mountain lion reinstall issue

[cft678]

I have an 2011 imac. I erased the hard drive and started to reinstall the mountain lion, i entered my apple id because it asked for it, but it wouldnt start to install and then came the text "mountain lion couldnt be installed, because it isnt bought with this apple id". So i thought that os x is tied to the apple id which it is purchased with, so i tried to install snow leopard to it. I put the snow leopard install dvd (retail version) in and pressed the "option" button when the computer started, so i got the boot options and chose the dvd. It wont start installing it just makes 3 "BEEB" sounds in a row and the screen is blank.

I'm really mad that this relatively expensive computer is completely useless now. There has to be some way to make this computer work again. i cant even get to the internet with it to purchase new mountain lion and not even sure would that even work.

Any suggestions to make it work again?

 

[Bruno09]

If your iMac is a 2011 model, it came with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 or later, therefore you can NOT install SL from the retail DVD which is 10.6.3.

You need to use the original grey Install DVD that came with the Mac.

Alternatively you can buy ML from the Apple Store, or "buy" Mavericks from the App Store.

 

[cft678]

It originally came with mountaion lion, i just happened to have the snow leopard dvd and tested it, so i could get at least some operating system.

If i can somehow get to the internet with the imac and "buy"/download Mavericks, it should work even with out the correct/original ID?

The hard drive is completely erased, when i start the imac, it only has 4 options 1.restore from time machine back up (i dont have TM) 2.Reinstall OS X 3.Get help online 4. Disc utility

 

[jbarley]

Have you tried forcing an Internet Recovery?

Restart your Mac while holding Command+Option+R until you see a spinning globe appear, then go from there.

 

[chrfr]

The hard drive is completely erased, when i start the imac, it only has 4 options 1.restore from time machine back up (i dont have TM) 2.Reinstall OS X 3.Get help online 4. Disc utility

Choose the "reinstall" option. That will download the operating system from the internet.
You may need to go into Disk Utility and format the disk first if it's new.

 

[cft678]

Choose the "reinstall" option. That will download the operating system from the internet.
You may need to go into Disk Utility and format the disk first if it's new.

of course, but the issue here is that the mountain lion was not originally bought with my apple ID and the whole damn mountain lion is "tied" to the apple ID it was originally bought with.

 

[chrfr]

of course, but the issue here is that the mountain lion was not originally bought with my apple ID and the whole damn mountain lion is "tied" to the apple ID it was originally bought with.

Sorry, I missed that in your post. Try booting from internet recovery (command option R as posted above). If it's a computer that shipped with 10.6.6, it may not support it, but it's worth a try. This is different than booting with the recovery partition on the disk, but since this iMac didn't ship with Mountain Lion originally, Internet recovery should download an earlier version of the OS which won't require an Apple ID.

 

[cft678]

If your iMac is a 2011 model, it came with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 or later, therefore you can NOT install SL from the retail DVD which is 10.6.3.

You need to use the original grey Install DVD that came with the Mac.

Alternatively you can buy ML from the Apple Store, or "buy" Mavericks from the App Store.

Obiviously i cant buy 10.6.3 or later OS X on DVD...? Or somehow get mountain lion on DVD (which is not ID tied of course)

And also if buy whole new hard drive, i still cant install the old 10.6.3? Pretty sure about it, but just asking to be completely sure...

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but since this iMac didn't ship with Mountain Lion originally

it did come with mountain lion originally, i just happened to have old snow leopard DVD from previous computer.

but that was a good idea to try to boot from internet recovery

 

[Weaselboy]

Obiviously i cant buy 10.6.3 or later OS X on DVD...? Or somehow get mountain lion on DVD (which is not ID tied of course)

And also if buy whole new hard drive, i still cant install the old 10.6.3? Pretty sure about it, but just asking to be completely sure...

You machine will not run on the retail 10.6.3 DVD period.

If you want to reinstall Snow Leopard you can call 1800MYAPPLE and they will sell you the OEM grey installer disks that came with the machine and you can use those to reinstall.

As mentioned by others earlier, your machine is on this list, so if you have applied firmware updates you can do Internet recovery using command-option-r and that will let you install Lion. If your machine came with Snow Leopard then you updated to Lion, you will be asked for the AppleID you used to purchase Lion.

Edit: I see your add on above. I think you may be confused. Mountain Lion did not come out until mid-2012, so I don't think your iMac came with ML. If it did a command-option-r would get you straight to ML. What do you see when you do Internet recovery.

 

[macuser453787]

It originally came with mountaion lion, i just happened to have the snow leopard dvd and tested it

Just FYI, check out post #2 on this thread for a very probable explanation of why your 2011 model did not boot from a bootable DVD (aside from the version of SL installer disk you're using as noted by the other poster).

I hope you get it fixed!