Can't use Internet Recovery

under my ID and redeem the Lion 10.7 that I purchased

Since you already have Lion purchased under your own account, it will always be there for you to retrieve without paying for it again. You are allowed to install Lion on as many Macs as you own, so it doesn't matter if you purchased it for a different Mac. Just login to your account with the Mac you're referring to here and install Lion.

An Internet Recovery will only work if your Mac came with Lion or later. Anything earlier, you have to install from the DVD your Mac came with, or a compatible retail disk. The Mac in question was originally released in May, 2011. According to www.everymac.com, they shipped with Snow Leopard, 10.6.3, or 10.6.6, depending on the model purchased, and when.

Even at 10.6.3, it's questionable a retail copy of Snow Leopard would work. If it came with 10.6.6, it definitely won't. If you didn't get the original gray disks with the Mac, see if you can get those from the seller. You'll need them. If s/he doesn't have them, you'll have to get a replacement set from Apple. They'll need the serial number to make sure you get the correct disks.

Once you have the Snow Leopard disks for your Mac, boot to the DVD, erase the drive and reinstall. Update if necessary to get the App Store on your drive. Then login to your account and reinstall Lion. Though if you want to, you can skip directly to Mavericks.

I have no OS on the machine at all right now. I have an iMac that will only boot to Utilities/Internet Recovery.

Yes, and that leaves you kind of stuck. You can't do an Internet Recover since it didn't come with Lion or later. What you can do is a Command+R restart to boot to the Recovery partition. Which it appears you already know, and have erased the drive while in Recovery mode. From there, you could reinstall Lion. But doing so I believe requires knowing the Apple ID used to purchase Lion before it will reinstall. If so, then you can't get anywhere until you purchase a set of replacement DVDs from Apple for that Mac.

I'm sure that R C-R would be happy to help you pay that down!

Hi rkaufmann87,

You know your stuff! May I ask your guidence please. I have a iMac 21.5/2.9Ghz/Intel core i5/16GB mem/ 1 TB Fusion /Late 2012 version. Very happy.

Sometimes overnight in sleep mode, it shuts down completley. No power settings to do so. And when it does shut down, it can take several attempts to restart with the power button. The best method seems to be remove the power and re-apply. Any ideas? I do have apple care, but thought it might be something simple?

Regards

Bob

You'll get a lot more help when many more people can see your issue instead of stuffing it inside a completely unrelated topic. Start a new topic of your own and repeat this information there.

Fine Kurt, thanks.

Whew! Glad to hear you got it straightened out and working.

Thank you for your follow up. I just went through the same thing but, since there is no Apple store for about 1,000 miles around, I did not meet with the success you did.

I am so disappointed by my experience that I am now thinking that Linux would be a better system to run on my Apple hardware.

Luckly, I "found" a Lion 10.7 install disk and it worked. It is unfortunate that Apple will no longer produce such disks.

derek

Apple didn't make OS X Lion 10.7 install disks. The only way to get Lion was by download and I believe Apple sold a thumb drive. At minimum Lion is $20, so where did you get this? It sounds pirated. You may have the usual issues with pirated OS X in the future.

It is geniune Apple.

derek

It's either not 10.7 or not genuine Apple. As Dah*veeh said Lion 10.7 was NEVER shipped on discs.

The disc says OS X Lion 10.7.1 - Install and Startup Disc and it came from Apple.