Reinstall of Mountain Lion deleted everything!!

The other day my 13" Macbook Pro froze. So I held the power button to turn it off and when I turned it back on there was a flashing folder with a question mark. I called apple support and they said to reinstall Mountain Lion, which is what it had when I first bought it Nov 2013 but I had upgraded it to Mavericks. But when it was finished and restarted, my computer was like it was when I first bought it. I went through the whole process of setting it up and creating a user account etc. When I was finally able to look around on my computer I soon realized everything was gone. I've looked in the hard drive in the users folder, but only the account I just made and the folder "shared" is in there. The person on the phone told me it would not erase anything, and yet it did. Is there any way to recover my old user account?

Restore with a Time Machine back up or a boot clone.

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Upgrading to mountain lion, deleting everything I have on Lion

I have so much rubish on my mac at the moment, its going quite slowly and often crashes. I want to upgrade to mountain lion, with everything being deleted, and everything I have done/changed on lion to be undone (basically like new). How do i go about doing this?

Obviously, make sure you first archive anything such as photos and documents that you do not wish to permanently erase.
Boot OS X Recovery and choose Disk Utility from the OS X Utilities screen. Choose the volume containing Lion from the left column - usually it is named "Macintosh HD" - then click Erase. This will take only a moment.
When it finishes, quit Disk Utility, and choose Reinstall Mac OS X from the Utilities screen. You will be asked for the Apple ID you used to purchase Lion, if it was not already installed on your Mac when you bought it. When it completes the Mac's Setup Assistant will appear in which you configure a new account. Don't be surprised when your personal information such as name, address, and phone numbers are automatically populated. These are gathered from Apple using your Apple ID, not from any information on your Mac.
After you log in to your account for the first time, purchase Mountain Lion from the App Store and install it.
That's it!

Reinstalling Ox Mountain Lion

If I reinstall Ox mountain lion will it erase all my data on that partion

Depends on how you reinstall. You can reinstall over the existing system or you can erase and install. The latter will remove everything on the volume. The former only affects the system files being replaced.
Reinstalling Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
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. 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.
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/Mountain Lion, Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
Install or Reinstall Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
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. 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.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
        the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.

I just downloaded Mountain Lion and everything is working great. But i keep getting an error in the app store and i can't download 'Pages"

I just downloaded Mountain Lion and everything is working great. But i keep getting an error in the app store and i can't download 'Pages' or any other apps. I keep getting an "error" and it says credit card processing is temporarily unavailable......help

Try deleting the cache associated with the App Store.
Quit the App Store if it's open.
Open the Finder. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder
Type this exactly as you see it here:
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore/Cache.db
Click Go
Move the Cache.db file to the Trash.
Launch the App Store. See if that made a difference...

HT2474 I did a clean reinstall of mountain lion and for some reason the dock keeps osx lion format

I did a clean reinstall of mountain lion and for some reason the dock keeps osx lion format. Does someone how to uptade only dock application?
Tks

Try doing a Dock restart using the following Terminal command:
killall Dock
Log out/in and test. If that doesn't work.
You need to look in your user Library/Applications Support/Dock for the .db. Hold down the option key while using the Finder “Go To Folder” command. Enter ~/ Library/Applications Support/Dock. Move the .db to your desktop.
If you prefer to make your user library permanently visible, use the Terminal command found below.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/04/show-library-directory-in-mac-os-x-lion/
You might want to bookmark the command. I had to use it again after I installed 10.8.4. I have also been informed that if you drag the user library to Finder it will remain visible.
Then try a dock reset.
Applications/Utilities/Terminal enter the command
killall Dock
Log out/in test. If it works okay, delete the .db from the desktop.
If the Dock is the same, return the .db to where you got them from, overwriting the newer ones.

Tried to reinstall OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.4 and every time i start with the installation i get a requested time out message, had to shut down my MacBook Pro retina. Now when i start up it automatically start internet recovery

tried to reinstall OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.4 and every time i start with the installation i get a requested time out message, had to shut down my MacBook Pro retina. Now when i start up it automatically start internet recovery for two ouers. After the internet recovery the same problem with reinstalling OSX message

Gave up on the GUI. This script derived from http://blog.netnerds.net/2012/07/os-x-how-to-setup-nat-on-lion-and-mountain-lion / seems to work for me:
gwdev=en0 # This is my WiFi connection (has Internet connection)
targetdev=en1 # This is the USB to Ethernet adapter (to give Internet connection)
/sbin/ifconfig $targetdev down
/sbin/ifconfig bridge0 create
/sbin/ifconfig bridge0 up
/sbin/ifconfig bridge0 addm $gwdev
/sbin/ifconfig bridge0 $HOST_ADDR
/sbin/route add default -interface bridge0 -ifscope bridge0 -cloning
/usr/sbin/sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
/sbin/ipfw add 100 divert natd ip from any to any via $gwdev
/usr/sbin/natd -interface $gwdev -use_sockets -same_ports -unregistered_only -dynamic -clamp_mss -enable_natportmap -natportmap_interface $targetdev

Time Machine backup from clean reinstall of mountain lion

I have a few niggles before and after installing mountain lion. Previously using snow leopard.
I want to do a clean reinstall of mountain lion and then use time machine to restore files and folders.
I dont want to do a full restore of time machine as i dont want to restore my niggles.
When I currently go into Time machine the restore button is alwats greyed out.
I am therefore not confident of being able to restore files selectively after clean reinstall.
I must admit I dont fully understand how time machine works after reading various tips and instructions.
Can anyone help or steer me in the right direction please.
Niggles include:-
Cant run Kaspersky or Sophos
Shutdown and restart problems
Small Desktop screen in front of blue screen after leaving idle for a while
Thanks

macfan110 wrote:
When I currently go into Time machine the restore button is alwats greyed out.
That button should be enabled once you navigate to a backup and select something.
But it's not going to work that way once you erase the internal HD. That's because the erased drive is treated as being a different one. Since the "old" drive isn't connected, you can't restore things to the place they were saved from, via the Restore button.
But you should be able to select what you want, right-click it, and choose the Restore <item> to ... option, to get a prompt to select the "new" drive.
Also, if you don't use either Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant to put your stuff back, Time Machine will do a full backup of the "new" drive. You may be able to prevent that, by telling it to "associate" the "new" drive with the old backups, per #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting

I'm trying to reinstall my mountain lion, but it won't install on my regular disk

so, i have a problem.
When i tried to restart my Mac earlier today, I got the gray screen. Now i'm trying to reinstall my mountain lion, but when the install guide tells me to choose a disk to reinstall on, it says that my disk is locked.
please help, urgent!
thanks.

No, you'll lose your data. Do you have a backup? If you don't use Time Machine, here are some cloning programs you can use to make a backup. Two backups are better than one.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Will Mountain Lion delete iWeb?

Considering upgrade to Mountain Lion, do not want to lose the iWeb package that was shipped with my iMac when I bought it mid July 2011. Does anyone know for sure if Mountain Lion deletes iWeb on install? Thank you.

I ran across a "hack" that will let one run Front Row with Lion:
Ralph Perdomo reports that he has ported OS X Front Row to Lion by moving several frameworks and the application itself from his old Snow Leopard install. He wrote up the procedure over on his weblog and has provided an optional installer for anyone who didn't keep a Snow Leopard install around.
Perdomo reports that the re-installed application seems to work well, and he does not seem to have run into conflicts from what I can tell. The frameworks/app in question are:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist
/Applications/Front Row.app (Front Row 2 in folder)
TUAW has not had a chance to test this hack out, but we applaud Perdomo for his creativity in the face of OS upgrades.
I haven't tried it either so can't confirm or deny that it works.

HT1553 Will uploading Mountain lion delete my files?

Will uploading Mountain Lion Delete my files or do I have to back up my files first?

Yes; having your backups on the same drive as the original data won't help when that drive fails.
(73018)

Will upgrading to a new OS like Lion or Mountain Lion delete my previous files on my computer? Will I have to back up my files with a hard drive first?

Will upgrading to a new OS like Lion or Mountain Lion delete my previous files on my computer? Will I have to back up my files with a hard drive first?

Upgrades do not delete your personal files in the Home folder. But any installation can go bad, so it would be wise to backup your current system to an external hard drive.
Upgrade Paths to Snow Leopard, Lion, and/or Mountain Lion
You can upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion or directly from Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $19.99. To access the App Store you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.6 or later installed.
Upgrading to Snow Leopard
You can purchase Snow Leopard through the Apple Store: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.). The price is $19.99 plus tax. You will be sent physical media by mail after placing your order.
After you install Snow Leopard you will have to download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 and give you access to the App Store. Access to the App Store enables you to download Mountain Lion if your computer meets the requirements.
     Snow Leopard General Requirements
       1. Mac computer with an Intel processor
       2. 1GB of memory
       3. 5GB of available disk space
       4. DVD drive for installation
       5. Some features require a compatible Internet service provider;
           fees may apply.
       6. Some features require Apple’s iCloud services; fees and
           terms apply.
Upgrading to Lion
If your computer does not meet the requirements to install Mountain Lion, it may still meet the requirements to install Lion.
You can purchase Lion by contacting Customer Service: Contacting Apple for support and service - this includes international calling numbers. The cost is $19.99 (as it was before) plus tax. It's a download. You will get an email containing a redemption code that you then use at the Mac App Store to download Lion. Save a copy of that installer to your Downloads folder because the installer deletes itself at the end of the installation.
     Lion System Requirements
       1. Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7,
           or Xeon processor
       2. 2GB of memory
       3. OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
       4. 7GB of available space
       5. Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.
Upgrading to Mountain Lion
To upgrade to Mountain Lion you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Mountain Lion is $19.99 plus tax. The file is quite large, over 4 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
     OS X Mountain Lion - System Requirements
       Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.
     For a complete How-To introduction from Apple see Upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion.

Reinstalling OSX Mountain Lion, and it says 500 hours to dowload?!? hellp

I have a MacBook Air and was suggested to delete everything on my HD before potentiallly selling my MacBook. So I followed all the instructions, disk utility, erase hard drive, go back and reinstall Mountain Lion. Anyways everything is going smoothly, but my installation time says up to 500 hours for it yo download !!! Is that crazy? Some malfunction? Or just my internet connection???
Please help

It could be a server-side slowdown of sorts, but likely is because of your connection. Are you in a relatively remote area? Most broadband connections should take a few hours or less to download the installers, which are around 4GB in size.

How do you stop Mountain Lion slowing everything down

I recently upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion - which I so regret doing now.
I have a 24 inch iMac core duo 2.6ghz with 8 GB RAM (mid 2009) and a mid 2010 Mac Mini core duo 2.4ghz with 4GB RAM - so both with maximum RAM installable. Both Hard drives are under half full.
I use the Office 2011 for Mac software as well as the normal iLife suite. I occasionally use parallels to run some Windows software, but I always swith parallels off when not using it. And I occasionally have logmein running when I am going to be away for a few days, but switch it off when I am back. That's it - nothing too weird.
Since upgrading both to Mountain Lion I now experience a hige slowness in using anything. Web pages take ages to load. A Word dociment can take 30 second to open. It takes over 90 seconds to start up iMovie etc.
I saw posts on this formum suggesting that I
a) Repair disk permissions
b) delete the caches in ~/Library and in /Library
c) reboot
I have done all these things. Immediately afterwards my system speeded up to a more acceptable level. But 2 days later and it is back to an unacceptable slow speed
Surely I dont have to keep doing the three things above every day?
is there a way of going back to Snow Leopard? That will be much cheaper than having to buy a new iMac (which are way too expensive and the 21inch screen would be a downsize from what I have now and the bigger screen is even further beyond my budget
Or can anyone help me get Mountain Lion working quickly - all the time?
Many thanks

I have the same early 2009 24" iMac as you do and I just completed reverting back to Snow Leopard from Mountain Lion.
The process was time consuming and took about 3 days to do. I also reverted an early 2011 MacBook Pro which also took 3 days.
Basically the first thing is to completely backup your machine as it now is under Mountain Lion. You may also want to drag and drop all of your user folders and shared folders onto the backup HD. Make a copy of all of your passwords, software licenses and the Mountain Lion keychain onto the backup HD.
iLife '11 and iWork '09 run under Snow Leopard and so those are not an issue. They can just be reinstalled after Snow Leopard is running.
The four parts of the reversion that entail some work are; 1: converting your Mountain Lion Mail boxes to Snow Leopard, 2: converting your Mountain Lion iPhoto Library back to Snow Leopard, 3: converting your Contacts (Address Book) to Snow Leopard and 4: converting Calendar (iCal) to Snow Leopard.
Converting Mountain Lion Mail to Snow Leopard
          1. From your user Library, copy the Mail folder to your backup HD
          2. Double-click the Mail folder and the V2 folder will open
          3. Double-click the V2 folder and your will have a list of your email addresses and a folder called Mailboxes
          4. These folders contain your mail box files (mbox) from which you can recover all of you email and import it back into Snow Leopard. In each email account, you will need to open a number of folder to get to the actual mbox file. The Mailboxes folder contains your On My Mac mailboxes (you may or may not have any of these).
Converting Mountain Lion iPhoto Library to Snow Leopard:
          1: Control-click (Right Click) the Mountain Lion iPhoto Library file
          2: Look for a folder named Masters
          3. The Masters folder contains all of your original, unmodified photos
          4. Copy the Masters folder to your backup HD as you will use it to import your photos into the Snow Leopard iPhoto Library
Converting Mountain Lion Contacts to Snow Leopard
          1. From Mountain Lion, export all of your contacts as vCards and save these on your backup HD
          2. These vCards will be imported into the Snow Leopard Address Book
Converting Mountain Lion Calendar to Snow Leopard
          1. From Mountain Lion, export all of your calendars as iCal files and save these on your backup HD
          2. These iCal files will be imported into the Snow Leopard iCal (Calendar)
Be sure to do all of this preparatory work first and that the backup files are usable.
Using the Snow Leopard installation DVD, restart your machine while pressing the C key to start from the DVD. Use Snow Leopard's Disk Utility to erase the hard drive completely overwriting it with zeros. (Be sure to select the hard drive itself and not just the Macintosh HD partition as you want to completely erase the HD). This will take about an hour and a half.
Next, Install Snow Leopard and then apply ALL software updates. You will need to repeat Software Update until Software Update displays the software is all up to date message. Next install iLife, iWork and all other Apple software and again, apply ALL software updates. The point is to get the standard Apple software running and configured before installing any other applications.
The iTunes library is the same for Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion so just restore your iTunes library from the backup and it will work.
At this point you can restore your Mail, iTunes, iPhoto Library, Contacts and iCal. When all of the Apple components are running correctly, install all other software and restore your user data.
I've been a programmer and in the IT industry for over 30 years and if there is one piece of advice I can give you it is this: take your time doing all of this and be sure that each component is working correctly before moving on to the next. It's tedious and time consuming but it can be done.
For me, the deal breaker with Mountain Lion is the way that saving files is implemented. This is a type of version control and version control has always been problematic just as syncing is. You never know what syncing really means and what is changed until it's too late.
Also, there was a lot of useful functionality removed in Mountain Lion and a number of things added that have no place in an operating system.

Factory reinstall from mountain lion back to lion

i have a 2012 macbook pro which came with lion then i bought mountain lion and updated.
i just did a fresh reinstall of my OS and, to my suprise, lion was installed rather than mountain lion. my question is whether or not i should bother installing mountain lion when the mavericks is coming out within a couple weeks. opinions?
i dont need mountain lion for any particular reason. will i save space on my disk by just waiting for mavericks?

also, was this a bad idea in the first place?
my computer was running fine but i couldnt get postgresql to work/download. i use a software application that requires this. so, after troubleshooting with the apps software team to no avail, i decided to do a fresh reinstall. when tried, it wouldnt work. i check out utilities, ran disk repair, and it couldnt be repaired for some reason. i reformatted it and everything seems good now.

Clean Reinstall of Mountain Lion

I have restarted my iMac and held down cmd R. I used disk utility to erase the HD. I tried to insatall OS X Mountain Lion and when I enter my Apple ID I get the message that "This Apple ID has not purchased Lion". This is interesting as when I check my purchase history at the App store it says I purchased Mountain Lion in July 2011. I am now stuck with an iMac that does nothing. Any suggestions?

If you had installed Mountain Lion then you may have two Recovery HDs - a Lion and a Mountain Lion one. Try booting with only the OPTION key depressed. If you see a Recovery HD labeled with 10.8.x, then use that to restore OS X. Your Lion system was installed by another user from whom you most likely purchased the computer.
Otherwise, you will need to do this:
Install Lion/Mountain Lion on a New HDD/SDD
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your external 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. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Reinstall of Mountain Lion deleted everything!!

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