How exactly do I completely wipe my MBP?

Question

How exactly do I completely wipe my MBP?

My MBP has been acting strangly for more than two months now. It started with taking a couple minutes to locate the WiFi, then just general slowness, and now is so troublesome that I want to just wipe it completely to factory fresh and try again. I nearly chucked it out a wondow today, the first time a Mac has made me feel like I was using a PC.

I originally posted quite awhile ago (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3693202) although 300+ reads got not a single reply. So I don't know whether I am even posting this in the right area... is this more likely a Lion problem? Or something else? I don't know and am tired of being stressed. Had an important paper to write today and probably should have used my iPhone rather than trying to convince my MBP to work.

I have repaired the permissions, zapped the PRAM, re-installed Lion, re-RE-installed Lion, and tried just living in Safe Boot Mode. I just want my Mac to work, as it always has in the past. So now, let's just start fresh and see what happens. Except guess what? I can't find any specific instructions as to how to even do THAT.

So I am begging someone to give me simple instructions to erase my hard drive so I can just start over. And hopefully whatever caused this to happen won't happen again.

Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Mar 25, 2012 11:20 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 25, 2012 11:25 PM in response to Cynthia Delmar

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3188922?start=0&tstart=0

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

140,832 points

Mar 25, 2012 11:30 PM in response to Cynthia Delmar

First of all update to OS X 10.7.3 if you haven't already. It incorporated a fix specifically to address the WiFi problem you are experiencing.

I understand your frustration and you can certainly reformat your HD and start with a clean slate, but that is rather drastic. Perhaps there are some other steps you could try.

Safe Boot is for troubleshooting and not designed for routine use - you cannot just live in it.

Starting the computer in "safe mode": Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

Have a look at these other general purpose knowledgebase articles. Perhaps you could find something useful:

Creating a temporary user to isolate user-specific problems: Isolating an issue by using another user account

Identifying resource hogs and other tips: Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used

To identify potential hardware problems: Apple Hardware Test

In the end if you wish to reformat your hard disk and reinstall Lion, you would boot the recovery partition by holding ⌘ R during boot. It sounds like you're familiar with that 😉 From there, open Disk Utility, select your disk and erase it. As you know this is drastic and might not fix what's wrong anyway. So exhaust all the other steps above first.

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Answer 3

Mar 25, 2012 11:34 PM in response to John Galt

John Galt wrote:

and might not fix what's wrong anyway.

good point. A clean install should only be done if you are experiencing software problems, as this method usually fixes most, if not all software related issues.

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Answer 4

Mar 26, 2012 12:02 AM in response to John Galt

I had upgraded to 10.7.3 and although it cut the time somewhat it did not resolve the issue.

I was no longer able to boot other than in Safe mode, I was just getting the grey screen/Apple logo and no further.

Activity Monitor showed nothing unusual.

Anyway, I have done the wipe and now am waiting while it apparently searches for an Internet connection. It gave me some options to choose from but none of them were my wireless modem. So then it asked if I wanted it to search so I said yes (didn't really have much choice) and for the past 15 minutes or so it has been showing a one-minute countdown clock that gets down to maybe :56 and then resets to 1:00 again -- although the progress bar is slowly filling, so that's something.

Guess I should probably hang it up for the night and get some sleep. It won't be fixed before I have to leave for work in the morning anyway...

Thanks, guys. Beginning to think I should dig out my Snow Leopard disks just in case.

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Answer 5

John Galt

Level 10

140,832 points

Mar 26, 2012 12:09 AM in response to Cynthia Delmar

The initial time estimates are usually wildly inaccurate. If the progress bar is progressing, things are happening.

I wish you had not given up yet but I get the impression your patience had run out.

Please let us know how this works. Good luck!

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Answer 6

Mar 27, 2012 3:17 PM in response to John Galt

Well, the system seems to be working cleanly, at least -- instantly connects to WiFi, not a spinning beachball in sight.

However, it would seem that I shouldn't have believed all the "your data lives in the sky" talk. When I check my Purchased music from iTunes, it shows me two albums and a couple of singles, when there should be dozens of both. My iPhone has more of my music than I find when I sign into iTunes. So clearly I should have saved the iTunes library from my computer!

I hate to even think about my photos...

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Answer 7

John Galt

Level 10

140,832 points

Mar 27, 2012 3:31 PM in response to Cynthia Delmar

Thanks for the update, if anything was sure to fix your MBP that would be it.

However, it would seem that I shouldn't have believed all the "your data lives in the sky" talk.

Exactly why I said

As you know this is drastic and might not fix what's wrong anyway. So exhaust all the other steps above first.

Once you reformat your HD, everything on it is gone.

Before you give up have a look at the iTunes Store menu and select "Check for available downloads...". If you purchased music on your phone some or all of it may appear there.

I am far from a "cloud" advocate. Ask anyone who signed up for a "lifetime" MobileMe account. No one will ever care about your data as much as you do.

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Answer 8

Mar 27, 2012 4:00 PM in response to John Galt

I just don't understand why, when I log in to my iTunes account, it doesn't show everything I bought -- even an album I bought earlier this month is missing. It says my computer is the only device authorized, why isn't my iPhone showing? Was my iTunes account also living on my computer? Doesn't the store have its own records of our purchases?

iPhoto won't open at all, even though I downloaded the latest version from Apple.com.

I can live with losing a lot of this stuff -- I still have the photos on my phone and on my camera cards, I can buy the music again... but here is what I don't understand, and it's a pretty basic issue: something was messing up my computer, and whether it was a software problem or had it been a virus of some kind, wouldn't backing up the system to my external drive and then replacing the computer's data with a backup copy have just have copied the problem as well? I had fixed permissions and done one-by-one elimination tests for the past two months and nothing worked. This was drastic but it worked, at least... I can use my computer again.

OMG... apparently I have two Apple IDs, which is news to me. One is just my name, the other is my full email address. So when I sign in using the email address, there are all my missing music purchases. Only now, it says that since this computer is already attached to an Apple ID (which I must have set up at some point because a couple of my music purchases are attached to it) I can't authorize it to the correct one for 90 days!

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Answer 9

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Mar 27, 2012 4:14 PM in response to Cynthia Delmar

How is it possible that anyone still fails to understand the absolute necessity of backing up one's data on at least one external hard drive? NOTHING else is a reliable backup!

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Answer 10

Mar 27, 2012 4:21 PM in response to eww

Yeah, I know... boneheaded move. Because it's a laptop I just never do full backups to my external drive because I don't ever leave it hooked up. I copy the data files I have to have but not the system as a whole.

Definitely need to invest in something I can connect via my wireless network and get Time Machine going. I could have saved myself two months of trying to figure out what went wrong.

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