Help: install failure-Lion "can't be installed because recovery system can't be created.
After selecting c:/ drive for install (GUID, Journaled, Snow Leopard 10.6.8), the install procedure runs about 2 minutes then halts with message, Lion "can't be installed because the recovery system can't be created." What is a probable cause, and what is a solution? Anyone know? Is tehre a FAQ on this? Can't find one.
I had similar issues.
The following article pointed me in a better direction:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20081398-263/os-x-10.7-cannot-be-installed-on-certain-drives/
I tried to go the partition route, but for some reason the operation failed.
I decided to attempt a Lion install again afterwards anyway, but once again it failed, but now my whole system was hosed and could not revert back to Snow Leopard.
I did a restore from time machine. Once that completed, I attempted to install Lion again, and ta da! it works now.
What a pain.
Similar Messages
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Unable to install OS X Lion as "...it can't be installed on Disk Mackintosh HD because recovery system can't be created. Visit www.apple......"
Visiting the web pages does not help me can someone please point me in the right direction ?OK. You have a Boot Camp partition which is why the issue. See the following:
It seems the issue is that the space at the "bottom" of your available space when Lion installs it's partition is already occupied by BootCamp. The fix was to go into Disk Utility; Select your Hard Drive; Select Partition; Move the bottom of your main partition "up" a bit to create a space for Lion; close Disk Utility; Install Lion; once Lion is successfully installed, go back into Disk Partition and drag the bottom of your main partition back "down" to the bottom of the window.
In your case use Disk Utility to "shrink" your OS X partition a little more than 1 GB.
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired empty space. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
Remember that you only need to shrink the OS X partition a little more than 1 GB. Now, when you try the Mountain Lion installation the installer will be able to make the Recovery HD. -
How can I install Mountain Lion OS... I get error message saying a Recovery System can't be created... Any help or ideas out there?
After a week of dealing with AppleCare we discovered there was a corrupted recovery disk on my hard drive when i upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, therefore not allowing the upgrade to Mountain Lion. So ended up backing up the computer, then formatting the computer and reloading SNOW LEOPARD then upgraded straight to Mountain Lion, then restored my user files. This has worked, and am so grateful to AppleCare for their tireless help with diagnosing and helping to sort this out! they've been fantastic!
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My Macbook Pro is set up to run Windows via bootcamp and I am trying to install Mountain Lion.
I cant install and has come up with an error message telling me Install Failed because it cant create a recovery system. I am not very technical and can just about spell 'Mac' so I need help
ThanksInstaller reports "This disk cannot be used to start up your computer"
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OS X Lion begins installing and then error message comes up that it can't be installed on MacIntosh HD because a recovery system can't be created. What do I do to fix this problem?
What to do if the installer warns that no Recovery HD can be created
Some disk partition configurations may result in the OS X Lion installer reporting that it could not create a Recovery HD. In these situations, even if you are permitted to continue the install, you should quit the install and create an external, bootable OS X Lion hard drive with a Recovery HD, first. You will be able to return to the upgrade to OS X Lion on your computer's boot drive after creating the external Recovery HD.
Important notes
Your storage device must have at least 13 GB available (after formatting) to install Lion and an Internet Restore partition.
These steps will erase and reformat the storage device. OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery will instruct you on setting up the storage device to use the GUID partition scheme and the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, which are required to install Lion and an Internet Restore partition on your external storage device. You should back up any important files that are on the device to a different drive.
This procedure will install a version of the OS X Lion that is compatible with the Mac it was created with. Using this Lion system with a different kind of Mac may produce unpredictable results.
Your computer's serial number will be sent to Apple to help authenticate your request to download and install OS X Lion. -
I get an "install failed" message. "Recovery system can't be created—click restart to return to previous version of OS X." This doesn't work. My Mac continues to try to install Mountain Lion. What is the elegant way to get my system back?
The first time I attempted to install ML was on a late 2011 MBP. It ran for three minutes then gave me the error message: Could not install OSX due to an unexpected error. I was using the original ML install app, not a USB or other drive.
After a couple of restarts wiht the same result I saw a message to the effect that the install was trying to close open apps. I closed apps manually a few times to no avail. I shut down instead of restarting then booted into Safe mode (hold down the shift key when starting) and that did it. The install went smoothly after that.
I since installed ML in two iMacs using a cloned copy of the install app on a USB drive. This time I shut down the computers and booted into Safe Mode first and there were no problems.
I don't know if this issue is the one causing you these problems but it is a simple enough solution to try.
Jay -
I want to install Mountain Lion, but I forgot my password. How can I retrive or reset my password. I'm using Mac OS X, version 10.6.8
OS X: Changing or resetting an account password
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Lion will not install due an inability to set up a recovery system what can I do
Lion will not install due an inability to set up a recovery system what can I do
Have a read here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
Stefan -
I just bought the new OS X 10.8 and downloaded but when I tried to install it on my computer Installation Failed and I got this message:
"OS X can't be installed on the disk Macintosh HD , because a recovery system can't be created."
I tried so many times but the same message comes out to me each time and when I restart the computer I am back to the same OS X installer and can't access my computer any more so I am really stuck I can't install the new OS X version and can't go back to the old OS X version or access my computer.
Please help
My computer is MacBook Pro 13"OK. You have a Boot Camp partition which is why the issue. See the following:
It seems the issue is that the space at the "bottom" of your available space when Lion installs it's partition is already occupied by BootCamp. The fix was to go into Disk Utility; Select your Hard Drive; Select Partition; Move the bottom of your main partition "up" a bit to create a space for Lion; close Disk Utility; Install Lion; once Lion is successfully installed, go back into Disk Partition and drag the bottom of your main partition back "down" to the bottom of the window.
In your case use Disk Utility to "shrink" your OS X partition a little more than 1 GB.
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired empty space. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
Remember that you only need to shrink the OS X partition a little more than 1 GB. Now, when you try the Mountain Lion installation the installer will be able to make the Recovery HD. -
Clean Install: Recovery system can't be created
I have a late 2007 white Macbook. I installed a 320 GB drive into the optical bay and my O/S drive was a 120 GB OCZ Vertex+
I had previously had a Crucial M4 as the OS drive for months. I used SuperDuper to clone it to the OCZ about a week ago and had no problems.
The system was running fine until a few days ago when it started acting weird, so I tried to reboot. I got the blinking folder with a question mark and couldn't do anything else. I was able to recover some of my data off of the SSD using my brother's MBP and DiskWarrior. I also created a 4 GB Lion bootable USB.
I erased the SSD using disk utility and then tried to run the installation, but I keep getting "Mac OS X can't be installed on the disk XXXX, because a recovery system can't be created."
Any help would be much appreciated.Well, you cannot see the Recovery HD partition and formatting (erasing) the drive does not remove it. Only partitioning the drive will remove it. The error you are getting is the error produced when there is another partition on the drive that cannot be altered or the drive is not prepped correctly or a Recovery HD partition already exists or there is something corrupted on the drive.
I suggest that you boot from your installer flash drive and use Disk Utility to repartition the SSD:
Drive Preparation
1. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. When done quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button. When prompted click on the option to See Other Disks then select the SSD as the target. -
Installing Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, Install failed and HD write-locked
I recently downloaded the mountain lion installer from the App Store and I ran the installer. Stupid person as I am, I did not have any backups for my file and I naively assumed that an apple OS installer would be without flaws. Boy, was I wrong. I need every bytes of my data (or close to every bytes) but the installer failed.
Mid installation, the installer stopped and said that the installation failed and that I need to repair my disk. So I restarted the computer and I ran disk utilities (my start up disk was the OS installer and the installer allows me to run several programs, including terminal, disk utilities, and by the way, when I held option while starting up to see which start up disks I have, I only had the OS installer as the start up disk. Also, the installer allows me to run a program called "Startup Disk" when I click on the apple logo on the top left corner, but it doesn't allow me to startup my computer using Macintosh HD) and noticed that when I highlighted Macintosh HD, my "Repair Disk" button was grayed out. So first things first, I ran the "Verify Disk" button but after a minute or so, Disk Utilities said that verification failed and that Macintosh HD needs to be repaired. But the "repair disk" button is grayed out! So I went to the Mountain Lion installer again and ran it. Of course, it failed again so I restarted the computer.
So I tried to first back up all files in Macintosh HD to an external hard drive using Disk Utilities, and I used features such as "New Image" and "Restore" but they both ended up in "Input/Output error". I tried many methods with Disk Utilities but they resulted in errors.
After some research, I noticed that some people's computers worked after they reset their PRAM. So that's what I did. I held command+option+P+R when computer started up and I reset the PRAM. When the start up disk (which is the OS installer, not the normal operating system) loaded, I was greeted with choose languages option and then I was back in the Mountain Lion installer state. I again ran the installer again, hoping something would be different, but then it was different. But not in a good way. When I was told to choose where I would like to install Mountain Lion, I noticed that Macintosh HD was grayed out. Last time, I was at least able to run the installer but this time, Macintosh HD was grayed out. The installer said that my Macintosh HD was locked. After some research, I learned that apparently, the Mountain Lion installer write-locks Macintosh HD mid installation.
So now I am stuck and I am thinking of two things (plus some questions)
1. I am wondering if there is a way to unlock Macintosh HD. But even if I can unlock Macintosh HD, there is no guarantee that the installer will successfully install Mountain Lion, am I right?
a. so how can I un-write-lock Macintosh HD?
2. More realistically, I am thinking of borrowing someone else's macintosh computer and use it as the backup center. I have a firewire cable and a terrabyte external hard drive. So what I'm thinking is that I'll hook my computer in target mode to my friend's computer and I will also plug in my external hard drive to my friend's computer and then I can download and run Carbon Copy Cloner from my friend's computer to copy all data from my Macintosh HD to my external hard drive. And then I will erase my Macintosh HD, freshly install Mountain Lion onto it and then copy all data back from my external hard drive. But I am not sure about few things.
a. it looks like my Macintosh HD is write-locked. Can I still use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all data from Macintosh HD (in target mode) to my external hard drive?
b. will my computer allow me to erase (or format) Macintosh HD?
c. will my erased/formatted Macintosh HD able to install + be installed Mountain Lion OS?
If you are here, then you have read my long long problem. Thank you very much and I would really really really appreciate your answers and opinions. ThanksI'm not sure where you read that about the disk being "write-locked." That doesn't make much sense, given that the major task an installer like this must achieve is writing a whole bunch of files to the hard drive. I think your source was mistaken.
As to what happened, it sounds like your hard drive was badly corrupt to start with, or possibly was on the edge of failing and is now in the process of dying entirely. If you don't have backups of your data, that does not bode well for you, unfortunately. If you can manage to use target mode to copy your data, do that.
Once you're sure you've got all your data, you need to start up from your Snow Leopard install disk and repair the hard drive. (Since it sounds like the Mountain Lion installer didn't work, I wouldn't trust the recovery partition that Mountain Lion installs.) Or, even better, just erase the hard drive entirely and reinstall Snow Leopard. Then, once you're back up and running, with all your data back on the system and with Snow Leopard updated to the most recent version, try installing Mountain Lion again. If any of that fails again, the problem is likely to be a dying hard drive, and you'll need to replace it. -
Can't install the OS--Recovery system could not be created.
So I wiped the hard drive of my macbook, and bought OS X 10.8. I made the little recovery USB thingy, and tried desperately to get it to install the new system. However, it keeps telling me that OSX could not be installed on your computer because a recovery system can't be created. It asks me to restart over and over again, but so far, no dice. HELLLP!
Same problem here. This is my configuration:
- SSD drive with 2 partitions: 1 for the OS and the applications and 1 for BootCamp
- regular HD for data
- 2nd regular HD for TimeMachine
I've tried almost any solution suggested in different discussions (increasing the partition manually...) except of erasing disk and doing a clean install because I'm afraid of losing data of the Windows partition which is not backed up by TimeMachine. I'm not sure how to copy this partition.
Since this problem has been described for more than 6 months one could think there should be a solution available by Apple ?!? -
"Recovery system can't be created" error when reinstalling Lion from recovery system
I get the infamous OS installation error "Install failed... because a recovery system can't be created" – but in fact, the recovery system already exists, since I'm installing from it, and incidentally, I've previously already used it for an Internet reinstallation. I've tried about a half dozen iterations now.
Here's the exact sequence of events:
Reboot on recovery drive.
Select option to reinstall the OS from the network.
License agreement, etc; then select drive -> install -> sign into Apple store.
"Downloading additional components" message. 1st attempt consistently fails at this stage, need to restart at step 2.
Download for roughly 20 minutes, then automatic reboot -> "Installing Mac OS X".
After about 10 minutes: "Install failed. Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer. Mac OS X can't be installed on the disk ..., because a recovery system can't be created. Visit www.apple.com/support/no-recovery to learn more."
I've pawed through innumerable posts of people who have gotten the same error message, but haven't found one that reproduces my circumstances. I've reviewed the KB articles "OS X: About OS X Recovery" and "OS X Lion: Installer reports This disk cannot be used to start up your computer", with no luck. Based on a suggestion in the second KB article, I've reduced the primary partition size by roughly a GB and retried - no luck.
See this thread if you want to know why I'm reinstalling the OS, even though it's (more or less) functioning and I have Time Machine backups. It would also make me feel a lot better to know that the reinstallation would work in case of real need. Thanks in advance for any help.
-- PhilPhilip Keller wrote:
John,
I think I'm "reinstalling OS X by booting OS X Recovery": I reboot with command-R depressed, or I reboot with Alt depressed and choose the recovery parition, and then I start the installation process from the list of things I can do. Are we talking about the same thing?
Yes, exactly.
I think that OS X Internet Recovery would be necessary only if you were to attempt a Lion installation with a completely empty HD, implying that even a Recovery partition has not been created. Your USB flash drive is the way to cope in that circumstance. If you can install Lion by booting the recovery partition as you described, it seems to me that it is all that is necessary and there is nothing to fix, despite the error message you see.
I'm surprised that Internet Recovery works at all, given that your Mac is not one of those allegedly eligible to use it.
Without a similar 2006 iMac to test, I can only speculate that the "abysmal distribution system" as baltwo describes it just doesn't work well with earlier Macs, and that Apple may not have tested it extensively with them. If I were you I would rely upon that USB installer much more than OS X Recovery or OS X Internet Recovery. I prefer not to rely upon any installation method that can possibly result in "the server is not available at this time" or such nonsense, but that is the direction in which Apple has been going for a long time.
An OS X installation log exists at /var/log/ that you can examine using Console, probably named "install.log". Deciphering it is another challenge. -
I am trying to update my iPod but I can't until I sync it. However when i try to sync it a message pops up and says "Blythes iPod" can not be synced because a session can not be started with this device. What do I do? Help!
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1567
Ah, it has been mentioned daily esp since iOS 5 / iTunes 10.5 but has always been there as an issue.
Order of attempts:
Repair the installers
Uninstall EVERY Apple component (auto and manual)
Services: Restart all 3 Apple items (AMS, Bonjour, iPod)
I* always do the last almost, then launch iTunes, and only then connect iPod.
IF you see a yellow alert in Devices and Printers or in Device Manager, then I could find NO WAY to fix or repair other than a clean OS. Something messed up the device driver support.
If/when Windows asks "what to do when it detects iPod"? don't chose any default action, to me, based on hunch and 3 PCs, that seems to mess AMS up for some reason.
Tried with Windows 7 64-bit Pro and Home Premium, and also Deve Preview 8 (which other than the inability to update iOS to 5.0 seems to run better -- except when it comes to AMS thing! so seems Apple is not on the same page writitng drivers. -
The hard disk can not be split because some files can not be moved
Prerequisites: Computer has had a partition installed in bootcamp with a non-complete Windows XP installation
Started by uninstalling the old windows and restore the partition.
Got error on disk so it was cooked by the Lions recovery and was OK
Trying to re-install Windows, but get the same problems that
"The hard disk can not be split because some files can not be moved"Problem solved by reducing the size of the windows partition to 40GB (from 50GB).
I had a quit full disk so perhaps that influenced, not i have about 43GB left for mac and 40GB for windows
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