Mac wont boot. troubles reinstalling lion, want to reset my mac already.

ugh mbp 2008, never had problems till now. So i went into utility, and because i have nothing of real interest on my mac i reset the HD. it was partitioned i guess because i had my normal hd and bootcamp, which i never used anyways. also repairing the disk kept giving me errors. so after erasing everything, i went to create a partion, and was going to download lion to that. but when i try to make a partition it says "partition failed- couldnt unmount disk." I need help. I just want the whole thing to be reset, i have nothing to lose. what do i do???

milesmartin, did you ever resolve this issue?
I find myself in almost the same situation. I have a Mac Pro using OS 10.6.1 with 9gb RAM and three hard drives. This happened suddenly at a cold startup for me. The strange red/pink lines, mouse not responding, etc. I could do a hard restart (power off) and the problem seemed to go away. I have tried many tests with TechTool Pro and the Apple hardware disk. All test show no problems with hardware. I have installed clean systems on a new hard drive several times including going back to OS 10.5. Each cold restart brings the same freeze, strange graphic displays. I reset the SMU, purged the PRAM, replace the battery, pulled/replaced all RAM modules, tried starting from the OS install disk. So far, nothing helps.
At the start of this problem, I could do a boot in safe mode. Now, nothing works and it may take 4 or 5 restarts to get the system up and running. This is most unacceptable and probably stresses the components in ways that will eventually cause a failure.
I am out of ideas today and it is no longer fun. Any help?

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Not cheap anyway you look at it sorry, professional Data Recovery being the most expensive.
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http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
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Mac wont boot. troubles reinstalling lion, want to reset my mac already.

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