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sweinhart Author

Level 1

4 points

Lion OSX install

I have an old presumably 2008 Macbook Pro. I installed an SSD and burned a copy of Lion OS and MountainLion OS on dvd. USB boot appears to not be an option as I have tried multiple times and bootup never recognizes installer. SSD is blank so Recovery is not an option and I do not have another Mac. However, the OSs I've tried are small enough to fit on external dvd and the boot up recognizes it. The first time, the setup made it all the way through the first main menu where you have the option to use the Disk Utility or Install. I clicked install but it said it couldn't install on the ssd I put in there. I assumed that maybe I needed to format to HFS+ first, so I pulled it and used Partition manager to create and format HFS. I put it back in the Mac, but now, everytime I try to run the installer (both versions), it loads for several minutes but then freezes and never makes it to the initial menu. I've tried everything I can think of using both Windows and Linux to create installers but now I'm stuck. I'm sure there is nothing wrong with the installers as I got it to run the first time.

Posted on Apr 4, 2021 3:04 PM

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sweinhart Author

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Apr 4, 2021 5:47 PM

Hopefully solved. Not sure if its dumb luck or not. After 20+ retries @ 10 min each, configuring ssd as GUID raw partition allowed the installer to get to disk utility at which point I erased and reformatted HFS+. Installer then allowed me to proceed with install. Hopefully completes successfully.

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Lion OSX install

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