Reload Lion

[Funderburgh]

I have a Mid 2012 Macbook pro. I followed an internet stream with instructions to set it back to factory settings which had me erase the disk and reload the lion OS. When I reload, the OS download goes fine, but after restart there is a gray circle with a slash. I'm stuck. any help is welcome.

 

[organicCPU]

Is it the prohibitory symbol (a circle with a line through it)? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210901

- Press and hold the power button on your Mac for up to 10 seconds, until your Mac turns off.
- Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold both Command (⌘) and R to start up from macOS Recovery.
- While in macOS Recovery, use Disk Utility to repair your startup disk.
- If Disk Utility found no errors or repaired all errors, reinstall macOS.

Could it be a dying HDD – is it older than 5 years? – or maybe a broken disk drive controller cable?
If yes, you could test it by successfully installing to and booting from an external USB drive.

By the way I used to run Mac OS 10.8.x Mountain Lion for many years on a MBP2012 and finally decided to upgrade to 10.9.x Mavericks. May I ask, why you'd want Mac OS X 10.7.4 or higher back on your Mac?

 

[MBAir2010]

This happened to my spare macbook air 2010 in july
i used internet recovery to reinstall snow leopard from a usb thumb drive.
do you have thumb drive of lion Or a time machine copy?
if not use the option key while rebooting the macbook

those 2012 do Have faulty cables but that would have not let you erase your drive.

i know others will help you out here soon, as well