Lion Installation Problems

Hi guys,

Last night I made an attempt to install Lion via the Mac App Store. When I ran the .dmg file, everything was working pretty well until it tried to restart my computer. All of the applications closed, but then I got an error message saying that I could not log out. Being the non-tech savvy person that I am, I did a hard shut down, assuming that would be the equivalent of restarting my computer. When I turned on my computer this morning, I was brought to a Mac Utilities screen, I believe and now I'm not entirely sure how to get my computer running again.

The options that were given were (perhaps not with verbatim names): rebooting from Time Machine, Reinstalling Lion (and effectively losing all of my information), going on Safari for help (which is the Safari I'm using right now), and using Disk Utility to restore information. So, without Time Machine, my only option, I believe is Disk Utility. Browsing that, my hard drive still has all the old information, but I don't want to screw up a reboot and lose everything, so I'm coming here for a little extra help. So, the two things that are given to me are my Macintosh HD and the Mac base system (or something to that effect -- unfortunately I cannot multi-task in this mode).

The options that were given to me were: restoring information, repairing the disk, etc. I think what I need to do is restore the information, but that requires erasing one area and then booting the HD (I think). So, my question is what should I erase to boot the HD? Or should I do something completely different?

Thank you!

P.S. Everything right now is running with the Lion UI. I don't have a desktop and everything because it's running in the utilities mode or whatever it is, but yeah.

Get another Mac, Start this up in Target Mode and Backup your users. Doing a full OS upgrade without a backup, oh dear.

Once you have confirmed you have fully backed up your files!!!

Do a clean install of Snow, run all the updates repeatedly.
Then Install Lion.
Run the Software updates.
Then Migrate in your Users.

Haha, I'm glad I didn't go through with this. I'm glad there are other Macs in my house. Thank you.

Off to do some googling on all that stuff so I don't screw that up, too.

Edit:

Actually, after doing some googling another question has popped up. How do I do a clean install of Snow Leopard without the disk? After my old hard drive had crashed, I brought it to an Apple outlet store and the new hard drive came with Snoe Leopard pre-installed. Should I go out and buy a copy of Snow Leopard to perform this?