mac startup manager won't load

Hi, I'm trying to reinstall my OS x Lion in a new HDD, but when I'm try to enter "mac startup manager" (with alt/option key) only appears the mouse cursor on a grey background, any help is greatly appreciated.

Well tell us what Mac and how have you got Lion - on a DVD, USB thumb drive, digital download or what? If it is on a DVD you are going the wrong way about things. Pop in the DVD, reboot and hold down 'c' after the chime and if the DVD is compatible it will load from the DVD into Installer.

We need more info... What Mac is this? Where is the new drive - you've already replaced the internal drive in the computer or is it attached externally? Do you have a USB disk that you have installed Lion onto attached to the computer?

The Startup Manager only shows you the available bootable drives. If you have already removed the old drive and put in the new one and have not attached a bootable Lion installer via USB that you previously made, then you have no bootable drive on the machine.

In the above case, depending on which Mac you have, you may be able to boot into Internet Recovery.
See here for a quick walkthrough for using both the internal Recovery partition (which would be on your old hard drive) and for using Internet Recovery if you have already removed the old hard drive.

If you only replacing a still functioning old drive for a newer faster drive, the easier way would be to boot to your old drive and then use CCC to clone the old drive to the new.

Thanks for the replies, It's a Macbook pro 2007 (I don't know if that is a model sorry :S ) my cousin gave a USB with the mountain lion in it and told me to do that, my old drive is dead , it is a HDD from an old laptop (HP Pavilion G4).

P.D sorry for the late reply, I had internet problems.

Ha! So let me get this straight, you have a 2007 MacBook into which you have installed a Hewlett Packard HD from an old HP Pavillion G4. You problem is simple I think. Unless the USB Lion installer is a bootable volume, that is, capable of booting the computer then what you want to do is impossible. The inboard HD needs to be in Mac format to recognise the installer and initiate the instal of Lion. In other words you need to have a Mac Operating System already on it. In your case you need to erase the drive and reformat it for a Mac, you cant do that unless you boot from a different source.
Having said all that I'm still not sure it would work anyway.
If you could mount the drive in an external housing, plug it into a working Mac and use Disk Utility to erase it partition, it and reformat it to Mac Extended Journaled you may be able to install Lion at the same time. I would certainly be interested to know.

Thank you, I will try that and let you know, (sorry I have no experience in mac troubleshooting at all)

If the USB flash drive had Mountain Lion installed on it properly to make it bootable, it should show up as a bootable device while booting up the machine and holding down the option key.

However, Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 is not going to install on a '07 MacBook. The latest version of OS X it can run would be Lion, OS X 10.7.
It could be that a 10.8 or later version cannot boot an older Mac, I just have not tried it. Guess I should.

You can get Snow Leopard direct from Apple for $20.
Think you can still get Lion from them also.

(The internal drive and it's format, or even if it is a dead drive or has no internal drive, has no bearing on whether a bootable USB installer of OS X will work. All those options I have done on multiple Macs. You would need to partition / format the drive using Disk Utility prior to installing OS X.)

thank you, I will try it too.

I will make this mac work again or burn it to the ground trying

Suggest checking with cousin if it is a genuine Apple version or one he got elsewhere. OS X.7 Lion is still available from Apple Online for $20.00.

The 2007 MacBook Pro that you have theoretically can run Yosemite, but will be very slow. Mountain Lion is a good choice of OS for your MBP. It will run reasonably in 2GB of RAM, but far better in 4 or 6. If you can't see the Mountain Lion Installer when plugged into a USB port while holding down the ALT key when powering on, then its not been configured as an installer. You need either a working USB installer, or a Snow Leopard install DVD from Apple. If you go down the later path, install Snow Leopard, then run the Mountain Lion installer. My only concern with using the Snow Leopard DVD is many SuperDrives in the older MacBook Pro's have died, you need to be sure yours is good.

Once you have a working installer or a Snow Leopard DVD then use disk utility to partition the hard drive as GUID and as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or else you won't be able to install any Mac OS.

Hi thank you all for the help, at long last it is working, his USB was for updating Lion so we extract the InstallESD in his imac and create a bootable usb again, and the HDD formated with GUID_partition_scheme format, now it is working like a charm.
Thank you everyone