I found a solution....but the chosen "answer" to this question is broadly described and gets you no where, so needless to say this has been driving me insane (Kappy's passive-aggressive follow up comment didn't exactly make me happy either....so on top of being wrong this person is also not keen on life in general).
Here's EXACTLY what I did, whether the most direct solution or not:
1. Hooked the Mac to an Ethernet connection (wifi will work fine as well)
2. Started in internet recovery (held down Command + Option + R) after hearing the chime
3. Let it do its thing (if you don't have Ethernet plugged in its going to prompt you for wifi creds)
4. When the recovery screen finally came on, I selected "reinstall Mac OS X"
5. Clicked through the junk written by lawyers
6. Brick wall....could not install on the single partition because it was locked/etc etc.
7. Went up to the file menu and quit the installer
8. We're back to the main recovery screen.
9. Open disk utility
10. Now I have something different: the main, locked hard drive and an ejectable disk with the same OS X Base System name (hope has been briefly restored, but vicious skepticism remains very high)
11. I select the very TOP item (the main disk, not the sub, which for me was a Toshiba something or other) and clicked "partition"
12. I changed the name to "Macintosh HD" (Put whatever you want here. Doesn't matter).
13. Change the vol. to journaled, and I did not choose the encrypted option because I was so screwed already the last thing I needed was to create myself more headaches....without this you're back to square 1
14. Partitioned it (don't worry, it won't bite....remember, you're already at rock bottom so it can't get any worse).
15. Quit disk utility
16. Go back and select "reinstall Mac OS X"
17. Junk by lawyers...click click click
18. Oh what's this? I can install on this disk now? Fantastic!
19. Run that baby
20. Voila......now you can freely look at cat / video game gifs, or reply to incorrect, passive aggressive comments on the Apple discussion boards. The choice is yours.
As for any other issues, I don't know. It works. Do I sound like an expert?
I hope it works for you. Enjoy.
