MacOS – Prepare MacBook for sale when OS X Lion reinstall requires Apple ID

If you consider that the license for Mountain Lion doesn't look to be transferrable to the new owner (as most are probably not clear legally to transfer/sell/give away an App Store license for Mountain Lion) then other options might make more sense than just installing Mountain Lion.

Why not reinstall Lion which is tied directly to the hardware. You need no Apple ID to use Internet Recovery or the Lion recovery disk assistant. You could optionally offer to assist the buyer in upgrading to Mountain Lion and also ensure they understand iLife might not be included with this sale.

You could gift some or all of the apps to their Apple ID, give a physical gift card to cover the expected cost of the software or renegotiate the sale price of the Mac.

We have a discussion of more options on this thread:

• Where can I get a copy of Mountain Lion that I can resell with my Apple hardware?

Apple documents the reinstall and erase options at:

• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Let me preface this: it's possible that this solution doesn't work entirely, and that you'll need a version of the installer that has a full copy of OS X (instead of downloading it from the internet on the fly.)

With that said, here's the issue. Your Apple ID (and therefore purchases) are not associated with the computer you're trying to install to since it's a clean install. Therefore, it doesn't know you've "purchased" Yosemite previously, and since it's no longer on the app store, isn't giving you access. What you need to do is reassociate your Apple ID with that computer. The recommended solution is to log into icloud.com.

Alternatively (or if that doesn't work), you can download it from another computer with a working version of OS X and then execute the installer from there (or create a bootable installer from there.)

Small side question: why not install El Cap?