Reinstall lion without disk

My laptop came with lion 10.7 but I was able to downlaod 10.8 for free . Now I need to relaod 10.8 but installer says I need 10.7 on it first . I did not get any disk with laptop as it was a refurb . Can I get 10.7 without buying it

Lion did not come with disks; however, you should be able to use internet recovery to get the original OS reinstalled: hit Command + Option + R while restarting to access internet recovery; once the Utilities show, use Disk Utility to wipe the drive and then reinstall the OS. You cannot install an earlier OS over the top of a newer one, so you need to wipe the drive........ which means you need to make sue to have a complete backup since you need to erase the drive.

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  • Reinstalling lion without wiping drive

    i need to reinstall lion without wiping my drive because i haven't made a backup yet. how do i do this?
    thanks.
    carl

    Can't you first make the backup?
    Reinstalling Lion
    Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alterhatively, 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.
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
    Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
    Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

  • Reinstall Lion without losing data?

    I bought a Mac Mini with Snow Leopard on it over the summer. I had nothing but problems with permissions. I eventually decided to buy the Server part of Lion. That has also been a headache. I have scoured the forums to find out how I can reinstall the Server hoping that would take care of the issues. It appears that reinstalling Lion then adding Server are my only options. However I need help doing this right way. I have a virtual machine and data from address book to Calendar that I can't loose. I have time Machine but I am scared of just relying on that as the permissions issues I have been having keep coming back. Apple support has been of no help with just the one issue I was having with contacts. That problem came right back after I got off the third call to Apple.
    Can I reinstall Lion without loosing my data?
    Can I just copy my user folders to an external HD then reinstall Lion clean, add users, then copy data from those folders back? Specifically will I loose the work my wife has done importing and flagging faces in iPhoto?

    I would do as you said, save data, or do a clone first.
    But, reinstalling Lion should only affect  those things that
    lion installs and not anything else, unless you do a clean
    install of course.  Backing up is a good precaution though
    should something go wrong.

  • How to reinstall Lion without recovery disk

    I want to reinstall Lion Mountain (I have downloaded it from apple store) and I dont have a recovery disk....Can anyone help me with this?

    You can make a bootable copy using:
    Lion Disk Maker

  • Trying to erase and reinstall Lion without Apple ID

    A while back I bought a MacBook Pro from a friend. It came with a Lion Installation Disk.
    I've tried erasing the harddrive, and reinstalling Lion, but now im being prompted to enter the Apple ID that purchased Lion.
    Since my friend bought the computer along with Lion using his Apple ID, how do I reset and install Lion without having to enter his Apple ID?
    Any help is appreciated.

    The important question is, did this machine come with lion preinstalled or was it purchased from the app store?
    If it came preinstalled, your friend needs to call apple to transfer the license for the OS to you. If he purchased Lion, the license is not transferable and you will need the original install disks, wipe the drive, install the original OS, and then purchase Lion with your own Apple ID.
    FWIW, Lion did not come on a disk.

  • I am unable to erase hard drive after a crash, also cannot reinstall Lion because disk is locked.  There seems to be nothing else to do, suggestions?  Where do I go from here?

    I downloaded Lion 100 days ago (conveniently after the 90 day tech support)  now my HDD has crashed and it gets stuck at the apple screen.  I then hold command R and go to disc utility try to repair, that doesn't work, and try to erase.  But it says error, cannot unmount disk.  I then try to reload Lion, but it says the disk is locked.  Okay, so do I need a new hard drive?  If so that's fine, I just cannot seem to erase this drive to reinstall lion.  Also, I don't have a disk to reinstall OSx, as Lion is done via internet. 

    Wow, thanks.  It did the trick.  So now I am confused, do you think I still need to take in my Mac to see if there are some problems with the hard drive, or do you think I'm in the clear.  I was going to get a new hard drive installed, because I thought that was the issue seeing as I couldn't access it during safe mode. 

  • Need to reinstall Lion without Recovery HD

    I need help in reinstalling Lion on my iMac after a Time Machine Backup. I found problems with Macintosh HD aduring Disk Verification nd followed directions to erase it and restor from TM. When I went to do a clean reinstall of Lion by depressing Option or Cmed-R, the Recovery HD is no longer visible. I am positive that I didn't erase the Recovery partition, but now it's not there. I would much rather do a clean install with the installer but the Apps Store tells me I already downloaded it. Any help in recovering the Recovery HD or getting an internet download is much appreciated.

    First, make sure you're not pressing cmd-R too early. Wait until you hear the chime.
    If that still doesn't work, go to the App Store and option-click the Purchased tab. You should then be able to install it again.

  • Reinstall lion no disk available

    When trying to Recover Lion, I get two disks to choose from which are not available:  Recovery HD which is locked, & my external hard drive with Time Machine uses.  What do I do?
    PS:  My iPhone photo was too large to load here.

    Are you trying to reinstall Lion? Boot OS X Recovery by holding ⌘ R and choose "Reinstall Mac OS X" from the Mac OS X Utilities screen:
    Choose the volume on which to install Lion.
    I get the impression this is not what you are asking though, and the volume on which you wish to install Lion is not appearing as an option. Is that the problem?

  • Last Time Machine back-up is 45 days old and only of User Account files (not entire HD) and I must now reinstall Lion without being able to perform a new back-up. Will any new User Account files, since my last back-up, be lost when Lion reinstalls (via i

    My last Time Machine back-up is 45 days old and only of User Account files (not entire HD) and I must now reinstall Lion (via internet) without  performing a new back-up. Will any new User Account files, since my last back-up, be lost when Lion reinstalls ?

    Reinstalling OS X doesn't affect user data, provided nothing goes wrong. But it would be very unwise to assume that nothing will go wrong, especially if you're having (unspecified) system issues. You should try to back up all data before you reinstall or do anything else. There are ways to do that, even if you're unable to boot.
    If your backups include only user files, you won't be able to access them in Setup Assistant.

  • Can't reinstall lion without Apple ID used to purchase???

    Can't reinstall lion. It's asking for an Apple ID that was used to purchase OS X Lion?? I don't understand why I'm being asked that when it came already setup so I didn't have to buy it.
    How do I get pass this question to install??
    Or, how do I buy lion

    I can't remember downloading it when I brought the mac but if I did I would of only used one ID and it's not working. I did buy the newer version at some stage that would change anything would it?
    Iv brought lion from the store waiting on the redemption code now(waste of money) see if that works.
    Just when I thought apple were becoming easy to work with!!!

  • New HDD, trying to install Lion without disk utility or a mac (HELP!!!!!!!)

    Hello everyone,
    Here follows my situation: my previous and precious hard drive died a few months back inside my macbook pro. I bought a brand new one and am trying very hard to find a way to install the os lion on it but I cannot seem to find any plausible way or answers for people stuck only with a Windows pc to do this work.
    It is fair to mention that I no longer have my old installation DVD`s from Apple, although, I have the os dmg file to work with, an external hdd 1tb, dvd-rw´s, the lot.
    Did use a software called Transmac but it would just somehow, not cut it for me, neither trial nor full version. My External WD hard drive is fully formatted into HFS+ by the way.
    Also tried two virtual machines in order to use os lion on my Windows 7 and do the farly simple trick with disk utility itself, but those will not work for unfortunate people like me that are using AMD processors, once again, back to the drawing board.
    Would any of you guys know a way around this?
    Heard we could convert the dmg into iso and burn it using Nero and making it still bootable on Macbooks. Nevertheless, I have tried this option with two different combinations and it will still not boot.
    If anyone could just light up my way I would appreciate it very much.

    Thank you so much for your input here guys!
    I've manage to do it using the same software I was blaming here on the post: Transmac!
    So if you find yourself having the same trouble; persist!!!
    Use macdrive 8 or later on windows 7 (or other windows OS if it works for you) and format the whole external hard drive or usb stick to htf+, unfortunatelly I could not find a way to format only a smaller partition on there.
    Them go to Transmac, you need to have the full version in order for it to work and run as admin, the DMG file will them be expanded, in my case OS Lion was 3.50 roughly and expanded to 3.88.
    Choose "format with image" (something like that, correct me if I am wrong, there should be only two options for it anyway) confirm all the following options and wait for it to do its trick.
    Should anything go wrong with the writting procedure, go back and look into the small details one more time, two, three if needed.
    I can safely say that this is the easiest method I have came across to create a bootable external drive for mac using Windows given the keys I had to work with.
    Best of luck!

  • Reinstall CS5 without disks

    I need to reinstall CS5 and the disks have disappeared (not good). Will the existing serial work to activate the trial?

    you can download CS5 from the following direct download link.
    http://prodesigntools.com/all-adobe-cs5-direct-download-links.html
    Note: Please read the "Very Important Instructions" before download in order to avoid any problem.

  • Cant reinstall lion says disk is used for time machine backups

    is there anyway i can get the install cds

    Do you have a file called backups.backupdb on your disk?
    If so the installer think that it the Time Machine disk.
    Allan

  • How to boot from Lion without disk

    Iv'e done this before but seem to have problems remembering which keys to holddown during restart to get to disk utilities Comand R?

    Cmd-R doesn't always work.  If not, hold the Option key while starting.  That will show the Startup Manager, where you can select from all available startup sources, including the Recovery HD:

  • I got 3.95GB available on my flash drive and need 4GB to reinstall lion osx how can i create space on usb using Disk Utility ??!

    I got 3.95GB available on my flash drive and need 4GB to reinstall lion osx how can i create space on usb using Disk Utility ??!

    What is the capacity of the flash drive?
    You might also be able to reinstall Lion without a flash drive, by booting up the computer holding the Command + R keys, and choosing Reinstall OS X.

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