Bootcamp to Parallels and a fresh install of lion and win 7 on my imac 27"

[FTLOSM]

My imac 27 inch has lion on the apple side and windows 7 oem on the bootcamp side, I ended up loading something on the apple side that is just really goofing up my apple use, lots of errors and stuff on bootup and I can't seem to get it fixed it's driving me nuts actually, so much so I haven't really used the machine but have decided to take an afternoon and just reload the apple and windows sides fresh.

I have timemachine setup, nothing on either side is anything I need to keep really, can I just format the time machine hard drive (external 2 tb), or do I need that timemachine stuff to reload lion? I dont want to restore an earlier version of what I have on here I want to go day one new. I never quite did get what timemachine does figured it was more of a backup thing in case my drive failed but I had a 2tb sitting here so figured ok hook it up and assign as timemachine (i am very new to mac still).

On the windows 7 side i installed an oem version via bootcamp but I hate swapping back and forth rebooting, so I ordered up parallels software, I assume since I am going to reload lion it will remove my windows 7 bootcamp too?

Either way I will have to reload windows 7 to use it with parallels correct? (i did not plan on keeping the bootcamp option anymore).

I realize I might screw up my windows license stuff but reading around I have read others say they called MS and got it reactivated (it will be on the same machine). Worst case I can't get windows 7 to run with parallels and i just buy a full retail edition if i HAVE to as last resort.

Bill

[MacDawg]

You can reload Lion on your Mac partition without affecting your Windows/Bootcamp partition

Your Parallels will read your Bootcamp partition just fine without reloading it

[FTLOSM]

Ah thanks on that, figured I would lose the bootcamp windows when I re-install lion and since I was going to use parallels I figured no biggie on that.

Now to go read up on how to go back to day one on the lion side, patiently waiting for my parallels software to arrive in the mail...

Bill