Mac OS Lion (Clean install) question

N

nemac

Registered
I recently upgraded my 13 inch MacBook to Lion. I opted to do the download rather than pay the extra cash for the DVD. Shortly after the upgrade, I started experiencing problems with my MacBook. There are times when I boot up and it is unresponsive. Yesterday, I took it to the Apple store to have the genius bar dudes take a crack at it. They tested the software and the hardware. Both tested fine. They then did a re-install without first formatting the hd. They told me that they have seen this happen before and that this re-install may correct the problem but that if it did not fix it, they could do a "Format and Install" which would delete any documents I have stored on the drive. Anyway, once I got home I started seeing the same problem.

Yes, I could take it back and have them do the format and install but I would rather not have to drive out to their location. I have created an emergency boot drive on my 4Gig USB drive. I have booted up from it so I know that it does work. Has anyone done a clean install from an emergency boot drive? Anything I have to be careful of?

TIA

Javier
 
Yet another reason I have not upgraded to Lion. . . .

Not much to add other than PLEASE let us know that you backed up your data.

--J.D.
 
First to Dr X, thanks for all your help, and yes I backup all of my data on a weekly basis. As for reading the article on how to create a bootable disk, been there done that. I do have a bootable USB thumb drive. The initial question was is there anything I should look for in paticular while attempting to do a "Fresh Install" of the OS.
 
Sacrifice a virgin? :)

Assuming you HAVE, like now, backed up your data you could try a few things. Understand I do not have Lion so perhaps I am writing out of my hat. A Guru can correct me, but I think Lion is "stand alone" in that you can load a fresh OS that does not require a previous OS. If that assumption is correct, and you have cloned yourself on an External Drive, you could simply wipe the Internal with Lion, format the disk, load the OS, then bring "you" over from your clone.

If THAT fails to work then you can simply go back to your clone and try again.

Now, from another topic, it was revealed that Lion is a "ram hog" relative to our older Macs. One Guru recommended at least 2 GB RAM. I would translate that into 4 GB. If you have the same Macbook I have, it can take 6 GB RAM and run happily. Lack of RAM may be the reason for freezing and slowing.

--J.D.
 
That is why people post questions on this forum. We want to get honest answers, helpful suggestions all else can be kicked to the curb. My system is a 13 inch MacBook 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 Gig 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM however that is the limit. I can't run 6 Gig on my system. If I can't get this thing to run normally on Lion, I will reload Snow Leopard. If I can't get some good advice from forum members, I will take it back to the genius bar and have a clean install done.

Thanks

Javier
 
nemac said:
Has anyone done a clean install from an emergency boot drive? Anything I have to be careful of?
TIA
Javier
Click to expand...
To answer your question, yes I have done this, several times in fact trying to get a solid Lion working system.
From your Lion install media, (DVD-USB, etc) you can use disk utility to erase and format your drive before continuing with a virgin install, after which you will be prompted to migrate selected data from your previous system.
All very easy to follow and do.
 
OK but since I am formatting the existing drive prior to re-installing the OS, where would I be migrating data from? Now after the re-install is complete, I should be able to load all of my old data from the backups that I have been taking on a weekly basis, right?

Thanks for the reply

Javier
 
Just to correct a misconception that you might have, a 2.4 GHz MacBook (same one that I have), can have one 4 GB chip, plus one 2 GB chip, for a total of 6 GB. And, a good choice with Lion.
There's three different MacBook models that have 2.4 GHz processors. Any can be upgraded to 6 GB, and the newer models can go to 8 GB.
 
nemac said:
OK but since I am formatting the existing drive prior to re-installing the OS, where would I be migrating data from?
Click to expand...
Normally you would migrate the data back from a Time Machine backup or a clone of your system on another drive or partition.
 
OK got it. Since I didn't create a clone, I would use the Time Machine backups to bring back all of my data. Now on the rare chance that a clean install does not correct my problem, I can use my "Snow Leopard" dvd to re-install that version of the OS without any problems, right?
 
Sounds correct, you could also use the install DVD to initiate a full restore from your TM backups, usually picking an earlier date when you knew you had a good solid operating system.
 
Well thank you for your help. I will be re-installing Lion this coming Monday and I will posting results.
 
Well I couldn't wait till the week-end to do the OS install. I did it last nigh. I liked it so much that I did it again this morning. Actually I ran into a bit of a snafu last night. During the first go-around, I told it not to migrate data from and then I created my account, using the same user id as the account on the backups. I later tried to migrate the data from backups and it would not over-write over the new account with the backup data.It did load the data for the second account just fine. I was going to live with it until I remembered that I hada slew of pictures in iPhoto that I did not want to get rid off. Needless to say, I went to bed thinking about it.

This was on my mind so much that I woke up at 3:30 am. That is when I re-installed from scratch the second time. ThisI connected the backup drive and attempted to migrate the data store on my backups. Thereby creating my account. This also presented a problem as it could not find the USB connected Time Machine backup drive. I tried several times but it just would not find the external backup drive. At this point I decided to create a dummy account. The account had nothing in common with the accounts on the backups. Once the machine was up and running, I again attempted to do the migration of my old data. This time it was able to find the drive and it brought over all data and accounts stored on the backups. Once I made sure that all data and accounts were there, I changed the dummy account to a normal user
account before it would let me delete the account (my old account was the administrator account). At this point I rebooted the machine and it seems to be working fine. Unfortunately the problems that I was seeing before were not
happening every time I booted the machine. I will have to wait a week or so to call this a total success.

Thank you all for all you help and suggestions.

Javier
 
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