Botch Your (Mountain) Lion Install? This Might Help...

[Edited 08/01/12- Confirmed this works with Mountain Lion as well!]

Couldn't wait for the $69 USB key and tried to do a clean install of Mac OSX Lion yourself?

Did you wait with bated breath for your new Liony Goodness to reboot, only to be hit with:

"There was a problem installing Mac OS X. Try reinstalling".

AIGH! Even reformatting and repartioning does nothing to stop it, and an infinite loop of pain begins.

Have no fear, "austingaijin" on the Apple Support Forums was kind enough answer his own question!

Correct Answer by austingaijin on Jul 24, 2011 7:13 PM

Here's the crucial bit. I got myself into this boat. After wiping my entire drive,
I wondered "HOW can it possibly be finding any remnants of Lion?" The answer is PRAM.
You need to reset your PRAM.

Follow this article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

After doing this, and restarting, I got a different error and a window displaying
a log containing details of the failed installation.
It doesn't matter. Just select a new startup disk, or do the "hold the Option key during boot"
trick to select your USB install image, and when you restart, you'll get the normal "clean installer" options.

Brett

Thanks a million, Brett.  It worked for me, and I didn't even get the second errors you mentioned. It just fired right up with the install options again!

**Edit**  Just in case the link dies or you don't feel like clicking through, here's the short: you need to reset what's called PRAM, and it's done by restarting your Mac and holding Command-Option-P-R, yes that's a four key combination!  I have had to do this a couple times now, and I let it cycle through a couple of times.  Works like a champ.  Please read the linked KB article for full details!