My Mac has gotten pretty dirty from all the stuff I've installed and the files I have accumulated these past months. I have tried reinstalling by holding Command–R and following the process. However, doing so has not cleaned up my file system. In fact all it seems to have done is broken some of my already installed programs (e.g. Xcode and MacPorts). Is there a way to reinstall Lion so that it will behave like its just been taken out of the box?
I have previously been an Ubuntu user, and in Ubuntu I think I was presented with the option of scraping the existing file system when I do a reinstallation.
Best Answer
The different thing to try after booting in to Recovery Mode is selecting the "Disk Utility" program first in order for you to erase your existing OS X install.
Once Disk Utility is open you can select the Macintosh HD or so named hard drive where your existing OS X install is at, then erase the selected drive from with in the Disk Utility.
Quit Disk Utility, and then you should be at Mac OS X Utilites window again as pictured below. Then from there select "Reinstall Mac OS X" as was done before.
This procedure should allow a clean install of OS X, as opposed to a re-install over an existing copy of OS X.