Tried downgrading from El Capitan to Lion, in order to do that I erased my Macintosh HD, which now comes up as "Untitled". Every time I try to install Lion, I either get an error message saying that something went wrong and Lion cannot be installed, or I get a message saying that Lion can't be installed because it cannot create a recovery system. I'm pretty stuck and don't want to end up with a brick macbook. Please help. Thanks
Mac Pro
Howdy redrumshow,
I see you are a new user here in Apple Support Communities - welcome! I hope we find you contributing often in the future.
In order for you to reinstall Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on your MacBook you are going to have to not only erase the Macintosh HD partition on the drive, but the Recovery partition as well.
NOTE - this will only work if the computer came with Lion or earlier OS version originally. This procedure will not install Lion if your Mac Pro came with Mountain Lion or later.
If the MacBook originally came with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard it MAY be able to use Internet Recovery if this firmware update has been installed - Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery.
The following process will destroy all data on the hard drive - if you don't have backups of everything important, stop, go back and make one NOW.
The first thing to do is to force the computer to boot to Internet Recovery. For obvious reasons to do this you must have an Internet connection available. I would suggest using an Ethernet connection, as it will work faster than Wi-Fi.
From there you can proceed to do the reinstall. This article gives more information about installing using Recovery - OS X: About OS X Recovery.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best to you.
Howdy redrumshow,
I see you are a new user here in Apple Support Communities - welcome! I hope we find you contributing often in the future.
In order for you to reinstall Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on your MacBook you are going to have to not only erase the Macintosh HD partition on the drive, but the Recovery partition as well.
NOTE - this will only work if the computer came with Lion or earlier OS version originally. This procedure will not install Lion if your Mac Pro came with Mountain Lion or later.
If the MacBook originally came with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard it MAY be able to use Internet Recovery if this firmware update has been installed - Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery.
The following process will destroy all data on the hard drive - if you don't have backups of everything important, stop, go back and make one NOW.
The first thing to do is to force the computer to boot to Internet Recovery. For obvious reasons to do this you must have an Internet connection available. I would suggest using an Ethernet connection, as it will work faster than Wi-Fi.
From there you can proceed to do the reinstall. This article gives more information about installing using Recovery - OS X: About OS X Recovery.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best to you.
It's impossibile downgrade from El Capitan to Lion,
I normally use an external support (like bootable USB drive) with the OS that I want to re-install.
If the Recovery Partition didn't work for you install the OS via external drive.
To create external bootable drive you can use this software DiskMaker X, it's a life-saver in this situation.
But first made a backup with Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner (bootable backup).
Best regards
Tried downgrading from El Capitan to Lion
