[Nassifer]

Hello i am fairly new around mac's so here goes my sone came back from college and gave me his MacBook it is only about 1.5 yrs old, but he has so much BS on it I want to wipe it all clean and start over. I tried to use the USB lion recovery thing, but I could not format the drive and then re-install lion, I want to wipe everything off and start clean with 10.7.2 just need some advice on how to do it, already backed up all that I want. So I am ready to go, just need the directions.

Thanks

[OreoCookie]

These instructions will delete all your data from your hard drive! If there is data you want to keep, you have to have a backup of them! E. g. you can use Time Machine to do that for you.

(1) You need to start from Lion's Recovery Partition. Do do that, restart your Mac and press Command + R after you hear the start-up sound.
(2) After booting in recovery mode, launch Disk Utility.
(3) Use Disk Utility to wipe your usual OS X partition (typically labeled »Macintosh HD«). Do not try to get rid of the Recovery Partition! You need it to install Lion. You don't need to overwrite everything with zeros!
(4) After wiping your main partition, proceed to install OS X Lion.
(5) If you want, you can recover user data from a backup by using Migration Assistant.

[Nassifer]

what is lions recovery part ion, is that the USB drive that I have installed the lion recovery tools onto ?

sorry for the lack of knowledge, but been a PC user just getting to know the Mac world..

[ghporter]

The Lion Recovery Partition is much like the hidden partitions HP and Dell have been putting on Windows machines for a long time. It has the tools and OS files to build a "factory fresh" Lion installation. The process should really be as straight forward and simple as OreoCookie says, it's just not as familiar as the PC maintenance actions you're used to.

[Nassifer]

Got it, now back online after all the work, system seems SO mush faster now that his junk is gone, now time for me to add my junk thanks for the help.