Can't reinstall Mac OS X Lion on my MacBook Air

You should be able to reinstall OS X Lion again. Is this not allowing you to download Lion?

Try installing Mavericks on the USB drive. Booting from the USB stick will be very slow but this might allow you to get OS X installed on the main drive.

Before you go through this, what happens when you try booting from the internal drive? Hold down Shift key and try booting from internal drive.

What happened that caused you to loose access to your drive?

I would prefer that you had an external drive that was large enough so we could install Mavericks then run a clone of your internal drive after booting from Mavericks.

If your computer meets the requirements for Mavericks, why not upgrade to the latest version of OS X?

OS X Mavericks: System Requirements

To install Mavericks, you need one of these Macs:

▪ iMac (Mid-2007 or later)

▪ MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)

▪ MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),

▪ MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)

▪ MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)

▪ Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)

▪ Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)

▪ Xserve (Early 2009)

Your Mac also needs:

▪ OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8 already installed

▪ 2 GB or more of memory (I find this to be very low. 4GB would be the minimum with 8GB preferred)

▪ 8 GB or more of available space

I am having the same issue, and i am stuck at OS X utilities screen whenever i turn on my macbook air . I dont see an option for me to download OS X Mavericks ?

i see some other posts saying that holding command+R can boot from the spinning globe screen , but it doesnt work for me . any advise would be appreciated!

It's possible there is an issue with Apple's servers causing the problems. Normally that clears up in a day.

Go to the main window in Mac App Store. You should see Mavericks in the right sidebar or do a search for Mavericks.

i am stuck at the OS X utilities screen, cant download new OS X as I cannot open mac app store nor able to reinstall the Mountain Lion OS X through internet ...

Can you boot into your main internal drive?

While booted in recovery drive, can you open Safari and connect to internet?

Do you have an external drive?

i can get boot into recovery mode , and get on safari. i have a 16gb usb drive , is it big enough for re-installing ?

Have you tried Command+Opt+R (Internet Recovery)?

It says this item is temporarily unavailable when i am trying to just reinstall my OS X lion

I restarted and holding down shift, i see apple icon keep changing to other icon , question mark icon, folder icon etc. and when i let go of shift button, i am back to the OS X utilities screen.

how do i download the OS X Mavericks into an external hard drive ? is it okay i have other data in an external harddrive when doing this ?

I have tried Command+Opt+R (Internet Recovery) when restarting , it get me back to the OS X utilities screen .

When you download Mavericks to the USB drive it's not going to allow you to run the Mavericks installer. You need to buy an external drive then install Mavericks on the drive. You can then boot from the drive to recover your data and install a working OS X on the internal drive.

Recommended Drives

USB 3.0 drives work on USB 2.0 but you do get 2.0 speed. They are cheaper because they are popular PC drives. If you get a new computer you'll get the bump to 3.0 speed. I don’t recommend FW. The newer computers don’t have FW ports. You would need a connector in order to use the drive on a newer computer.

Size: I recommend either the 2T or 3T drives. Often they are cheaper than a 1T drive. The 4T drives have more issues and failure rates.

The Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.

Seagate Backup Plus 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STCA2000100) (Amazon only had used drives so I couldn’t get a price)

Seagate Backup Plus 3TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STCA3000101) $134.99

This Western Digital drive has good reviews: Has a 2 yr warranty. Comes formatted for Mac but I would still format using Disk Utility.

WD My Book Hard Drive for Mac 2 TB (WDBYCC0020HBK-NESN) $99

WD My Book Hard Drive for Mac 3 TB (WDBYCC0030HBK-NESN) $119.99

Check the warranty when comparing. The longer the warranty the better the drive. WD makes cheaper drives but with almost no warranty.

Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.

You can get one drive for both Time Machine and clone, but it’s recommended that you use different drives for each. If the drive dies you lose both types of backup.

There should be an option to re-install OS X. Please do not use a WiFi connection, it will very slow and may not work.

Please also see OS X: About OS X Recovery

Which version of OS X is installed by OS X Recovery?

• If you use the Recovery System stored on your startup disk to reinstall OS X, it installs the most recent version of OS X previously installed on this computer.
• If you use Internet Recovery to reinstall OS X, it installs the version of OS X that originally came with your computer. After installation is finished, use the Mac App Store to install related updates or later versions of OS X that you have previously purchased.

how do i download Mavericks into an external drive ? i dont have another macbook . i can download that by using a PC ?

after that, how do i boot by connecting external drive and installing the Mavericks into my macbook air ?

I'm not sure if this will help you.

My wife has an older MacBook that runs Lion. It can't run anything above that. I formatted her drive and attempted to reinstall and got the same message. I opened a shell window and confirmed I had an Internet connection.

I had been logging in as her. Instead I tried my Apple ID and it worked. I'm not sure why.

This actually helped me. My dad gave me his old MacBook (Late 2008) years ago and I have since purchased a MacBook Pro (Mid 2012). I tried resetting the 2008 Macbook to the factory default so I can sell it on eBay. Since I have 2 macs I tried the bootable drive option(I did the Yosemite 10.10 upgrade) that people talked about, but when I finally booted off of the drive it said, "This is not an authorized way to install the OS". According to this website my laptop should be able to run Yosemite 10.10: http://www.zdnet.com/article/will-your-mac-run-os-x-10-10-yosemite/ If it really can run Yosemite then the bootable drive doesn't seem to be an option anyways for this problem in the topic. The way that your post helped me was that you tried a different apple ID. I used my father's apple ID since it was originally his laptop and it worked whereas I got the "This is temporarily unavailable" notification when I tried my own apple ID. When they say" This is temporarily unavailable" it is probably just their less rude way of saying, "This laptop is suspected to be stolen and we will not service it for you". My MacBook 2008 is starting to download OS X Mountain Lion right now I'm guessing this is some type of security feature so if someone steals your laptop they can't simply format the drive and try to reinstall the OS to use it as their own. However I don't know how people are supposed to sell it then. A seller doesn't want to give their buyer their apple ID just so they can download the OS. I've read a few posts saying they purchased the laptop online and had this problem. I can't imagine how frustrated I would be if that happened to me. Since i'm selling mine I'm going to be nice and have the latest OS already installed and ready to go then i'll sign out of my apple ID. Hopefully years down the road when they want to format their computer again they don't run into this same probably. According to the posts the only other way people got their macs to work was taking it to the apple store. That probably is the easiest way to solve this problem if not the only way if you are not the original owner of the laptop. If you can't bring it to a Genius bar then maybe calling support would help. You probably have to explain your sob story to them, but it appears you have no other choice. I've tried all suggestions in this post with no success until this last one. My conclusion is that if you are not the original owner of the laptop you need to: Contact the original owner for their apple ID(preferably family since anyone else would strangle you for such a request), Bring it in to the Genius Bar(Hopefully they won't charge you), or Call Support(Hopefully they are helpful).

Good luck everyone!