Can't boot USB drive to install Mountain Lion

I used Lion Diskmaker (Serial Serveur » Lion DiskMaker (US)) to make a bootable USB drive to do a clean install of Mountain Lion. I have a late 2009 Mac Mini with an old windows USB keyboard attached to it.

I have plugged the USB drive into all 5 ports on the Mac Mini, and I hold "alt" (Windows equivalent of "Option" I believe) at startup, but I simply do not get an option to install Mountain Lion. All that ever shows up is a small wifi menu that lets me connect to my home wifi, but then does nothing. Mountain Lion install never starts. The computer does nothing to even indicate that it knows the USB drive is plugged in.

If I do not hold "alt," I just get a screen with a folder icon with a question mark. I cannot do anything from that point.

I actually removed my old hard drive and stuck a new one in before doing any of this. The new hard drive is not formatted yet since I can't boot the USB drive, but I do not think that should be causing any problems. Thankfully, I did not erase the old hard drive yet, so I could open the Mac Mini back up, put the old hard drive in, and re-create the USB boot drive. But if anybody has any suggestions other than that, I would GREATLY appreciate them.

Thanks in advance!

It's always possible that an error occurred when making the bootable Mountain Lion USB drive.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

It's always possible that an error occurred when making the bootable Mountain Lion USB drive.

- Nick

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not as good with computers as I once was, but that's the only thing I can think of. I was dumb not to test it before putting the new (blank) hard drive in. Maybe I'll run down to Best Buy and just get an external enclosure rather than opening the Mac Mini back up and sticking the old hard drive back in. I need an external enclosure anyways =P

If anybody has any suggestions other than re-making the bootable USB drive, please chime in!

phositadc said:

If anybody has any suggestions other than re-making the bootable USB drive, please chime in!

Click to expand...

If you have access to a 2nd Macintosh computer capable of running Mountain Lion…you could try booting the bootable ML USB drive from it. Then this would help determine if the problem is the Mac-Mini…or the USB drive.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

If you have access to a 2nd Macintosh computer capable of running Mountain Lion…you could try booting the bootable ML USB drive from it. Then this would help determine if the problem is the Mac-Mini…or the USB drive.

- Nick

Click to expand...

I just got back from Best Buy w/ an enclosure and my old hard drive booted up just fine. Strangely, Finder does not even SEE the bootable USB drive I made to install Mountain Lion. That's really odd, because I know for certain that it could see it (and indeed, that it had the Mountain Lion install files on it) earlier today.

However, Disk Util does see the drive. But if I go into the "Startup Disk" util, the bootable USB drive is not an option. The only option is my old hard drive that is now in the enclosure.

Very odd. I supposed I could format the 8GB bootable USB drive and start from scratch, but I do find it odd that it's not showing up in Finder right now.

I am wondering if this Lion Diskmaker is the issue. I do my bootable drives in Disk Utility and they have always booted.

Try this and see if it boots. It should unless something is crazy with that USB drive.

How to Make a Bootable OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion USB Install Drive

Take it the thumb drive had been formatted OS X Extended (Journaled) before running Lion DiscMaker?

harryb2448 said:

Take it the thumb drive had been formatted OS X Extended (Journaled) before running Lion DiscMaker?

Click to expand...

Yep, and I could browse around in it and see it in Finder just fine this morning. Looked exactly like the USB boot disk I made for Lion last year.

I'm going to make it manually next time. I'm re-downloading the Mtn Lion install file now (and kicking myself for deleting the old one after I made the bootable USB disk). Last time it only took 20 minutes. Today it's taking like 4+ hours. Apple's servers must be getting slammed today for some reason.

conclusion

Just to put this thread to rest, after hooking my old hard drive back up via external enclosure and manually creating the bootable USB drive, Mountain Lion installed just fine. So apparently the app Lion DiskMaker simply did not work properly for me.

It's so simple to do it manually I'm not quite sure why I ever relied on an app to begin with. Cutting corners isn't always a good thing =P

Glad you got it working and thanks for letting us know what you finally did to get it working.