Questions about hard drive wipe and reinstall

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MacBook Pro 15" 2.66 GHz Core i7 4 GB RAM NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB
So I have a MacBook Pro 15" and I currently just upgraded to OS Lion and I want to switch back to the default OS that came with my MacBook Pro and I just have a few questions that I am hoping you guys can help me with.

1. If I have a bootcamp partition on my macbook will that get affected?

2. I have microsoft office installed, after the reinstall will the activation code work again?

3. And finally...how do I do it? I know it has something to do with the cd my macbook came with but does anyone have a link to a video or something that would be helpful.

Thanks for all the help!
 

chscag

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Any reason why you wish to go back to Snow Leopard? Did you make a backup prior to installing Lion? That would be the fastest and easiest way. If you don't have a backup and still want to revert to SL, follow along:

1. The Boot Camp partition won't be erased but may no longer be bootable requiring a reinstall or repair.

2. Which version of MS Office? 2008, no problem. 2011, if it's been less than 120 days since you activated it, you may have to call MS to reactivate unless you bought the 3 install pack.

3. Boot your MBP with your SL install DVD, go to Disk Utilities, remove the Lion recovery partition, remove the Lion partition, merge both together by dragging the partition boundary from the beginning of the drive until you reach the BC partition. Do not erase or remove the BC partition.

Format the partition as Mac OS Extended Journaled, GUID scheme, name the drive MacIntosh HD. After all this proceed with installing SL and applications.

Lots of work and lots of room for mistakes. So think twice about going back to Snow Leopard if you have no backup.
 
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1)It has been my experience that your bootcamp partition will be fine. I cannot state that it will absolutely still be there, as something could go wrong, but I haven't ever had a problem with it personally.

2)Probably, but someone will be better suited to help you. :)

3)You'll need to insert your CDs, then restart your Mac. As your Mac is booting, before the screen turns white or anything, press and hold "Option" or "C" to boot off of your CD.

Once you've booted off of the CD, select your language if you have to, and click utilities from the menu on the top of the screen.

-Select Disk Utility, and highlight your Mac OSX partition.

-Go to the erase tab, and then select Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Go ahead and erase.

-Once you've erased the drive, simply quit Disk Utility, and when proceeding with the install of OSX, tell Installer to install on the Mac partition.

For a better step by step, see this support document from Apple.

edit:chscag got it first! ;)
 
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Thanks for the replies, and the other reason and frankly main one is I only have 77 gigs left one my mac side of my hard drive. And with college coming up I basically want a new clean computer so I figured erasing my hard drive would be the best way to do unless someone knows of a program that deletes everything I haven't used in the past 3 months or something like that.
 

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