Archive and reinstall lion

You will then be greeted with various partitions you can use instead of the main Lion partition. Should you wish to simply reinstall Lion, you would select the Recovery HD partition. Once loaded, you just need to follow the prompts and install it over your current Lion installation. The new installation will replace all the core system files, but leave your user profile and data complete untouched.

Your music, documents, even passwords and bookmarks, and applications will not touched; none of your personal information will be deleted nor will it backup your old system, as was common in older OS X versions.

It is a seamless process that simply rolls Lion back to the default installation build. There will be nothing lost and no disk spaced wasted on old system files.

You can read about the process over at Apple. Note: It was the case that older builds of OS X allowed various types of reinstallations like Archive and Install or a complete erase , but these have been omitted in Lion, greatly simplifying the process. Lion doesn't offer the different kinds of installs that previous versions of the OS did. If you use the Lion installer, you will perform an "Upgrade" install that keeps your files and programs intact.

It's still always a good idea to back up your data before upgrading. If you need to perform a clean install, MacWorld offers advice , but it's not an option in the installer as in previous versions of the OS. It depends on which install option you choose: "Archive and Install" and "Upgrade" will keep your user files. The Important Information window appears. After reading or printing the information, click Continue.

The Software License Agreement window appears. An agreement sheet appears. If you agree with the license agreement, click Agree. The Select a Destination window appears. Click the volume that you wish to install to. Click Options. The installation options sheet appears. Select "Archive and Install". Click OK. Check the volume your are installing to is the correct one. Click Continue to begin the installation.

I have no clue as to how or if that was connected to the Archive Utility problem, but I was unable to have a single active widget or any kind until I repaired permissions and restarted. Then I could add widgets, and the Archive Utility coincidentally began working again. Interestingly enough, it was only in the de-compressing of files that my Archive Utility was bonkers. It could compress files all day long without trouble. As I said, I have no clue as to what the interaction could be -- or even if there was one -- between the Dashboard, Archive Utility and the permission repairs, that lead to all of these things bing cleared up.

But looking at the Activity monitor is an easy way to begin to track it down, or at least look for other things that have run off the rails Oct 2, PM. Oct 7, AM in response to cajund In response to cajund. Oct 7, AM. Oct 15, AM in response to cajund In response to cajund. Are people sure that it's completely hanging? I thought this too but I noticed that after 10 minutes or so it finally did manage to uncompress the. Oct 15, AM. This has happened to me before, but I can't recall if it was immediately after using Onyx to do the above.

I'd forgotten what I'd done to resolve the problem before Oct 19, AM. Nov 1, PM in response to cajund In response to cajund. Following all sugestions mentioned here did NOT resolve the problem.

More ivestigation is needed and the help will be appreciated. Nov 1, PM. Nov 14, PM in response to cajund In response to cajund. I'm still having the same issue. Will try a repair and reboot but it would be cool if this got fixed Nov 14, PM.

Click the gear icon labeled Options, then click Continue. If you're asked to select a user you know the password for, select the user, click Next, then enter their administrator password. After installation is complete, your Mac might restart to a setup assistant. If you're selling, trading in, or giving away your Mac , press Command-Q to quit the assistant without completing setup.

Then click Shut Down. When the new owner starts up the Mac, they can use their own information to complete setup. When you install macOS from Recovery, you get the current version of the most recently installed macOS, with some exceptions:.