Should I Reformat

[Harriflex]

I have the MacBook Pro silver 2008 model and had upgraded it from V10.5.8 to Lion 10.8. As I had upgraded to a new iMac Desktop, I gave the Laptop to my wife. I had transferred via Migration assistant from her Dell running Windows Vista. Unfortunately, I messed up the user accounts due to the way in which MiG Asst suggested I had two similar names, which then caused issues with filling my 250GB hard drive. In deleting User accts and other attempts to reclaim disk space, as I was faced with problems, I backed up to external drive. Then Erased and reformatted laptop and put back the Original operation OS X disks (10.5.8). Unfortunately I had overlooked these were old V10.5.8! Perhaps I should have backed up from Ext Drive?

I tried to use Migration Assistant via the external backup drive, but again worried about the warning about two similar User names. I understand that my latest Lion 10.8 is on the drive, but not confident how to recover it! Apple now longer offers the download?

Basically I want to put the Laptop back to its former state as a simple laptop for my 70 Yr old wife to understand and use with her iPad. All her original files etc are still on the Dell Vista Laptop.

Should I start agin via Erase Hard Drive, reinstall from Back up? I only require the latest OS X V 10.8 Then should be able to select the Files from the Dell.
Any help would be so appreciated...

 

[Weaselboy]

Did you use Time Machine to backup before you erased the internal drive? That may still have a recovery partition on it from a previous Lion install.

Try plugging in the Time Machine drive then hold the option key while you boot and select the Time Machine drive to boot from. That should give you a recovery screen where you can start Disk Utility and erase the internal disk then reinstall the OS. This will download the OS over the Internet and install it. Do not click "restore" as that is not the same thing.

It sounds like your multiple account problem with Migration Assist is because you setup your account then afterwards tried to import that same account from Migration Assistant. That will cause the duplicate mess you mentioned.

What you want to do is at the end of the setup process after the OS is installed you will be prompted to import your data. That is the Migration Assistant. Run it then before setting up any accounts and point the Migration Assistant to the Time Machine disk. That should import your account and data.

Let me know how it goes or if you need more help.