Mac Mini won't work with internet recover - grey flashing globe
My Mac Mini hard drive crashed so I replaced it with a new drive. So there is no recovery partition, its a new unformatted drive.
When I boot and try to click command+option+r keys after the chime I get a blank grey screen for quite a while, then a flashing grey globe.
Its hardwired to a local network, same connection its always been connected to.
I've tried 2 keyboards as well since I don't get any feedback on the commands. Tried it a number of times.
What can I try next to get the OS reinstalled? I can't make a recovery usb stick as I don't have another mac.
I tried to take it originally to the Genius Bar but they declined to repair it saying the serial # on the crashed drive didn't match their database even though I've never modified it. So now that I replaced the hard drive myself I'm sure they would decline it even more now that I opened it myself. Its out of warranty anyway.
iPhone 4, Other OS, Windows 8