No Bootable Device

[Stelised]

I have a mac Book Pro 17" A1297. Running Lion Now The Drive is formatted clean no recovery (Comm+R) Wont Boot off my Retail Os X Lion disk. But Will boot off a Ubuntu Disk and Windows Disks, I Don't have a fire-wire drive nor a pen drive. I have Tried to burn a copy of the install disk to see if it was too scratched or W/E is there something i am doing wrong and any help on this subject would be helpful. I will Include a list of start-up commands that i have tried

Command+R = Nothing there is no recovery partition
C = Cant tell it it works or not as it will boot from a linux disk or windows disk w/o needing this held down

Command+V = Nothing

Option = No Startup manager sits at white screen then goes black and says no bootable device - Insert Boot Disk -and Press any key

Can I Pull the HDD from the mac and manual put the files from the retail disk on the HDD using a live distro of Ubuntu then partition the drives for apple osx and Reboot to install?

 

[Mal]

There's no such thing as a retail OS X Lion disk. Is it one you made yourself, or are you referring to the flash drive? Either way, if the version of OS X on it is lower than the version of OS X your computer shipped with, it won't work. Let's say your Mac shipped with 10.7.2 (the latest OS yours could have shipped with), and the flash drive or burned disk contains 10.7.0 (a likely scenario if it was purchased when Lion was released). It wouldn't contain drivers for some of the hardware in that machine, and thus could not boot it. You need to make a newer version of the install disk, but of course you need a working Mac to do that. If you'd installed the updates previously, however, Internet Recovery should work on that machine, assuming it's one that actually did ship with Lion as you said. If you didn't install the Firmware updates, however, it may not support that. Best bet is to find a friend with a working Mac who can help you make a new Lion install disk.

jW

 

[Weaselboy]

I have a mac Book Pro 17" A1297.

That is a 2009 machine and did not come with Lion and is not capable of Internet Recovery from EFI (firmware). You are going to need to get to a friend's Mac to make yourself a good Lion install DVD or USB key installer.

 

[Mal]

That is a 2009 machine and did not come with Lion and is not capable of Internet Recovery from EFI (firmware). You are going to need to get to a friend's Mac to make yourself a good Lion install DVD or USB key installer.

According to EveryMac, that number could apply to anything from the 2009 models up to the Late 2011. That's why I generally try to discourage people using those numbers, they're not actually the model identifiers that should be referenced. In this case, though, short of providing the serial number, the OP couldn't access any more information because it comes from the About This Mac dialog.

jW

 

[Weaselboy]

...that number could apply to anything from the 2009 models up to the Late 2011.

Ahh... did not realize they duplicated those. Not really much of a model number then is it.

 

[Mal]

Ahh... did not realize they duplicated those. Not really much of a model number then is it.

Yeah, I think it must be more of a design number, because it seems to change when they change the case design, and it's different for each size screen, but doesn't change from model year to year. The "Model ID" (MacBook 8,3, etc) is a much better indicator of the actual model, and Apple usually goes by the informal model designations like MacBook Pro 15" Early 2011.

jW