Reinstalling Lion on MacBook Pro with Boot Camp

[MacKey76]

I have a May 2011 model MacBook Pro which originally had Snow Leopard installed.

I installed Windows 7 64-bit using Boot Camp after getting the machine and use both operating systems.

Upgraded Snow Leopard to Lion a couple of months ago using USB key from Apple.

As this is my first Apple machine, I have been playing and now want to reinstall Lion so I can start fresh and clean with it and actually get down to using it properly.

My question (after that rambling) is can I simply do a recover on the Lion OS to put a clean install on Lion on the machine?

The MOST important thing is I do not want to in any way ruin the Boot Camp Windows 7 which I run.

I did some looking online and found a few horror stories of people losing access to Boot Camp Windows when they recovered Lion so woudl like some pointers n any way to avoid this if there are any.

I am a Mac newbie but a Windows expert!

 

[johnhurley]

I have a May 2011 model MacBook Pro which originally had Snow Leopard installed.

I installed Windows 7 64-bit using Boot Camp after getting the machine and use both operating systems.

Upgraded Snow Leopard to Lion a couple of months ago using USB key from Apple.

As this is my first Apple machine, I have been playing and now want to reinstall Lion so I can start fresh and clean with it and actually get down to using it properly.

My question (after that rambling) is can I simply do a recover on the Lion OS to put a clean install on Lion on the machine?

The MOST important thing is I do not want to in any way ruin the Boot Camp Windows 7 which I run.

I did some looking online and found a few horror stories of people losing access to Boot Camp Windows when they recovered Lion so woudl like some pointers n any way to avoid this if there are any.

I am a Mac newbie but a Windows expert!

You want to get backups of the mac os x operating system partition ( usually done with time machine ) and backups of your win 7 partition.

A lot of people here use win clone ( whatever that is ) but personally I would stick with the built in win 7 system imaging capability and possibly add to that a full backup with ghost 15.

With both sets of backups in place I would probably proceed down the path of installing lion fresh after using disk utility from the recovery partition ( or from an install disc of the old os ) to erase all the partitions. I would install lion first and do all the various updates of software/firmware associated with the machine.

Then I would use bootcamp assistant to ( re ) partition a new bootcamp partition the same size as the existing one. Then I would format it first as ntfs and then go into win 7 installer and recover your system image ... that should get you back to where you are now.

I would also use bootcamp assistant to create win 7 driver disc ( or usb flash drive ) and go ahead and install them after recovering ( perhaps ).

Theoretically win 7 should be fine and probably you won't have to re-activate. If you do have to re-activate that's no big deal either.

 

[MacKey76]

You want to get backups of the mac os x operating system partition ( usually done with time machine ) and backups of your win 7 partition.

A lot of people here use win clone ( whatever that is ) but personally I would stick with the built in win 7 system imaging capability and possibly add to that a full backup with ghost 15.

With both sets of backups in place I would probably proceed down the path of installing lion fresh after using disk utility from the recovery partition ( or from an install disc of the old os ) to erase all the partitions. I would install lion first and do all the various updates of software/firmware associated with the machine.

Then I would use bootcamp assistant to ( re ) partition a new bootcamp partition the same size as the existing one. Then I would format it first as ntfs and then go into win 7 installer and recover your system image ... that should get you back to where you are now.

I would also use bootcamp assistant to create win 7 driver disc ( or usb flash drive ) and go ahead and install them after recovering ( perhaps ).

Theoretically win 7 should be fine and probably you won't have to re-activate. If you do have to re-activate that's no big deal either.

Thanks for the reply.

There is nothing on the Mac OS I want to save so no need to a backup - I want a clean start with Lion.

My Windows partition however has a lot of stuff on I want to keep - which I do keep backed up regularly.

Is there a way of doing a clean Lion install without having to reinstall my Boot Camp partition though?

If I have to then I will do this but I REALLY want to avoid it if I can.

 

[ssn637]

The last time I installed Lion on a hard drive with a Boot Camp partition the Windows 7 x64 volume was no longer bootable. At first I thought the partition had been deleted, but when I restarted the system in target disk mode and connected it to another MacBook Pro the Windows 7 x64 volume was indeed still there. Rather than deleting it and restoring my Windows backup, I simply ran iPartition from the other machine and noted that the volume was no longer visible in Windows. After enabling that option and restoring the MBR from iPartition the Boot Camp volume ran normally.

 

[MacKey76]

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Thanks for the reply.

I have decided to use the opportunity to upgrade the hard disk to a bigger one. Will then install Lion from fresh and recrate Boot Camp partition and do a clean Windows 7 install.

Not what I wanted to do at all but needs must. And at least I get 2 clean OSs.

 

[yeah]

There is another way to do it. When you are in the disk utility, don't click the BOOTCAMP partition, just erase Macintosh HD