I really screwed up my new Macbook pro retina with mountain lion

[Prettyboyian]

Ok so after a couple of days with my new macbook its now a paper weight and its all my fault.

i upgraded to mountain lion gm and it was good until some of the programs and plugins i use mainly didnt work anymore so i said i have to go back to lion. me like a idiot deleted the partition that had mountain lion on it thru disk utility. all that is left is the mountain lion recovery partition. now mind you i am not a developer i just did it because i wanted to try it out.

now i have no way of getting lion back. my only other computer is a windows pc and cant create anything with mac. does anyone have any options . and yes i know i am an adiot

 

[charlieegan3]

http://www.macgasm.net/2011/06/13/reinstall-lion-disc/

"To recover a Lion installation, and do a clean install or reinstall, you simply reboot while holding the option key. This brings up a list of partitions available for you to boot from, one of which is the new “Mac OS X Recovery” partition created by Lion when it’s originally installed. You simply mouse or arrow-key over to that partition and press return, which boots you into recovery mode."

do that an choose to redownload lion.

when you're back up and running, make a lion recovery disk

 

[VPrime]

Go into recovery partition

And select install mountain lion or something along those lines.
It will redownload mountain lion for you and install it.
At least then you will have mountain lion.

Then open up the app store and download Lion. Once downloaded follow this guide to make a usb lion installer.
http://mashable.com/2011/07/20/lion-clean-install-guide/

Once booted in your lion USB delete the mountain lion partition.
And tada.

Lion.

 

[Apfpilot]

I don't suppose you can do a rollback with either of those methods?

 

[Prettyboyian]

thanks so much for your quick replies. this is the thing. its a new retina macbook that had lion preinstalled. when i installed mountain lion it deleted the lion recovery and replaced it with mountain lion recovery. when i click the option button on restart only option pops up is osx recover 10.8. and when i try to re install mountain lion i have to log into my itunes and it says only people who bought lion can install. you see my predicament. when i searched online it said the usb lion sticks cant help my situation either. i really feel screwed lol.

 

[NeoMayhem]

thanks so much for your quick replies. this is the thing. its a new retina macbook that had lion preinstalled. when i installed mountain lion it deleted the lion recovery and replaced it with mountain lion recovery. when i click the option button on restart only option pops up is osx recover 10.8. and when i try to re install mountain lion i have to log into my itunes and it says only people who bought lion can install. you see my predicament. when i searched online it said the usb lion sticks cant help my situation either. i really feel screwed lol.

Then force it to use Internet Recovery. Hold Command+Option+R when you turn it on, and it will NetBoot the 10.7.4 recovery software from iCloud. It can take 20-30 minutes to start up if you have a slow connection.

 

[MacBird]

Wouldn't re-downloading Lion in the App Store work in this case?

 

[NeoMayhem]

Wouldn't re-downloading Lion in the App Store work in this case?

Yes, Internet Recovery will let him download and install 10.7 from Apple.

 

[Prettyboyian]

i must say NeoMayhem your the man i didnt even know that feature exists i am 7 min away from having lion back on my system ( i have a fast 150/65 broadband so its moving quick) thanks so much. thanks to everyone who wrote back so quick. i was really depressed thinking that this new 2k plus toy was a brick. thanks again to all who helped. if anything else goes wrong i will update.

 

[Apfpilot]

i know this is a dumb question but i am assuming that an internet restore wipes the drive?

 

[NeoMayhem]

i know this is a dumb question but i am assuming that an internet restore wipes the drive?

No, it will not wipe anything unless you use Disk Utility to reformat the drive.

 

[Apfpilot]

No, it will not wipe anything unless you use Disk Utility to reformat the drive.

IOW just to confirm my iphoto library and all will still be there?

 

[NeoMayhem]

IOW just to confirm my iphoto library and all will still be there?

If you already have 10.7 installed, using Internet Recovery will just install 10.7.4 over the top of your installation. No data will be deleted, but some apps may need to be reinstalled. This is useful if there is something wrong with your current install. If everything is working fine, this isn't going to do anything for you.

 

[cecoleman]

You need to find another machine and create a bootable Lion Flash drive installer. Boot to that wipe out the drive again and install.

 

[NeoMayhem]

You need to find another machine and create a bootable Lion Flash drive installer. Boot to that wipe out the drive again and install.

Internet Recovery = Remotely accessible Lion recovery partition.

 

[Apfpilot]

If you already have 10.7 installed, using Internet Recovery will just install 10.7.4 over the top of your installation. No data will be deleted, but some apps may need to be reinstalled. This is useful if there is something wrong with your current install. If everything is working fine, this isn't going to do anything for you.

i upgraded to 10.8

 

[ekonetics]

My GF has a 2011 MBA with 2GB ram and it runs just fine. Never had a problem....she does all basic things.

You've Trot UH
Y tr

 

[NeoMayhem]

i upgraded to 10.8

Downgrading is probably a bad idea without wiping your drive first, but if you have a backup, there is a chance it will work.

 

[JohnDoe98]

If you already have 10.7 installed, using Internet Recovery will just install 10.7.4 over the top of your installation. No data will be deleted, but some apps may need to be reinstalled. This is useful if there is something wrong with your current install. If everything is working fine, this isn't going to do anything for you.

Just an update. If you have a newer version, like mountain Lion, the internet recovery and all other methods will not allow you to install Lion on top of it. Let me repeat, it will not allow it. The only way to downgrade is to wipe out the partition. I just tested this.

 

[NeoMayhem]

Just an update. If you have a newer version, like mountain Lion, the internet recovery and all other methods will not allow you to install Lion on top of it. Let me repeat, it will not allow it. The only way to downgrade is to wipe out the partition. I just tested this.

Makes sense. Thanks for testing it.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Makes sense. Thanks for testing it.

Had no choice, gotta bring my rmbp in tomorrow to get the screen swaped for another one, and I am not a developper. They probably would have ignored, or played with ML GM, but I figure its best to play it safe. Lets hope I can restore the Data from time machne when I get it back

 

[Pipper99]

I have a new rMBP that came installed with lion, and I want to install mountain lion, but before I do that, I want to make sure that I have a bootable lion USB drive that will work if I want to downgrade. I created a bootable lion USB last year on my iMac, but I wonder if it will work on the rMBP (it may not work without wiping the drive first if I understand this thread correctly). I tried to download lion from the app store on my rMBP so that I could create another USB drive if need be, but the app store says that that version of lion won't work on my rMBP, but I'm still running lion, hence my confusion.

Any help is appreciated.