I get the grey screen with apple logo & swirly circle - that's it?

I need to re install Lion X. I went to the Genius bar & the Genius held the alt key (?) then the re-install screen came up. Simple, but i need to do this at home & now it doesn't work!
Do I need the computer on?
Do I hold only the alt key?
Or is it the cmd key?
Please help!
Thanks

Hold the alt/Option key (that's ONE key) at Startup and a completely ROM resident routine called the Startup Manager will draw a gray screen then an Icon for each bootable Volume. then the Eject key is "live" and will open the drawer on a tray-loader.
Select Recovery_HD and you will get to the Utilities/Installer screen you saw before.

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