27inch 2011 imac

First time on the site and maybe you have all seen this before and have it answered but I need some help. Let me start by saying I don't have the money to purchase new so my only option is repair.

I received an Imac from a friend and apparently they took it somewhere to get it looked at and they were told the logic board needed replaced. Now if the logic board needed replaced I would think it wouldn't boot up at all however I can get it to recovery mode and to the disk utility and all that.

When I go to reinstall os x lion it tells me not all the components could be downloaded, then I'm right back where I started.

I can't unmount any of my HD's and I tried running the hardware test but it stops after 25 sec.

I took the ram out to test logic board and I get the beep and five sec interval and then beep.

I have run out of ideas on this any help would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the forum.

How are you trying to reinstall Lion? Was it the original OS for the machine? I cannot remember all the way back to 2011, but did it come with install disks? I think it probably came with Snow Leopard, which required disks to install. You can buy SL from Apple for about $20 in the US (you didn't give your location). If the previous owner prepped the machine for transfer, he deregistered it with Apple, which means that the history of operating systems was deregistered as well. In that case, you will need to re-register it after you get it to boot. If he left it as it was, still registered, then the OS is tied to your friend's Apple ID and can only have the OS reinstalled by that Apple ID. So, it would seem that the best path forward is to invest in the $20, get the disks from Apple and see if you can get it to take a fresh install and get you going. Then you can decide what to do about upgrading the OS.

Others may chime in here with other suggestions.

If the iMac was sold in 2011 it would have come with Snow Leopard OS X.6 so ask if they have the DVD. The same machine sold up until December 2012, and from about May that year came with OS X.7 Lion and no discs. How are you downloading Lion and where from? If you can get into Receovery as you say, go to utilities and erase and format the hard drive, and continue to OS X.7 Lion download from there. You may need an Apple ID to access the App Store to do this.

I suspect the hard drive on that machine is failing which is why the drive will not dismount or you can get into recovery. If that's the case, the entire front panel and display will need to be removed to gain access to the hard drive. And the hard drive in that machine is proprietary and must be replaced with the exact same drive or the fans will run full speed. The Seagate drives in the 2011 iMacs were problematic and at one time Apple was replacing the 1 TB drives for free under a recall. But the recall has ended.

So I installed a new hd but only got the white screen, then it gives me a folder flashing with question mark. Went ahead and cloned my sisters macbook pro and was able to boot off an external drive but when I went to reinstall os it doesn't install via disk utility.

Also the disk is formatted correctly

chscag said:

I suspect the hard drive on that machine is failing which is why the drive will not dismount or you can get into recovery. If that's the case, the entire front panel and display will need to be removed to gain access to the hard drive. And the hard drive in that machine is proprietary and must be replaced with the exact same drive or the fans will run full speed. The Seagate drives in the 2011 iMacs were problematic and at one time Apple was replacing the 1 TB drives for free under a recall. But the recall has ended.

Click to expand...

A similar thing just happened to mine. I thought it might be the logic board but it was the WD HDD. Replaced with a new none-proprietary one but...the engineer installed the Macs Fan Control app, set the ODD and CPU to auto and the HDD to a constant of 1100.

Installed new HDD thought I was in the clear but it still wouldn't install OS. Before anyone asks yes I formatted the drive correctly. I then connected my sisters mac book pro to the imac via thunder cable and restored the HDD with her HDD. After an hour or two of running and me deleting some of the unnecessary files my imac just shut down. Now it only gets to the white screen with the apple logo and the loading bar then shuts off. Tried going into recovery mode to erase and repair HDD, got in and the thing won't let me unmount or repair. Tried doing it with the mac book pro same thing won't let me unmount or repair. So now we are right back where I started, really need to figure out what is happening before I decide to just throw more money at it.