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Another Downgrade Thread: MacBook Air 2011

I

imsostupid

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 19, 2012
8
0
Hey guys. As you can see from my username, im freaking stupid. I made the mistake of running a beta as my main os. this is the last time i fiddle around with things im not familiar with. Im done with betas and alphas.

with that being said, i need help downgrading my 2011 macbook air to lion. I tried and read everything. Even the thread thats two below me. I booted into recovery and went to disk utility but when i tried to erase my HD it says "error. cannot unmount disk". After seeing that i assumed, maybe i'll just reinstall the OS on top without erasing. When i went to go reinstall the OS, i realized that the reinstallation is for 10.8 and not for 10.7. There isn't a trace of 10.7 anywhere. My online recovery is now for 10.8.

I have no idea what to do guys. Please help here. Belittle away, i deserve it for being so stupid. So recap, my online recovery is now 10.8 and i can't unmount my disk to erase. freaking great.

I dont have any time machine back ups of 10.7 either. any luck?
 
imsostupid said:
Hey guys. As you can see from my username, im freaking stupid. I made the mistake of running a beta as my main os. this is the last time i fiddle around with things im not familiar with. Im done with betas and alphas.

with that being said, i need help downgrading my 2011 macbook air to lion. I tried and read everything. Even the thread thats two below me. I booted into recovery and went to disk utility but when i tried to erase my HD it says "error. cannot unmount disk". After seeing that i assumed, maybe i'll just reinstall the OS on top without erasing. When i went to go reinstall the OS, i realized that the reinstallation is for 10.8 and not for 10.7. There isn't a trace of 10.7 anywhere. My online recovery is now for 10.8.

I have no idea what to do guys. Please help here. Belittle away, i deserve it for being so stupid. So recap, my online recovery is now 10.8 and i can't unmount my disk to erase. freaking great.

I dont have any time machine back ups of 10.7 either. any luck?
Click to expand...

Go the MAS and download lion. Then do this.
Then you will need to do a clean install of Lion. When start your mac have the USB stick plugged in and then press the power button. Hold the shift button immediately and boot from the USB drive. From there go to disk utility and wipe your drive clean. (You will need a backup of your data.) Then install and enjoy.
You could partition your drive and install ML on another partition and dual boot after you are done. This would give you the best of both worlds.
 
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I'm in the same unfortunate boat. I cant get my macbook air with 10.8 to boot the lion usb drive. I just get the circle with a line through it. The same usb drive will boot a snow leopard mac and successfully upgrade it to lion. I've also tried recovering a partition from an install .dmg and boot from that with the same result. If i try to launch a lion installer to install on another disk, it says I cant run a 10.7 installer in 10.8.

If I try to use the 10.8 recovery disk will it install mountain lion or lion? It tells me I haven't purchased Lion when I try that. My mac came with Lion. If I buy lion in the app store will the 10.8 recovery install lion?

I don't know what else to try. Everyone else's successful methods don't seem to be working on my mac. I thought It might be the rEFIt boot menu I have installed so I uninstalled that and still have no fix.
 
Restart your machine, hold cmd+option+R while booting to enter the Internet recovery. The rest should be fairly easy, good luck! ;)
 
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