Help!! Can't do anything!!

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Ok, so I got a MacBook Pro for valentines day....I've always had windows so this is all new to me! When I got it the guy told me OS X Lion was installed and the HD had a windows partition that I decided I didn't want it partitioned so tried to get rid with disk utility to no avail.....anyway, long story short I've completely messed up trying to reinstall lion! The guy I got it off told me to press alt when booting to enter recovery mode....the drive seems to be empty but I can't resize or delete any partition without getting a "can't unmount disk" error no matter what I do. Also, when attempting to put a fresh copy of lion on I'm asked for apple ID and password to download lion from the app store! The guy said it shouldn't do it....but it is!! It won't boot to OS at all now.
I know, I know, I should have left it alone lol but I thought how different can it be?!
The lad I got it off has said to go round this evening but I want it sorting now!!!
Anybody any advise??!
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MBA 1.7 GHz Core i5, 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - Lion 10.7.4; Thunderbolt Display; 2011 iMac base w/SSD
Call Apple Support
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Mac Mini (Late 2014) 2.6GHz Intel Core i5 Memory: 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
Sounds like the machine is used. Is it covered by AppleCare?

My advice? Buy new. Yeah, I know that doesn't help you now.
 

cwa107


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Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Ok, so I got a MacBook Pro for valentines day....I've always had windows so this is all new to me! When I got it the guy told me OS X Lion was installed and the HD had a windows partition that I decided I didn't want it partitioned so tried to get rid with disk utility to no avail.....anyway, long story short I've completely messed up trying to reinstall lion! The guy I got it off told me to press alt when booting to enter recovery mode....the drive seems to be empty but I can't resize or delete any partition without getting a "can't unmount disk" error no matter what I do. Also, when attempting to put a fresh copy of lion on I'm asked for apple ID and password to download lion from the app store! The guy said it shouldn't do it....but it is!! It won't boot to OS at all now.
I know, I know, I should have left it alone lol but I thought how different can it be?!
The lad I got it off has said to go round this evening but I want it sorting now!!!
Anybody any advise??!

You never want to remove a Boot Camp partition using Disk Utility - in fact, I wish Apple would put some kind of nanny in place to prevent it, as it's a really common mistake. You can safely restore a Mac to its original configuration (pre-Windows) by re-running the Boot Camp Assistant, which is available in the Applications => Utilities folder (not that it helps you at this point, since you'll need to re-format the entire disk).

Also, you never want to make ANY major changes to a hard drive's disk structure without a backup.

Since it has Lion on it, it *should* have a hidden recovery partition. The correct way to access it is by turning the machine on and immediately pressing and holding Command + R. It should boot into the Recovery Assistant window, but if it does not, it will try to do an Internet recovery to reinstall the OS.

More information here:

OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery
 

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