iMac 2017 27 inch reinstall Lion issue

[Salamanderal]

Hi. My 2011 iMac HD died the other day and I've purchased a Crucial 1TB SSD. I've installed this correctly as per various guides I've found and the iMac starts up which suggests that the cables have all been replaced correctly. Whenever I try to install Mac OSX Lion through the recovery mode it starts with really odd timings such as -2,000,000,000 to minutes - it does this for a few minutes before telling me "can't download the additional components needed to insatall Mac osx". I've erased/reformatted the drive and even with my connection being an ethernet connection or a wifi connection I get the same message. Can anyone help me? I'm really stuck and don't know what I should do next - ? create a USB boot drive? I have a back up from a year ago that I could have booted up from but that drive size was 1.5TB and my new SSD is 1TB and so it won't let me boot up! 🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂

Many thanks in advance

Aleks

 

[herrdude]

Why Lion?

 

[Salamanderal]

Why Lion?

Hi. It doesn’t have to be Lion - it’s just that when I’m in recovery mode that’s what my iMac wants to install. Is there a way of making it download and install something else?

 

[herrdude]

Do internet recovery. Shut down your computer. Turn it back on and hold the Command-Option/Alt-R key combination. You should see a spinning globe. Your mac will download the recovery from the internet.

Cheers!

 

[Salamanderal]

Hi. Thanks for your reply. I was just using Command R and that was trying to force me to install lion which didn’t work. Using your key combination has worked and I’m happily using High Sierra. Thanks for your help!