Impossible to reinstall lion from scratch on recovery

Hello everyone! Im trying to reinstall lion on my macbook pro late 2011. I thought it would be easire than installing windows - but boy was I wrong! First it was saying that it couldntmfind the installation information. Then I guess it found, because I could get to the installation part itself. But it was saying that it would take about -2,434,234,673,24 hours to finish - negative billions hours, as you can see.

I thought it was just a bug and left the night. Nothing happened, but the numbers kept changing randomly.


Cancelled, tried twice, same error. Tried again, now cAnt get past the "information not foud" again.

Question: if I use a friend's thumb drive wirh a copy of Lion there, will I have some problem with authentication or something? Or it willbe the same as installing from recovery?

Its not an apple thumb drive, its just an image of lion that he did following some simple instructions on the internet.

I cant wait to download the whole image from apple store eith my hideous internet connection, so im quite desperate here.

Edit - sorry about the typos, im typing on an ipad! Thanks
I havent erased my partitions or anything - got the mac 2 months ago and just want to clean reinstall!
Thanks!

Well I tried with a thumb drive, and it finally went ok! But I was surprised that reinstalling Lion leaves all docs, apps, etc., intact, without needing to set the home on a different partition. That's nice!

My Lion is now a lot better, I don't have to wait about 3-4 seconds when gesturing for the launchpad, or about 8-10 seconds to open Finder, Safari, and Mail.

But the recovery partition thing was not helpful at all. I hope it's an isolated problem with me, and not a recurring issue!

Maybe just words here - it sounds like you wanted to reinstall the recovery partition?
(No, you use the recovery partition to reinstall Lion on the normal startup drive)
Was I misunderstanding?

A clean install of Lion is the recommended speed up way for a MB or MBP. Doing it the way you did from the thumb drive is the way to go as it simply install OS X.7 and leaves all your files and folders intact. You will have to update to OS X.7.3 as you will find it is now back to OS X.7.

Perhaps you can get a copy of the thumb drive? On a Mac Pro burnt Lion to a USB thumb drive and vy far the easiest way to go.

Hello! Gsahli sorry for the confusion, english is not my native language! But what I wanted was to completely reinstall Mac Os X Lion (not the recovery partition) using the recovery partition to do so. That I could not acomplish, I had to use a generic thumb drive with a friend's copy of his Lion. By the way, here's a picture of the crazy hours left: http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9626/fotowfi.jpg

harryb2448, I wish I knew that before wasting a few hours trying to install using the recovery partition! I think I will follow your advice and get a copy of Lion on a thumb drive for myself!

Just one question, if I wanted to make a completely clean reinstall, all I have to do is format the whole HDD and install using the thumb drive?

Thanks!

Insert the thumb drive and reboot, holding down 'C" after the chime.

You will have an option to select the drive/s you have connected. Highlight, and go to Utilities > Disk Utility > Erase > Partition even if only a single partition, under options select GUID, go back to the installer and run.

This will delete everything from the drive and install a brand new version of OS X.7.