Clean install of Lion without saving our settings

There are 2 users and I am planning a clean install of Lion because of other issues.
If I copy email, documents,Itune and Iphoto libraries and applications installed, I should have no issues importing all of the saved items without major issues - correct? My assumption is email for both users will be in the Email copy? I have a SuperDuper clone on an external drive. Just want to make sure before I start.
Thank you!

From what I've read, I will say yes. With the thumb drive in, you should be able to boot from it in recovery mode using command-r. You will probably need to erase your drive in recovery mode and then install Lion. You will need a backup of your user folder to migrate your information back.
Note that installing this way will not put the recovery partition on the hard drive, so you will need the thumb drive in the future to boot into recovery mode.
Also note that you need to make sure your computer is compatible with Lion. Check the Apple Site for computer requirements for Lion.

Similar Messages

New boot drive and a clean install of Lion

I have a Mac Pro with multiple internal hard drives. My Lightroom catalogs are on one disk, my actual photos are on another, and my OS is on a 3rd. I recently decided to upgrade my 7200rpm SATA boot drive to SSD. In the process, I also did a clean install of Lion. None of my data was moved, as it was all on separate internal drives.
I have the new OS installed, and I reinstalled Lightroom 3. I should also mention that whenever I import files from CF cards (using a card reader), I import as DNG. I only shoot RAW.
When I launch Lightroom and look at my previous work, or the shoot that I was working on prior to the upgrade, I notice that (at least) the following is missing: flags, ratings, edits. I think I can live without the flags and ratings (though I would love to get them back), but I thought the whole idea of DNG was to store the sidecar "edits" file with the RAW file in one package. Shouldn't I be able to see my crops, treatments, localized brush edits, etc.?
What am I doing wrong and what can I do to remedy the situation?
Thanks very much in advance.

You need the original catalog file. You should have copied this over to your new instillation and then just opened it, rather than reimporting files.
If, as you seem to be saying, your catalog is not on the OS disk then all you need to do is open this after reinstalling LR, rather than creating a new catalog as you seem to have done. Just find the original catalog and open it from LR, or double click on it from Finder when LR is closed.
If you have not kept a copy of the catalog file, then you could use your most recent back up of the catalog, hopefully you made regular backups using LR's backup system and did this to a separate drive.
However if you have re imported the files then any edits that have been actually saved to the files will be read by LR. You do have to actually write the edits to the files, either by choosing to do this automatically in LR's preferences or by clicking on the update metadata in LR, otherwise these edits are not written to the files (or as xmp files when using propitiatory file types. If you didn't write the changes to file then LR has nothing to read.

Would a clean install of Lion Help

Sorry if this has been covered before. This is my situation: Snow Leopard was stable and a really great experience from moving away from windows, but in Oct I upgraded to Lion. Since then all I've had is problem after problem. Safari is a nightmares, hanging a lot, my printer only work if I plug it in via USB, the spinny ball is a daily friend, and my mac hangs far too often. Though my swearing has improved greatly. I would go as far as to say Windows XP is far less stressful then Lion. I would really like this to end as my opinion of Apple is not good. I know I'm not along on this issue so would a clean install of Lion help or would an clean install of Snow Leapard be better? Rant over...

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a test, not a solution. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
Step 1
The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account.
Enable guest logins and log in as Guest. For instructions, launch the System Preferences application, select Help from the menu bar, and enter “Set up a guest account” (without the quotes) in the search box.
While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your personal files or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.
Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem(s)?
After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.
Note: If you’ve activated FileVault in Mac OS X 10.7 or later, then you can’t enable the Guest account. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.
Step 2
The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem(s)?
After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.) Post the results of steps 1 and 2.

How to Create a Bootable Flash Drive to do a clean install of Lion. I have tried to use the InstallESD.dmg but it still will not do a clean install so that I do not have to do a reinstall from the Recovery (That just re downloads and takes over 6 hours)?

How to Create a Bootable Flash Drive to do a clean install of Lion. I have tried to use the InstallESD.dmg but it still will not do a clean install so that I do not have to do a reinstall from the Recovery (That just re downloads and takes over 6 hours)?
The system I'm have is a Mac-mini that had SL on it and no SuperDrive. I have also call Apple Support and they have really have not been to much help over 1st did my up grade to Lion and Installed the Lion Server.... it lost my SSL that I paid for and kill almost on of my server setting, plus kill all my web servers (using apache vhosts), and not to say the LDAP will even let remote users login to your laptops.
PS: There is no way that I'm going to buy a Install USB from Apple... They have over billed me over $300.00 because the Apps Store still has bugs (Glad I did not write that App/Service)
If there is anyone that can give in the information to create a USB install stick, I would be very thinkful.

Here you are bro, courtesy of "softpedia.com"....brilliant site!!!
If you ever had problems with your Mac OS X installation you know that the first thing you should do is to check the startup volume using Disk Utility.
After the check has ended and, if the errors exceed a certain level of seriousness, the Disk Utility application will require you to restart your Mac and use its Mac OS X Install disc counterpart.
Other users may have to reinstall OS X altogether, but will find, or already know, that their SuperDrive (a CD/DVD reader and write combo drive) is not functioning properly and it will not be able to read the Install disc.
Although this might happen to Mac OS X Leopard users due to faultyhardware, the vast majority of problematic SuperDrives will be encountered inside Snow Leopard running Macs.
This is due to the updated SuperDrive firmware included in either the Install disc or the software updates one has to install to reach the latest version of OS X, namely 10.6.6.
This can be fixed by flashing the SuperDrive’s stock firmware using free command line tools that one can find for free online (I will write about this process also, but at a later time because this article only focuses on allowing you to create your own alternative USB boot disc).
If you are reading this last bit of information with skepticism, than you should know that it happened to me too. Despite all my tries to make it work properly, the SuperDrive kept on munching any inserted DVDs and just popped them out in about twenty seconds.
The workaround to this issue was to create my own Leopard bootable USB memory stick. I am not suggesting a Snow Leopard bootable stick mainly because there are lots of users that have decided to buy the cheaper, Upgrade version, which I have not tested and, therefore, I’m not sure if it will work properly once written to a USB disk.
And now, here are the exact steps you should follow in order to obtain a fully bootable Leopard (or Lion) Install disc.
Step 1 (If you already have the Leopard install disc DMG file you can skip to Step 2)
Launch Disk Utility (you can find it inside /Applications/Utilities). Here select the Leopard Install disc in the list of drives on the left and click on the New Image menu entry at the top of the window. A save message will appear where you will have to select the Desktop as a destination.
Step 2
After Disk Utility has finished creating the Leopard DMG, insert your USB stick and erase all data and reformat the disk. To do this select the USB in the list of drives on the left and, after clicking on the Erase tab on the right side of the window, choose the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format and click the Erase button beneath.
Step 3
After the USB has been reformatted, download the SuperDuper app from HERE and launch it. Once SuperDuper starts, you will only have to select the DMG in the Copy drop-down menu, your USB memory stick on the right and hit the “Copy Now” button.
One can also use Disk Utility for this task but creating a bootable USB stick failed 2 out 4 times when copying the DMG to the stick (with the exact same settings each time). Creating the bootable stick using SuperDuper proved to be the perfect way to do it because it worked each of the 4 times I tested it.
The steps above can also be used to create a bootable Mac OS X Lion USB by using the InstallESD.dmg image you can find inside the Lion installer (named “Install Mac OS X Lion.app”) downloaded from the Mac App Store in the /Applications folder.
To locate the InstallESD.dmg right click the Lion installer, select the “Show Package Contents” entry, go inside the “Contents” folder, and from there into the “SharedSupport” folder. Inside this folder you can find the InstallESD.dmg you can use to create your own bootable Mac OS X Lion USB stick. To do so, go to the third step described above and use the InstallESD.dmg as the DMG to be copied to your USB disc.
That’s it! Once the process ends you will have a fully bootable Leopard (or Lion) USB disk that you can use as an alternative to the Apple’s DVD Install disc that comes bundled with all Macs.
To use your newly created bootable disk you will have to restart the Mac, press and hold the OPTION key until the StartupManager appears. Here, select the Mac OS X Install disk using your keyboard arrows and press return to start from the selected drive.

Reinstall Apple software after clean install of Lion on 2009 IMac

Completed a clean install of Lion on 2009 IMac, which initially reacted poorly to an upgrade (my first attempt to move to Lion). How do I reinstall iPhoto, Garageband, Aperture, Final Cut Express, iMovie, Logic Express? These were all preinstalled with original purchase. How would I find the serial numbers that will inevitably be asked for? The App store wants to charge for these items, and other non-Apple software I've purchased for the App store won't download again. Multiple issues! Any suggestions?

You'll need to use the DVD's that should have accompanied your system when you bought it.
Prior to the App Store when you purchased a system from Apple that included installed software such as iLile or Final Cut the DVD's were always included in the box. The serial numbers will be on the DVD boxes or DVD's themselves.
regards
Concerning the App Store purchases if you long into the APp Store using the same Apple ID you used when you bought the software you should be able to download again without charge. At least this is how it works for Apple software don;t know if 3rd party stuff has different rules

Clean install of Lion on MacBook Pro

Hello - I have been using Lion for a while now, with no problems, but am now having permission problems with such actions as emptying trash, downloads, upgrading certain apps, using Dropbox, etc. I think it has something to do with my user settings, but have tried in as many ways to repair this, to no avail. I am backing up my files on a Time Capsule - and the only things I am really wanting to keep are my iTunes files and my iPhoto files. (I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.)
My questions:
1. Once everything is backed up to TC, what is the best way for me to do a clean install of Lion?
2. How do I then go about reinstalling my apps/files (iTunes, iPhoto, movie files, documents, etc)?
Also, is there anything one needs to be aware of when installing Lion in regards to user name, administrator, etc?
Thanks in advance.

Game of Thrones wrote:
Hello to everyone.
I am new to the Mac community. Recently i purchased a MBP (and am really happy with it). However i need to make a clean instal of the Lion that it came with. Can somebody help me ?
P.S. I am sorry if this question was asked before. I could not find it.
Thanks in advance !
Reboot holding Command + R and follow the prompts. Backup your system first.
Good Lock
Pete

Clean install of Lion with a bootcamp partition

On my MacBook Pro Snow Leopard and via Bootcamp is Windows XP installed.
I wanna do a clean install of Lion, but can this been done without disturbing the XP-Installation?

Yes, it should. I was successful with my Win7 Boot Camp partition. But as always, be sure to backup the Windows partition, with a cloning utility if posssible, just in case...

Clean install of Lion and proper Time Capsule procedure. Advice Please.

Good day all,
I have performed a clean install of Lion. I have previously been using a 1TB Time Capsule to backup my Snow Leopard disk. I did not use the Time Capsule to restore my files to Lion, instead I restored individual files from a backup of my Home folder on a seperate exteral hard drive. I have not yet enabled Time Machine in Lion. Is it advisable to erase the Snow Leopard backups using Airport Utility before enabling Time Machine? If I enable Time Machine without erasing the Time Capsule will it ask me if I want to erase or will it simply begin another set of back up data leaving the previous backups intact?
Thank you!

If you had used Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant to put your data back, Time Machine would do an "incremental" backup, of what's new or changed.
Since you didn't, TM doesn't realize the erased disk has most of the same stuff as before, and will treat your Mac's internal HD as a different one, and will do a new, full backup of it. You cannot prevent that. (If your backups were on an external HD, you could make it "associate" the backups with the "new" disk, but that doesn't work on network backups for some reason.)
So your best bet is probably to erase the TC's internal HD.
If it's quite large, however, you may not have to. If it's at least 2.2 times the size of what's on your internal HD, there will be room for a new backup.

Will doing a clean install of Lion fix hangs?

Since upgrading to Lion I have had my share of crashes with mail especially and since doing the update to 10.7.1 my Macbook Pro is locking up with white screens, won't wake from sleep and crashing all over the place. Oh yea and Safari is hanging too.
I have used Lion Cache Cleaner to run maintenence scripts and it helped slightly so I was wondering if a clean install will help or if I just need to downgrade to Snow Leopard until they get the bugs worked out.
****, I feel like I am back on a PC again

Just because someone says they had success does not mean you will, and just because someone says that a clean install of Lion didn't do the trick for them doesn't mean it won't for you. You don't know what they did or didn't do and how their situation was different from yours.
There are no guarantees without knowing what's going on. I can tell you that what you're experiencing is not normal. I cannot, based on what you shared, tell you what's causing your problems. What's important for you to understand is that, for a variety of technical reasons, a system that was not having any problems before can fail dramatically following a major upgrade, but due to no fault of the upgrade's. You could have a hardware issue that Snow Leopard just never tripped on. You could have some corrupt system files that will be fixed by a reinstall. You could have bad third-party software that is horribly incompatible with Lion. There are just too many variables.
Ultimately it's certainly your right to choose to downgrade to Snow Leopard. However, sooner or later you're going to have to either deal with Lion or switch to Windows or Linux. I'd strongly advise trying to get your system to work with Lion, since it's working quite well for many people.

Total clean install of Lion

I sold my old MacBook Pro which I upgraded to Lion recently. I want to wipe everything for the new owner and start with an used version of Lion. Today I did what I thought was a clean install of Lion. I held command+R on the restart, and selected "clean install of Lion"...it redownloaded Lion and all that, after a few hours, it installed, rebooted but everything was still in my name with my desktop.
Is it possible to just start totally fresh without a user as you would get from the factory?
Thanks.

baltwo wrote:
You're not paying attention. The OP DL'd Lion to install it on his old machine. That implies he needed to log into the MAS and provide an AppleID. If you DL'd Lion from the MAS, you had to do the same thing.
Sure, but that doesn't alter the installer file in anyway, it's not like the ID becomes stitched into the software. When I clean installed Lion, I had to login to the Mac App Store, iTunes, etc. again. The new user would be in the same situation as anyone who buys a new MacBook Pro today (or any system other than the new mac mini and macbook air). These systems don't feature "Lion Internet Recovery" and don't give the user a licence to Lion from the App Store (as far as I've heard).

Clean install of Lion in Recovery Mode - Easy?

I've been looking at different ways of getting a clean install of Lion on a machine that:
Has Lion already installed
Can boot into Recovery Mode
Is there a problem with the following, simple procedure:
Boot into Recovery Mode with the usual cmd+R; connect to WiFi.
Open Disk Utilities and erase/reformat the 'main' Partition on the Hard Disk
Once a new, fresh partition has been created, get back into the main Lion Recovery dashboard
Choose the Install Lion option pointed at the fresh partition.
Can someone confirm, please, that this should work, and that I won't be left with an empty partition on which Lion will refuse to re-install....?!
thanks
mark
PS If this makes a difference, I'm likely to need to do this on an iMac that was purchased with Snow Leopard, then updated to Lion in the usual App Store way; it's been reinstalled via Lion Recovery but not a clean install; the problems it has still persisted and I think it's time for a clean slate

It isn't, and its potentially problem-causing unless you know you've had one good, trouble-free install from that .dmg.
I went that route the first time I downloaded Lion, had troubles with my first install and continued having troubles with every install afterward made from my USB installer. The light finally went on in my head that it was the original .dmg that I'd downloaded and saved to USB that was corrupt.
Another point is that even if you have no problems with that .dmg, you'll be stuck with that version of Lion everytime and have to do laborious software updates. If you download directly you get whatever version is currently in the App store (10.7.4 right now).
The only advantages I can see of doing it Cattus' way is if you either have a cap on your available downloads per month or a slow connection. Otherwise, not worth it, IMHO.

Clean reinstall of Lion without disturbing Parallels??

For various reasons I would like to do a clean reinstall of Lion on my MBP. I do have the Apple Lion thumb drive for installation. I also have Parallels/Windows installed on this computer.
My question: is there any way I can do a clean reinstall of Lion without disturbing the Windows/Parallel part? I don't think so but am hoping someone out there can prove me wrong!
Many thanks for any input.

I thank you both for your responses.
I want to make sure I understand about the .pvm files. Are you saying that I would have to reinstall Parallels but then restoring the .pvm files would "install" Windows and any Windows applications I had installed? That they would not have to be reinstalled individually? The registration/activation of one of the Windows programs is such a hassle - I don't want to deal with it.
As to why I want to reinstall - that's a good question. It's probably more a carryover from my Windows days than any real necessity. I've installed and deleted programs quite a bit and just wanted to tidy things up. Probably just a symptom of my OC personality!
I am starting to rethink things though. I don't mind the work, but I guess when you get right down to it there is no real point.
Again, thanks for your input.

How to do a Clean Install of Lion

Hope this will help someone.
I recently did a clean install of Lion on my Mac Pro (after doing an earlier Lion upgrade) and the performance difference is absolutely amazing. Before my Mac Pro was laggy and there all kinds of little glitchy bugs (I'm sorry I can't explain it better than that) with a lot of my applications. Since I use that machine to also administer the network, that just wasn't acceptable.
I'm convinced, after this experience, that a clean install of Lion is the best thing for me, so, this morning I decided to do the same thing to my MacBook Air (IMHO the best laptop ever invented).
Here's what I have done.
1. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner to the laptop.
2. Clone the laptop hard drive to an external hard drive. I have a Seagate 500GB USB drive which had a 500GB partition with Lion already installed on it. There are instructions all over the web on how to install Lion to an external drive. I used disk utility to add a partition, effectively splitting the partition in two with Lion still installed on one of the partitions and the other partition "clean".
3. Donate to Mike Bombich's site. Carbon Copy Cloner is a remarkable program - I've paid a heck of a lot of money over the years for similar programs and they didn't work 1/2 as good.
4. Go into System Preferences, select the "Startup Disk" applet and select your Lion install on the external hard disk drive as the startup disk. I SUSPECT you could also set the cloned laptop partition as your startup disk, but since the Lion install was already on my external drive, I used that.
5. Reboot the laptop
6. Hold down Command + "R" during the startup process to boot to the recovery partition of the Lion install on the external disk.
7. When the menu pops up, select Disk Utility
8. Repartition your laptop hard disk drive. This will also erase everything on the laptop. You can not repartition your hard drive unless you are booting from an external install of Lion. The recovery partition is hidden so repartitioning the drive will fail if you try to do a clean install from your laptop.
9. When the partitioning is finished, quit Disk Utility and return to the previous menu.
10. Select "Reinstall Lion" and select your laptop hard disk drive as the target.
11. You'll have to authenticate to Apple with your Apple ID, so there should be no problem with downloading and reinstalling Lion.
12. Wait for the download and install to finish. The download will take longer than the install.
13. During the setup, use the Transfer Assistant to transfer the cloned drive items to the new Lion install.
When the TA and install is finished, you should be back to where you started with everything intact.
Good luck!

Hope this will help someone.
I recently did a clean install of Lion on my Mac Pro (after doing an earlier Lion upgrade) and the performance difference is absolutely amazing. Before my Mac Pro was laggy and there all kinds of little glitchy bugs (I'm sorry I can't explain it better than that) with a lot of my applications. Since I use that machine to also administer the network, that just wasn't acceptable.
I'm convinced, after this experience, that a clean install of Lion is the best thing for me, so, this morning I decided to do the same thing to my MacBook Air (IMHO the best laptop ever invented).
Here's what I have done.
1. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner to the laptop.
2. Clone the laptop hard drive to an external hard drive. I have a Seagate 500GB USB drive which had a 500GB partition with Lion already installed on it. There are instructions all over the web on how to install Lion to an external drive. I used disk utility to add a partition, effectively splitting the partition in two with Lion still installed on one of the partitions and the other partition "clean".
3. Donate to Mike Bombich's site. Carbon Copy Cloner is a remarkable program - I've paid a heck of a lot of money over the years for similar programs and they didn't work 1/2 as good.
4. Go into System Preferences, select the "Startup Disk" applet and select your Lion install on the external hard disk drive as the startup disk. I SUSPECT you could also set the cloned laptop partition as your startup disk, but since the Lion install was already on my external drive, I used that.
5. Reboot the laptop
6. Hold down Command + "R" during the startup process to boot to the recovery partition of the Lion install on the external disk.
7. When the menu pops up, select Disk Utility
8. Repartition your laptop hard disk drive. This will also erase everything on the laptop. You can not repartition your hard drive unless you are booting from an external install of Lion. The recovery partition is hidden so repartitioning the drive will fail if you try to do a clean install from your laptop.
9. When the partitioning is finished, quit Disk Utility and return to the previous menu.
10. Select "Reinstall Lion" and select your laptop hard disk drive as the target.
11. You'll have to authenticate to Apple with your Apple ID, so there should be no problem with downloading and reinstalling Lion.
12. Wait for the download and install to finish. The download will take longer than the install.
13. During the setup, use the Transfer Assistant to transfer the cloned drive items to the new Lion install.
When the TA and install is finished, you should be back to where you started with everything intact.
Good luck!

I need to do a clean install with Lion. How do I do this. I can't find any doc. to tell me the procedure.

I need to do a clean install with Lion. How do I do this. I can't find any doc. to tell me the procedure.

Follow the instructions at the link I posted
have a lot of old stuff transferred from Mac to Mac to Mac that is slowing down everything
If that included Power PC apps, read here > Lion upgrade questions and answers: Apple Support Communities

Can I do a clean install of Lion, onto my Mac Book Pro4,1, that is currently running 10.5.8? I have seen U-tube videos on how to do a clean install to Snow Leopard, and another from SL to Lion, but can zero out my HD, and do a clean install to Lion?

Can I do a clean install of Lion, onto my Mac Book Pro4,1, that is currently running 10.5.8? I have seen U-tube videos on how to do a clean install to Snow Leopard, and another from SL to Lion, but can zero out my HD, and do a clean install to Lion?

See this article.

Clean install of Lion without saving our settings

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for