How to restore macbook pro with lion preinstalled

What do you expect will happen? Reinstalling over an existing Lion system merely replaces system files. If it works properly then you shouldn't notice anything other than Lion should work.

If your intent is to erase the drive first, then you have to use Disk Utility to first erase the drive, then do the Reinstall Lion option.

I don't know what you want to accomplish. If you erase the drive then all the data on the drive will be removed. If that's what you wan to do then:

Reinstalling Lion Without the Installer

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alterhatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Erase the Drive: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Erase the drive as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the Erase tab, set the Format Type to Mac OS Extended, Journaled, then click on the Erase button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.

Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

The above instructions will do that.

I erased the HD and restarted it with the Ox S and when I try to install from DVD I follow prompts and it starts but then says that it can't install

What do I do now?

This is what I was told to do...

Kappy,

Thank you for the directions - worked like a charm! Was able to restore and reinstall Lion very easily.

Core

so i have the same problem do i just back up my stuff and hit restore?? and will eras my drive? and after that could i have lion installed or load on a usb drive and than while its restarting i could reinstall lion from the drive??

what im trying to do is fix my computer that i updated to lion but after i updated to lion it wouldn't let me log into my username account like it should like when you hit your picture and you name when you turn it on well the bar where you type your password in doesn't work or doesn't pop up and i was wondering if this would help to fix that problem.. thanks

Hi, I'm a bit new at to the world of Apple and would appreciate some help with this problem please. I have a MacBook Pro which has been Lion pre-installed. I have used it to back up my iPhone and my wife's iPhone and iPad. I also have documents and photos etc on it as well as the music in iTunes.

I know how to back up documents and photos but how do I back up the iTunes data and the copy of Office for Mac as I want to reset to factory settings. I have an external hard drive but think that if I do a simple back up and restore I will simply be reinstalling everything that is on here now?

Hope this makes sense...?

Cheers

Tim