imac not starting after erasing disc

[cypress822]

Erased my hard drive so i could sell it. When i turn it on, there is a question mark that blinks off and on. I had lion installed and therefore no disc. How do i reinstall a clean OS on to the hard drive? I do have an external bootable hard drive if that helps. I only have a wired keyboard...not a wired keyboard.

I was hoping when i restarted it, it would allow me to access the lion bootable recovery thing...but no luck

 

[ChristianVirtual]

have a look here. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

 

[cypress822]

How can I do cmd-r with a wireless keyboard?? The keyboard doesn't hook up in time wirelessly.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Use your external disk and rebuild the internal disk; just be carefull when choosing the disk to i stall to. Also look here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

 

[Jonnyfive]

I am pretty sure you will need the original recovery disks that came with it.

I recently replaced the hard drive and ran into the same problem until I found the original recovery disks.

 

[Mal]

How can I do cmd-r with a wireless keyboard?? The keyboard doesn't hook up in time wirelessly.

It will, but you have to hit it with just exactly the right timing. I find if you hit the buttons right after the grey screen pops up, it'll catch, but if I'm a second early or late, it'll miss the window. You could also just borrow a wired keyboard, or even get a $5-10 one from your local computer store (doesn't have to be Mac specific), and use that. The Alt key usually remaps as Command, IIRC (whichever one is not in the same position as the Command key on a Mac keyboard).

jW