Hi, I have a late 2008 iMac with a new hard drive. How do I install Mountain Lion from my bootable USB flash drive.

How do I install Mountain Lion to a new hard drive without having the recovery partition on it.
I have the USB flash drive with software on it but when I switch my Mac on all I have is a white screen & a flashing question mark.
ATB,
Steve.

Did you use LionDiskMaker or DiskMaker X?
Boot the machine with the option key down until you see your bootable USB stick.  Select the latter, and reboot.
When the installer boots up, you will first need to choose Utilities and Disk Utility. Select the target HD device name and then the partition tab. Select 1 partition, name it Macintosh HD. Format is Mac OS Extended, and option is GUID. Apply. Exit Disk Utility and return to the installer, which will now show your newly partitioned HD as available for install.
When OS X is installed and all updates applied, press shift+command+U and run disk utility again. Verify/repair permissions and verify the boot disk.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for