Trying to erase and reinstall Lion without Apple ID

A while back I bought a MacBook Pro from a friend. It came with a Lion Installation Disk.
I've tried erasing the harddrive, and reinstalling Lion, but now im being prompted to enter the Apple ID that purchased Lion.
Since my friend bought the computer along with Lion using his Apple ID, how do I reset and install Lion without having to enter his Apple ID?
Any help is appreciated.

The important question is, did this machine come with lion preinstalled or was it purchased from the app store?
If it came preinstalled, your friend needs to call apple to transfer the license for the OS to you. If he purchased Lion, the license is not transferable and you will need the original install disks, wipe the drive, install the original OS, and then purchase Lion with your own Apple ID.
FWIW, Lion did not come on a disk.

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What's the best way to erase and reinstall Lion?

I'm a little confused by the various posts I've read about erasing and reinstaling lion.
My MBP is about 4 years old. I upgraded to lion last summer and it never worked great, but over the last 3-6 months its been dragging. I want to start fresh. I've uploaded all of my personal files to a sky drive and then copied all of my extremely irreplaceable photos to two other hard drives. Now I'm just fuzzy about my next step.
I've read I need to make a boot disk, or a thumb drive or I can do it right from my system. I don't care which way or what I need, but I want it fresh with no chance of curroption.
Thanks for any and all direction.
Josh

While we all have MacBooks in this forum most of us don’t run Lion. There's a Lion Support Community where everybody has Lion. You should also post this question there to increase your chances of getting an answer. https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.7_lion

Lion erase and reinstall by the Apple Store

Ok, I'll admit I'm a recent PC crossover so that qualifies me as a Newbie. Today I took my MacBook to the apple store for an erase and reinstall due to about 20gb of space was missing on my HD. My latest backup was done the day before I went back to Apple to reinstall Lion. After I restored my data from the backup, the address book app and the app store app are both missing. My address book data is on iCloud so I'm not that concerned about the data but I would like to get the app back on my MacBook. Any help on how to do this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks....

I'm not aware of any easy way to reinstall an OS X application in Lion short of reinstalling Lion. You can do that without erasing the drive again, but there is the time it takes to reinstall.
I don't suppose you have a copy of the Lion installer saved on your computer or purchased the Apple USB Lion flash drive installer?
Reinstalling Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

Problems trying to erase and reinstall iBook G4 to factory settings

I am trying to reinstall the factory settings on my iBook G4 so that I can pass the computer on to my parents. I tried installing from my two install disks, using the "erase and install" option. Disk 1 worked fine, everything proceeded normally, and then the computer asked me to insert Disk 2. From that point on, the thing seems to be caught in some loop. I get the "preparing installation" message, and then it starts to install, but then suddenly the screen goes to blue, and then it comes back on as the beginning of the "preparing installation" progress bar again. It does this on a continues loop. When I opened the Installer log, the errors I see say "can't instantiate package" for keynote 2, iWork Font, iWork Extras, and GarageBand.
At some point after it goes through this loop, it gives up, tells me there were errors and to reinstall OS X. It ejects the disk, and then prompts me to reinsert the Disk 2 again. When I do, the whole thing starts all over again. Please help! I don't know what else to do.

You may have to use the Disk Utility (on booted installer disc) to see
if it can 'repair disk' and also consider checking the optional tools it
has, to use the one that over-writes the hard disk drive with random
zeros; and then reformat it to HFS+ since it could have a problem.
When you do get a system installed, be sure to run 'repair disk
permissions' from the new system's Disk Utility.
In fact, to start up in SafeBoot and then run DU's repair disk permis-
sions can be helpful; prior to any updates or upgrades.
{Another way to remove user files could have been to use a different
plan and remove the user account, replacing the admin/owner one
with another new admin user account. There is a way, and it likely is
in the Apple Support knowledgebase. The topic gets revisited here.}
If Disk Utility - on OS X installer - finds a problem it can't fix, before
trying a reinstall from the booted installer disc, you may have to see
about getting a third party disk utility compatible with the OS X you
are trying to install and use that to repair the computer's hard drive.
DiskWarrior is among the popular; but note this isn't a one does all,
it may be enough to fix the hard disk drive's issue or see if it is OK;
though there are other third party disk utilities which fix other stuff.
Good luck & happy computing!
edited.

Trying to Erase and Reinstall Yosemite from install drive

I am trying to prepare my 2009 Mac Pro for selling. I erased the startup disk from disk utility, and now I'm trying to reinstall Yosemite using an install file on an external hard drive. Every time I boot to the external hard drive, choose "Install OS X" from the utilities menu, and then wait for the "Preparing to install" screen. After preparing to install, however, I get the error message:
"An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."
I had a working Yosemite install on this machine before erasing the disk, so I know it can handle it. The external hard drive is a LaCie Rugged connected via Firewire 800 (I also tried via USB). My Mac Pro also has two additional 1TB drives in bays 2 and 3 (both erased and empty).
MY SYSTEM
Early 2009 Mac Pro
2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
16GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB

UPDATE: I just reset the NVRAM, and that seems to have solved the problem.

My hard drive is messed up I was told I need to erase and reinstall lion, but I was wondering if I could reinstall maverick instead seeing as it is the most recent one out there. Ideas? tips?

I am running Mac OSX 10.7.5 I need to erase everything and reinstall. Should I reinstall Lion again or maverick?

Ooops.
I upgraded my 10.6.8 system to 10.7.5. ..No problem, but my practice is to connect an ESATA dock to my macpro. install to the drive in the doc, use migration assistant to migrate my data and apps.   use the os in the doc for 2 weeks, if no issue then I delete the OS partiton in my Internal System Drive, do a carbon copy clone to the internal drive.
I just did the similar to upgrade to mavericks.   I installed to a new hardrive in my docking station.   (black widow esata dock). I noticed 10.9.1 is slow stayed with 10.7.5 as my operating system. now and then I would boot 10.9.1 fire up the console utility and fix the issues that made it slow....
Now I am at the "burn in stage" mavericks is now running fast and stable.   I'll use all my apps and if it does not break with the applications I run I will eventaully cc my 10.7.5 OS drive to the docking station, file the drive away.. and take my 10.9.1 drive in the doc and cc it to my internal system drive.
I always wipe out a partion when installing a new OS. Zeroing out is a bit more thorough, you will know if your drive is junk... but it's overkill for me.
I figured repartion is ok.
I'm 2 weeks away from doing a carbon copy clone from my 10.9.1 os drive in my dock to my internal drive.
by the way.. I am running Mavericks on a 8 core macpro 2,1. I have a modified bootloader that has an arbitration layer EFI32 to/from EFI64 emulated.
pretty cool.
And from new system standards, the old macpro stacks up pretty well:

Can't reinstall lion without Apple ID used to purchase???

Can't reinstall lion. It's asking for an Apple ID that was used to purchase OS X Lion?? I don't understand why I'm being asked that when it came already setup so I didn't have to buy it.
How do I get pass this question to install??
Or, how do I buy lion

I can't remember downloading it when I brought the mac but if I did I would of only used one ID and it's not working. I did buy the newer version at some stage that would change anything would it?
Iv brought lion from the store waiting on the redemption code now(waste of money) see if that works.
Just when I thought apple were becoming easy to work with!!!

Trying to format and reinstall (lion download not working)

Recently finder completely stopped working so i decided the best option was to just reinstall OSX lion, I didnt recieve an install disk but noticed there was an option to reinstall on the start up disk menu.
I have erased all of my partitions and i am trying to download the lion installation to my ssd, it runs for about an hour and 30 mins then fails. I am relatively new to Macs and have inherited this one, so please excuse if my terminology is a bit sketchy.
Any suggestions?

From the Installer menu bar in Recovery, select
Window ▹ Installer Log ▹ Show Errors Only
What error messages are shown?

Trying to erase and reinstall, but I can't. Help!

The last time I installed an OS upgrade, it asked if I wanted to transfer files from an older computer. I did and it pulled everything over perfectly.
I'd like to do that again. I purchased a new imac and went to install Snow Leopard with the expectation that it would ask me if I wanted to transfer over files from another computer, however it never asked me that. I was able to upgrade my OS on the new imac, but I'm trying to figure out how to seamlessly transfer all my files over from the older imac.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Sorry, but that's like buying an auto without its jack and spare tire, and something no one should ever accept, especially from an Apple retailer. Go back to Best Buy and see if they can rectify the issue. Otherwise, call AppleCare and order replacement disks: requires the serial number and a token S&H charge (should be in the neighborhood of $20-30) and also get the manuals, if they weren't included. Yes, you need the restore disks because they include the Apple Hardware Test suite and the other Apple apps that came with the machine, most likely the iLife ones. Check your machine at the Apple Store at http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=Nzk2MDUyNw to see what software came with it.

Erase and reinstall without start up discs.

I want to erase and reinstall my MacBook Pro which is 10.6.8 but I can't find my start up discs anywhere. Is there a way I can do this?

No. To do an erase and install requires a Snow Leopard DVD or a bootable backup on an external drive or another Mac with Firewire ports running Snow Leopard.
You can purchase Snow Leopard through the Apple Store: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.). The price is $19.99 plus tax. You will be sent physical media by mail after placing your order.
After you install Snow Leopard you will have to download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 and give you access to the App Store. Access to the App Store enables you to download Mountain Lion if your computer meets the requirements.
     Snow Leopard General Requirements
       1. Mac computer with an Intel processor
       2. 1GB of memory
       3. 5GB of available disk space
       4. DVD drive for installation
       5. Some features require a compatible Internet service provider;
           fees may apply.
       6. Some features require Apple’s MobileMe service; fees and
           terms apply.

Erase hard drive and reinstall Lion

Hello Everybody,
Is there a straightforward way to erase the hard drive of my imac and reinstall Lion. I have purchased the mac from my friend but I believe the HD hasn't been completely wiped as I can still see some of his files.
OSX Lion was purchased and installed but is there a way to completely delete the HD, reinstall Lion and start with fresh computer?
Thanks!

I'm in the same boat but a slightly different twist. It appears, from talking to Apple support, that MobileMe corrupted some of my data on my iMac. Everything is backed up. It appears that some of the preferences have been corrupted because my scrolling doesn't work the way I set it. MobileMe propagated this corruption over to my Macbook Pro but I'm living with it right now. I turned MobileMe off on my iPad2 and my iPhone. I'll go and correct the issue but then the incorrect will turn itself back on. Even repairing permissions fixed stuff and they came back later. I chose to reinstall Lion. I booted CTRL+R, chose ERASE with the correct Mac format then double checked everything before reinstalling Lion. NO LUCK. Lion comes back but like the person above said, there are files still there so ERASE doesn't ERASE EVERYTHING. I still have issues with my preferences. I've installed the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant and have it loaded on a 4gb thumb drive. Now what I want to do is erase...blotto...flatline...zap... you name it, I want it GONE. Then I want to format and reinstall Lion from a totally naked disk drive. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks very much. It was right here that I found out about the Recovery Assistant!

HT204074 I have a new machine with a previous installation of Itunes, linked to another Apple ID. Even I authorized the machine to my Apple ID, I can not connecto to the Apple Store. I tried removing Itunes and reinstalling it, but anything changed.

I have a new machine with a previous installation of Itunes, linked to another Apple ID. Even I authorized the machine to my Apple ID, I can not connect to the Apple Store. I tried removing Itunes and reinstalling it, but anything changed. I still can not connecto to the Store.
My previous machine has Itunes Installed, and I deauthorized the machine so I unlinked to my Apple ID, if this is correct.
Anyway, Dropbox is also not connecting....so I do not know how to make it woek. please help!

I have the same problem - it is maddening. I rely on this iPad for work so this is not just an annoyance! The above solutions of changing the appleid on the device or on the website do not work.
The old email address no longer exists - I haven't used it in a year probably and I no longer have the account. I logged into the appleid website and there is no trace of the old email address so there is nothing that can be deleted or changed there. On the iPad there is no trace of the old email address so nothing can be deleted there either. I have updated the iPad software and the same problem comes right back. Every 2 seconds I am asked to log in using the old non-existent email. The device is currently useless.
The only recent change to anything was the addition of an Apple TV device, which was set up using the correct login and password.
Does anyone have any ideas? The iPad has been backed up to the iCloud so presumably it now won't recognize the current iCloud account? So restoring may notbe an option?

HT201240 Erased and reinstalled my operating system did i loos my lion ? if so how do i get it back?

I have erased and reinstalled my operating system in doing so i did not reinstall leopard but did install disc 1 an 2 and Snow Leopard! I had lion also! how do i tell if i have my lion dowm load installed or not and how can i recover my lion?

Try the following user tip:
Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device

I keep trying to install and reinstall itunes but keep getting apple application support not found...how do i fix this?

I keep trying to install and reinstall itunes but keep getting apple application support not found...how do i fix this?

For general advice see Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates.
The steps in the second box are a guide to removing everything related to iTunes and then rebuilding it which is often a good starting point unless the symptoms indicate a more specific approach. Review the other boxes and the list of support documents further down page in case one of them applies.
Your library should be unaffected by these steps but there is backup and recovery advice elsewhere in the user tip.
The section Install missing components has advice on breaking down the iTunes installer into the individual .msi files which might prove useful if Apple Application Support won't install normally.
tt2

Rear camera will not focus after updating to 8.1.3. Any adviceY Already tried erasing and reinstalling.

I updated to 8.1.3 and my rear camera will not focus. I erased and reinstalled and still have the problem. Any advice?

Hello jonesrob,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
From your post I see that your photos and video taken with the rear camera on your iPhone are not in focus after updating to iOS 8.1.3. When you restored your iPhone, did you restore from a backup? If so then I would like you to please restore to the factory settings by following the directions in the article below.
Use iTunes to restore your iOS device to factory settings - Apple Support
If you had already restored to the factory settings and the issue persists, then it's time to seek service for your iPhone.
iPhone Other Repair Options - Apple Support
Have a good one,
Alex H.

Trying to erase and reinstall Lion without Apple ID

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