Badly need to revert to older OS - Urgent help needed please!

[plush]

Hello,

My computer: 13" Mid-2012 MBP, 4GB ram, 500GB Harddrive, 2.5 ghz I5.

I was caught in a boot loop the other day - white screen with apple that wouldn't load beyond 75% on the bar - and had to do a system restore. Apple forced me into a High Sierra upgrade from El Capitan.

High Sierra has made my computer run terribly. Worst of all, it's my work machine and I can barely even use my internet browser now.

I need to quickly restore to an older OS. My computer came with Mountain Lion, which I can't revert to through original system restore (Ctrl-opt-shift-power, I believe) since I have the newer OS on it currently. I don't have any discs.

I'm leaving on Monday for 3 weeks abroad and need my computer for work. It's practically useless with High Sierra.

Can I go into Disc Utility and wipe my hard drive clean, then do a system restore to Mountain Lion by using that keystroke? I've got everything backed up but don't want to wipe it clean if it's just going to force me back into High Sierra.

Help please!

 

[Roadstar]

The CPU on that computer should be perfectly adequate for High Sierra, but the small 4GB RAM and a slow traditional hard disk are a combination that’s making the system rather slow. While reverting to the old OS could fix the issue in short term, Apple’s quite likely not going to provide security updates for El Capitan for much longer, so upgrading the RAM and switching to an SSD would make the computer run High Sierra without any major issues.

 

[Ritsuka]

Make a backup of your data, download El Capitan https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886 , make a bootable installer https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 , reboot from the installer, erase the disk and install again.

 

[Fishrrman]

The answer in reply 3 is what you need to do.
It will take some work.

But you have learned a hard lesson here.
That lesson is:
Never never NEVER do an upgrade "this big" UNLESS you first use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a bootable cloned backup of your "existing installation" onto an external hard drive.
WHY?
Because if something goes wrong (as it has for you), you can immediately:
1. Boot from the backup
2. Erase the internal drive
3. RE-clone the cloned backup BACK TO the internal drive, and...
4. ... be "right back where you started from".

Try to download El Cap from the link in reply 2 above.
Does it work?

If so, do this:
1. Get a usb flash drive 8gb or 16gb
2. Download "boot buddy" (it's free):
Boot Buddy – sqwarq
3. Use Boot Buddy to create the bootable flashdrive.

Now, boot from the flash drive and do this:
1. DON'T run the installer yet
2. Instead, close the installer and run Disk Utility
3. Erase the internal drive to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format
4. Close disk utility, and reopen the installer
5. Install a clean copy of El Capitan.

BUT -- YOU BETTER HAVE A BACKUP FIRST!
If you don't have one, make one NOW.
Download CarbonCopyCloner from here:
Carbon Copy Cloner - Download
It's free to download and use for 30 days.

 

[MSastre]

The answer in reply 3 is what you need to do.
It will take some work.

But you have learned a hard lesson here.
That lesson is:
Never never NEVER do an upgrade "this big" UNLESS you first use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a bootable cloned backup of your "existing installation" onto an external hard drive.
WHY?
Because if something goes wrong (as it has for you), you can immediately:
1. Boot from the backup
2. Erase the internal drive
3. RE-clone the cloned backup BACK TO the internal drive, and...
4. ... be "right back where you started from".

Try to download El Cap from the link in reply 2 above.
Does it work?

If so, do this:
1. Get a usb flash drive 8gb or 16gb
2. Download "boot buddy" (it's free):
Boot Buddy – sqwarq
3. Use Boot Buddy to create the bootable flashdrive.

Now, boot from the flash drive and do this:
1. DON'T run the installer yet
2. Instead, close the installer and run Disk Utility
3. Erase the internal drive to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format
4. Close disk utility, and reopen the installer
5. Install a clean copy of El Capitan.

BUT -- YOU BETTER HAVE A BACKUP FIRST!
If you don't have one, make one NOW.
Download CarbonCopyCloner from here:
Carbon Copy Cloner - Download
It's free to download and use for 30 days.

Hard drives have become so inexpensive now that there is no excuse for not maintaining a clone of your system drive. I recommend a 2.5" drive and a dock to connect with your computer.

 

[MacDawg]

Hard drives have become so inexpensive now that there is no excuse for not maintaining a clone of your system drive. I recommend a 2.5" drive and a dock to connect with your computer.

Agreed. It is still astounding to me the number of people in this day and age who have no Time Machine, no clone, no Dropbox (or other cloud based solution), nothing, zero, zip, nada and are panicked they are about to lose something so valuable and irreplaceable that they would do ANYTHING to get it back: a term paper, family photos, music, fill in the ______. They appear to be oblivious that they are at risk to HD or SSD failure at any moment due to lifespan, power surges or some other reason. I have always said, data storage is always cheaper than data recovery. If you would do anything to get it back... do something now to prevent ever losing it.

Note: this is just a general observation and not directed at the OP, who stated they had a backup of everything

 

[jbarley]

Hard drives have become so inexpensive now that there is no excuse for not maintaining a clone of your system drive. I recommend a 2.5" drive and a dock to connect with your computer.

Sorta like what I'm using here...

 

[MSastre]

Sorta like what I'm using here...

View attachment 754762

Exactly! I consider docks and external drives as indispensable tools for system backup, archiving, storage expansion, and testing of updates. I have at least one dock for each computer we own.