Repeat this 2-4 times and Windows will open up boot options for you. For me, 2 times was enough to open up the boot options, your mileage may vary. II – Use Windows 10 recovery drive. A Windows recovery drive can troubleshoot many Windows problems in case Windows is not starting.

• Open Dmg From Recovery Boot Camp
• Open Dmg From Recovery Boot Windows 7
• Open Dmg From Recovery Boot Usb
• Open Dmg From Recovery Boot
• Open Dmg From Recovery Boot Windows 10

If you’ve done any deployment work with OS X Lion, InstallESD.dmg is probably not a new concept for you. But just in case you haven’t, or just in case you need a quick refresher, with the release of OS X Lion, Apple completely changed its distribution method for Mac OS X. OS X Lion is only available via an Internet download through the Mac App Store. And although downloaded as an application from the Mac App Store, Install Mac OS X Lion.app, contained within it is the disk image that makes the OS X Lion installer magic happen: InstallESD.dmg.

InstallESD.dmg does more than just handle the initial Lion installation. Initially contained within it is also the disk image that forms the basis of Recovery HD. Because InstallESD.dmg is available via the web, users are able to reinstall Lion through Recovery HD or Lion Internet Recovery in worst-case scenarios without needing physical restore media.

Let’s take a deeper look at InstallESD.dmg, Recovery HD, and Lion Internet Recovery to see what they are, what they mean for you as a Mac Admin, and how they’re all related.

InstallESD.dmg

• Step 1: Go to Applications Utilities Disk Utility and click on it to launch the program. Step 2: On the left, you'll see all the available drives. Insert the USB drive and watch as it appears on that list. Step 3: Now open a Finder window and locate your DMG file. Drag and drop it under the.
• Mount the recovery HD partition using Disk Utility. Then open finder and open Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg to mount the Mac OS X Base System. You will need to show hidden files to see the BaseSystem.dmg you can download a nice convenient Show hidden files app from the downloads section here at Tonymacx86.com.

After downloading Lion from the Mac App Store, Install Mac OS X Lion.app is placed in the /Applications directory. InstallESD.dmg is located within the application’s Contents/SharedSupport directories.

InstallESD.dmg is the new-age Mac OS X retail DVD. As a Mac admin, you can use it to create an external bootable Lion install disk, build a NetInstall or NetRestore set, have it act as the Install DVD for an InstaDMG workflow, and more. A consumer installing Lion would have several pre-installation steps handled by the Install Mac OS X Lion application. After those completed, the installer would prepare InstallESD.dmg to be mounted as the boot volume. The computer would then restart and proceed with and finish the installation.

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Looking inside of InstallESD.dmg, take note of two important files: Install Mac OS X Lion.app and BaseSystem.dmg. Yes, that is another Install Mac OS X Lion.app. That installer runs when booted from InstallESD.dmg. It is what actually installs Lion to the hard drive. BaseSystem.dmg is copied to the Recovery HD partition after it’s created during the Lion installation process. Let’s take a look at Recovery HD.

Recovery HD

As a Mac admin, you can rejoice in the fact that the days of keeping stacks of hardware-specific restore discs to reinstall Mac OS X are gone. Recovery HD is created during the Lion installation process as a very small hidden partition on the primary boot drive.

As mentioned earlier, BaseSystem.dmg can be found on Recovery HD, as shown below. Newer Mac models that support diskless Apple Hardware Test may also have a disk image for it contained within a hidden .diagnostics folder inside of the com.apple.recovery.boot folder.

When booted into Recovery HD, BaseSystem.dmg is mounted as the boot volume with the volume name “Mac OS X Base System”. This is shown in the com.apple.Boot.plist file (“rp” stands for root path).

The contents of BaseSystem.dmg are shown below.

In case you’re wondering, yes that is yet another Install Mac OS X Lion.app. That one runs when choosing to reinstall Lion when booted into Recovery HD. If you’re super clever, you might wish to customize the “Mac OS X Utilities” screen that is displayed when booted into Recovery HD (like the folks at Google have done). I’ll leave that to the true tinkerers, but taking a peek at the following application should get you started:

Because of Recovery HD’s small size, there is not enough room to store a copy of InstallESD.dmg within it. But thanks to its Internet availability, that’s not a problem. After authenticating with Apple and the iTunes store, the installer downloads a fresh copy of InstallESD.dmg disguised as a package. After download, the installer prepares InstallESD.dmg to be mounted as the boot volume, restarts the computer, and then continues with and finishes the installation.

It’s important to note that DHCP must be available for either a Recovery HD reinstallation of Lion, or a Lion Internet Recovery boot to function. Using Wireshark, I observed the process of reinstalling Lion through Recovery HD. There are far too many steps involved to list them all, but below are the ones I found to be most important. Note that I’m sure it’s possible that the random package names shown below can change, but they did remain consistent throughout my tests. It’s also safe to assume that the mirror names will vary by location, as they are Akamai mirrors. None of the following is officially documented by Apple; the implementation and details are subject to change at any time.

• After getting a DHCP address, osrecovery.apple.com is where it all begins. HTTP GET and POST requests are made to give the Mac a valid session cookie for the process. Some information about the Mac is sent back to Apple, including a model identifier and what appears to be a modified or encrypted version of the serial number.

• An HTTP GET request is made to a1166.phobos.apple.com for mzm.hgbvjzlz.pfpkg. This compressed package is what is responsible for performing the pre-installation checks to make sure the Mac meets the minimum system requirements for Lion. One of the more interesting pieces inside this package, and what allows Lion to be installed in a virtual machine, is this:

• An HTTP GET request is made to swscan.apple.com for Apple’s software update catalog.

• Various types of requests are made to iTunes (usually to ax.init.itunes.apple.com) to authenticate the user and ensure that Lion has been previously purchased. If it has not been previously purchased, the user won’t be eligible to reinstall through Recovery HD or Lion Internet Recovery.

• An HTTP GET request is made to a774.phobos.apple.com for MacOS_10_7_IncompatibleAppList.pkg. This package checks the system for any applications that are incompatible with Lion and moves them to an Incompatible Software folder during the installation. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3258 for more information.

• Finally, an HTTP GET request is made to a1166.phobos.apple.com for mzm.ajzbytae.pkg. I was unable to open this package after it downloaded, but can safely assume it is InstallESD.dmg. It is a 4.18 GB “package” and downloads during the installation step where the installer downloads “additional components” just before restarting.

I encourage you to packet capture the process yourself, whether it be through using a VM at home and sniffing your LAN traffic, or by using port mirroring on a switch. It’s interesting to observe just how many steps are involved behind the scenes. But what is even more interesting, is how Apple has created what appears to be globally available NetBoot over the Internet with Lion Internet Recovery.

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Lion Internet Recovery

If for any reason Recovery HD isn’t available or otherwise becomes corrupted, Apple created Lion Internet Recovery as a last resort for users. It’s an EFI firmware function available on most Macs shipped in 2010 or later. It enables users to boot over the Internet to Apple’s servers which will eventually present Recovery HD through a downloaded copy of a BaseSystem.dmg equivalent.

Here’s a riddle: What looks like NetBoot, smells like NetBoot, even tastes a bit like NetBoot, but isn’t actually NetBoot? Lion Internet Recovery. Or rather, it’s not traditional NetBoot with BSDP, TFTP, etc. Almost all Lion Internet Recovery traffic is HTTP traffic.

Just like with Recovery HD, there are many steps involved in booting to Lion Internet Recovery, but below are the most important. None of the following is officially documented by Apple; the implementation and details are subject to change at any time.

• After getting a DHCP address, the process again begins with osrecovery.apple.com. An HTTP GET request with an HTTP User-Agent header of “InternetRecovery” is made to osrecovery.apple.com

• osrecovery.apple.com responds with an HTTP OK giving the Mac a valid session cookie

• An HTTP POST request is made to osrecovery.apple.com/InstallationPayload/RecoveryImage. Some information about the Mac is sent back to Apple, including a model identifier and what appears to be a modified or encrypted version of the serial number, just like with a Recovery HD boot.

• osrecovery.apple.com/InstallationPayload/RecoveryImage replies with an HTTP OK passing additional information back to the Mac, such as where to actually download the Recovery Image from which it will boot.

• An HTTP GET request is made to oscdn.apple.com for RecoveryImage.chunklist. From what I can tell, this file is a checksum of sorts for the recovery image. The actual request for the image, detailed in the next step, uses HTTP range headers. I assume that comparing what has already been downloaded to the contents of the chunklist allows the Mac to only download the parts of the image it requires. This was most likely implemented to handle any network disruptions that might occur during a Lion Internet Recovery boot.

• Finally, an HTTP GET request is made to oscdn.apple.com for the RecoveryImage itself, appropriately named RecoveryImage.dmg. With Lion Internet Recovery, RecoveryImage.dmg is synonymous with BaseSystem.dmg.

Once booted to Lion Internet Recovery, the steps the installer performs to reinstall Lion are identical to those mentioned earlier that occur during a standard Recovery HD initiated reinstallation.

Lion Internet Recovery is an impressive feat of engineering. Again, I would strongly encourage you to packet capture the process to see how it works for yourself. If you’d like to see the full packet capture output from my Lion Internet Recovery boot, it is available here.

Putting It All Together

InstallESD.dmg, contained within the Mac App Store downloadable installer, is at the heart of Recovery HD and Lion Internet Recovery. Recovery HD is there when your users need it, and Lion Internet Recovery is there as a last resort just in case Recovery HD is not. Both rely on BaseSystem.dmg (or RecoveryImage.dmg in the case of Lion Internet Recovery) to provide them with a minimal interface with a few utilities and the ability to reinstall Lion. When choosing to reinstall Lion, either from Recovery HD or Lion Internet Recovery, the installer downloads the latest copy of InstallESD.dmg from the Internet in order to proceed with and finish the reinstallation.

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Hopefully after reading this article, the Lion installation and recovery processes have become clearer. Understanding the relationships between them and InstallESD.dmg is critical for deploying Lion and understanding the recovery options available to your users. Hopefully they won’t need to use Recovery HD nor Lion Internet Recovery nearly as many times as I needed to in order to write this article. Fortunately for me, my ISP doesn’t have a bandwidth cap.

These key combinations apply only to Mac computers with an Intel processor, not Mac computers with Apple silicon.

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To use any of these key combinations, press and hold the keys immediately after pressing the power button to turn on your Mac, or after your Mac begins to restart. Keep holding until the described behavior occurs.

• Command (⌘)-R: Start up from the built-in macOS Recovery system. Or use Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet. macOS Recovery installs different versions of macOS, depending on the key combination you use while starting up. If your Mac is using a firmware password, you're prompted to enter the password.
  
• Option (⌥) or Alt: Start up to Startup Manager, which allows you to choose other available startup disks or volumes. If your Mac is using a firmware password, you're prompted to enter the password.
  
• Option-Command-P-R:Reset NVRAM or PRAM. If your Mac is using a firmware password, it ignores this key combination or starts up from macOS Recovery.
• Shift (⇧): Start up in safe mode. Disabled when using a firmware password.
• D: Start up to the Apple Diagnostics utility. Or use Option-Dto start up to this utility over the Internet. Disabled when using a firmware password.
• N: Start up from a NetBoot server, if your Mac supports network startup volumes. To use the default boot image on the server, hold down Option-N instead. Disabled when using a firmware password.
• Command-S: Start up in single-user mode. Disabled in macOS Mojave or later, or when using a firmware password.
• T: Start up in target disk mode. Disabled when using a firmware password.
• Command-V: Start up in verbose mode. Disabled when using a firmware password.
• Eject (⏏) or F12 or mouse button or trackpad button: Eject removable media, such as an optical disc. Disabled when using a firmware password.

If a key combination doesn't work

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If a key combination doesn't work at startup, one of these solutions might help:

• Press and hold all keys in the combination together, not one at a time.
• Shut down your Mac. Then press the power button to turn on your Mac. Then press and hold the keys as your Mac starts up.
• Wait a few seconds before pressing the keys, to give your Mac more time to recognize the keyboard as it starts up. Some keyboards have a light that flashes briefly at startup, indicating that the keyboard is recognized and ready for use.
• If you're using a wireless keyboard, plug it into your Mac, if possible. Or use your built-in keyboard or a wired keyboard. If you're using a keyboard made for a PC, such as a keyboard with a Windows logo, try a keyboard made for Mac.
• If you're using Boot Camp to start up from Microsoft Windows, set Startup Disk preferences to start up from macOS instead. Then shut down or restart and try again.

Remember that some key combinations are disabled when your Mac is using a firmware password.

Learn more

• Keyboard shortcuts that you can use after your Mac has started up.