absolutely cannot reset 2011 MBA for resa

Question

absolutely cannot reset 2011 MBA for resa

I'm trying to reset my 2011 Macbook Air for sale and it's proving to be impossible. I've reset Macs before for sale many times (in fact, just sold one last week), but this is my first time with one that doesn't come with discs.

As a preface, I have the slowest and worst internet connection in the civilized world and absolutely no access to anything better in less than three hours of driving. So I know this is really not helping.

After I determined that my new MBA was up and running and I was ready to sell my 2011 model, I restarted it to get to Disk Utility. This started internet recovery, the most aggravating process Apple has ever come up with. 14 hours later, I was finally at Disk Utility. I started by trying to just install the original OS (Lion), but couldn't do that because I was running Mountain Lion. So I wiped the drive completely and then tried to install Lion. After about an hour, I got a message that said that Apple couldn't verify that the computer was authorized for Lion, so I couldn't do it. Seriously?!

So I wound up restoring my hard drive with my last bootable backup so I at least have a working computer again. Is there any way I can wipe all my personal data and reset ML to a pristine condition without involving the internet at all?

Thanks,

Rae

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), mid-2011 13"

Posted on Aug 31, 2015 7:54 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Aug 31, 2015 11:33 AM in response to Traveling Rae

The short answer is no, an internet connection is required. This is one reason why I have made a flash drive installer for each version of the Mac OS since OS X 10.7

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Answer 2

Aug 31, 2015 11:48 AM in response to dwb

I haven't been able to make the the flash drive installer because I didn't know to do so when I first downloaded ML (at a time when I had access to 21st century internet) and now I can't redownload it because my downloads keep timing out. So I guess I'll just wipe the drive again and hope I can find a buyer who will understand my situation and that with decent internet, they can get the computer up and running again. Thank you so much, Apple. 😠

21 hours and counting to get back to Disk Utility so I can wipe the drive. And internet recovery been running now for four hours. My internet connection isn't that bad. Apple's servers are so slow.

Thanks for your response!

Rae

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