Stuck trying to reinstall Yosemite

[BrianDye]

27" Mid-2011 iMac

Getting ready to sell it and upgrade to a newer model so I went to wipe it clean and when I'm trying to reinstall the OS from the recovery partition, it says it needs to contact apple to verify something, so I click OK and then it just stays on the next pop up which says "Loading Installation Information"

I have 3 partitions Mackintosh, Recovery and Bootcamp (Windows 7). I completely erased the Mackintosh partition as all the online guides said todo. Nothing changed.

When it's stuck on there, the mouse shows the color wheel so I can't click ANYTHING.

You might suggest leaving it sit like that overnight- well it decides to put itself to sleep mode after 15 minutes (maybe 10).

What can I do? I have a buyer lined up and this is holding me up and making me look pretty bad.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Weaselboy]

Let's do it through Internet recovery instead.

Hold command-option-r at boot (all three at once). After you select your wifi you will see a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads. Once it is done you will see this screen.

Launch Disk Utility and select the disk itself at the very top of the left column above Macintosh HD. Now go to the erase tab and erase the entire disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Once that is done quit Disk Util then select reinstall OS X. That will download and reinstall the OS version that cam from the factory.

 

[BrianDye]

Awesome, that's the screen I start at (unless I choose to boot to Windows)

So basically just erase the recovery partition? (I would like to keep the Bootcamp partition at the moment, buyer is interested in dual booting)

Then after that's erased, it'll re-download Mavericks or whatever OS it came with from the box?

Can't wait to get off work and try. Will post results.

 

[Weaselboy]

Awesome, that's the screen I start at (unless I choose to boot to Windows)

So basically just erase the recovery partition? (I would like to keep the Bootcamp partition at the moment, buyer is interested in dual booting)

Then after that's erased, it'll re-download Mavericks or whatever OS it came with from the box?

Can't wait to get off work and try. Will post results.

I know the screen looks the same as where you were, but this is different.

The on you were on was the recovery utility from the recovery partition on the drive. While booted from that one like you were you cannot erase the entire drive (including the recovery partition) like I suggested because you are booted to it.

By doing it from Internet recovery like I suggested you boot straight from that utility and are not booted to the recovery partition on the drive, so that way the whole drive can be erased.

So make sure you are careful to do command-option-r and not command-r. You will know you are on the right track when you see the spinning globe (below).

Yes... that will get you back to whatever can out of the box from the factory.

 

[BrianDye]

All is well. Thank you very much! Greatly appreciated.