[kennedy]

I want to wipe one of my MacBook Pros clean... unfortunately, it seems I have kept the install DVDs for all but that one. (And of course, the install DVD's for my other MacBook Pros don't work on it. And the OS X Lion that I bought is evidently only capable of upgrading, not installing from scratch.) Sigh.

Given the install DVDs only work with the matching hardware, is there somewhere on Apple's website that I can download the install DVD for my MacBook Pro?

[Spheric Harlot]

You can order them from Apple Support for a nominal fee.

[Waragainstsleep]

Which Lion did you buy? Regardless, if you upgrade it first, it will create a Lion recovery partition which you can then use to wipe the boot drive and it will download another copy of the Lion installer for you if it needs to.

[kennedy]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

You can order them from Apple Support for a nominal fee.

Order physical discs? How old-fashioned! (And slow.)
Sometimes Apple lags behind Microsoft (where everything is available for download).

However, I haven't found that option either at Apple Support.
I'll look harder.

[jmiddel]

If you mean wiping the HD, why not put it in one of the other MPs and wipe from there?

[kennedy]

Hmmm... so, if I swap the drive into a newer latest gen MacBook Pro, use its install disks to wipe it clean and install, and then swap that drive back into an generation older MacBook Pro, will it run fine? Or will it tell me it can't run on that older hardware?

[Spheric Harlot]

That'll work. Just stick it in a ten-dollar external enclosure and hook it up to the newer machine.

OR: boot the older machine into target disk mode by holding the T key on startup, and hook it up to the newer one via FireWire. Treat it like an external drive and install the OS.

No disassembly required at all.

[Waragainstsleep]

No disassembly required with my suggestion either. And no second machine.

The thing about the physical discs in question is that they are different for each new batch of machines. Apple would have to post hundreds of different images for download and a good percentage of people would download the wrong one anyway.

Microsoft does not have this problem because their OS discs are generic. The Apple ones have hardware specific OS builds and hardware tests on them.

[kennedy]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

That'll work. Just stick it in a ten-dollar external enclosure and hook it up to the newer machine.

OR: boot the older machine into target disk mode by holding the T key on startup, and hook it up to the newer one via FireWire. Treat it like an external drive and install the OS.

No disassembly required at all.

Thanks, that worked! Well, partially...

After it finished installing and then booted up fine on the external drive, I then tried to put in the Applications DVD to install the iLife stuff. When I double-clicked on the Bundled Software package, it ran for a bit and then gave me a non-descript error and suggested that I try installing again.

So, I rebooted onto the external drive, and then tried again... same result.

Any suggestions on how to get the apps installed?
Can I just copy them from my other MBP? Or do they need the installer to install them properly?

Thanks again!

[Waragainstsleep]

Use the migration assistant. Its in the Utilities folder. You can migrate just the apps, but you'll get every app from the other MBP.