Error on downloading Yosemite from App Store

Question

This is to open a separate specific issue that was also a problem from creating a Yosemite boot disk on a flash drive.
I had previously downloaded and installed Yosemite from the Apple upgrade site.  I installed it and then my MacBook Pro started to malfunction to an unusable state.  I erased my HD and restore back to my Mavericks - 10.9.5 - backup on Time Machine.  I found that iTunes was now corrupt and want to try to install Yosemite from a clean HD and start over.  So I have created an empty thumb drive with a single partition to use as a bootable drive to do a clean install after wiping the HD.
I now cannot download the Yosemite installer from the App Store though.  I get a popup saying:  "OS X Yosemite failed to download.  Use the Purchases page to try again."  When I go to the Purchases option at the top of the page, I get a new one page listing Yosemite (dated 10/9/2014) with a red message "An error has occurred."  I have tried 3x to download again and no luck.   The history also gives the option of downloading Mavericks (2/25/2014) and has iPhoto (10/20/2014) ready to Install.  In the Application folder it has the Yosemite install icon greyed out with an X at the corner to cancel the install.  Clicking it and confirming cancel of the install, I still get the same download error after.  The download bar under the Application folder is blank, i.e. no progress.
How do I get around this?

Answer 1

Even the ignorant get lucky sometimes, or sometimes they just think they are lucky and will find out soon that they aren't so lucky.  In any case, in my desperation to get my MBP operable again, I seem to have made some progress.  I had been unable to get my first install of Yosemite to work so I ended up reverting back to Maverick via a complete restore from Time Machine.  As noted above I still couldn't get a successful download of either Maverick or Yosemite to use to make a recovery flash drive (in order to wipe my HD and start over).  I thought maybe I could use the built-in recovery disk on my HD to get a clean copy of Mavericks and hopefully that would fix things.  I thought Mavericks would be on the recovery partition (if that's the right term) since I was running a restored Maverick.  I found that the version there was 10.10 - Yosemite even though I was running Maverick  Since I had already used Time Machine to restore to Mavericks I felt comfortable in seeing what would happen if I restored from the Yosemite recovery.  Well - it worked.  It got me up and running and let me download and complete the install of Yosemite.  It now runs smoother then it did before without the spinning beachball of death all the time.  But iTunes will still not launch so I need to figure that out.  And I downloaded the Yosemite Installer which I can use to make a recovery flash drive.