots of annoying stuff and lots of the good stuff from past OS's that the developers just removed and it's unpractical etc...from many, many people. Not just one or a couple.

Your thoughts on that ?

I've been running Mavericks for a while and am happy with it.  If you want another opinion, check on the Mavericks section of this discussion group.