Reinstall OS X LIon via USB Drive

Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive

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. Alternatively, 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.

Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the Macintosh HD entry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If Disk Utility reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the main menu.

Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Alternatively, see:

Reinstall OS X Without Erasing the Drive

Choose the version you have installed now:

OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet

if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Then you will need to install Yosemite unless you have a Lion installer on a flash drive already. However, you should be able to re-download Lion from your Purchases listings in the App Store. Did you try that?

If you cannot repair permissions, then that means you are not working with a bootable system volume.