Booting Retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD Fails

[jandrso]

So I am trying to "downgrade" my MBP 6.2 from High Sierra back to the original OS which was 10.6. Now the original HDD is out and a 256gb SSD is the replacement drive is installed and formatted as GUID partition with MacOS journaledFS.

The grey system restore DVD will not boot. The retail from Apple Store SL 10.6.3 DVD won't boot. I tried creating an image of the DVD's and putting them on USB drives. I tried external superdrives. I tried restoring the image from the USB drive to the blank internal drive. All I get when trying to boot the older OS is a whitish screen with the grey Apple logo. no progress bar...nothing.

If I hold Option down I get 2 selections... Windows (not installed) or the USB drive with image. if I select windows, it goes to a black screen with no operating system found. The other boot selection result in the white screen and grey apple.

Is my firmware needing a reset? How do I do that? I have not had bootcamp on here in ages. Like literally 5 years. I had forgotten I even had it since I deleted the partition way back when and extended the macOS partition back to use all the drive space.

So any ideas? Firmware reset?

 

[Fishrrman]

I realize this doesn't answer your questions, but...

Is there any particular reason why you want to install Snow Leopard?

Could El Capitan or Low Sierra (10.12) work instead?

 

[jandrso]

I realize this doesn't answer your questions, but...

Is there any particular reason why you want to install Snow Leopard?

Could El Capitan or Low Sierra (10.12) work instead?

Because the machine, while functional on El Capitan or Sierra, it is much more smooth on Snow, Lion, or Mt. Lion. High Sierra was on it and it was dog.

 

[chrfr]

So I am trying to "downgrade" my MBP 6.2 from High Sierra back to the original OS which was 10.6. Now the original HDD is out and a 256gb SSD is the replacement drive is installed and formatted as GUID partition with MacOS journaledFS.

The grey system restore DVD will not boot. The retail from Apple Store SL 10.6.3 DVD won't boot. I tried creating an image of the DVD's and putting them on USB drives. I tried external superdrives. I tried restoring the image from the USB drive to the blank internal drive. All I get when trying to boot the older OS is a whitish screen with the grey Apple logo. no progress bar...nothing.

If I hold Option down I get 2 selections... Windows (not installed) or the USB drive with image. if I select windows, it goes to a black screen with no operating system found. The other boot selection result in the white screen and grey apple.

Is my firmware needing a reset? How do I do that? I have not had bootcamp on here in ages. Like literally 5 years. I had forgotten I even had it since I deleted the partition way back when and extended the macOS partition back to use all the drive space.

So any ideas? Firmware reset?

If you've ever updated the firmware on the computer, internet recovery will work but that should get you Lion instead of Snow Leopard. (the retail disc will never work with the 2010 MBPs, so there's no point in trying it.) Even an inexpensive SSD will improve the performance of the computer. I run High Sierra on a 2010 13" MBP and it works fine with an SSD.

 

[jandrso]

So I did the internet restore and it only offered me High Sierra as the OS option. It does run well enough on the SSD but then again it is a virgin installation with no other applications installed or running.

I am not sure why folks think Snow won't load on the box. It came with Snow Leopard. The system restore DVD disk is Snow Leopard. I was an early adopter for this machine and waited weeks for shipment. I was still very much in "love" with Leopard and was a bit shaky with the lack of PPC support in Snow. Core architecture changes in an OS can make. things a bit unstable you see. Lion came out a full year later.

I will chalk this up to a firmware update issue.

I will run on HS for now, but surely there is a fix for Snow.

 

[chrfr]

So I did the internet restore and it only offered me High Sierra as the OS option. It does run well enough on the SSD but then again it is a virgin installation with no other applications installed or running.

I am not sure why folks think Snow won't load on the box. It came with Snow Leopard. The system restore DVD disk is Snow Leopard.

The version of Snow Leopard on the original retail disc is later than the version that's on any retail SL disc. That later version is required to boot the 2010 MacBook Pro.
If you hold down command-option-shift-R and start the computer, that will offer Lion for you.

 

[Idefix]

and when you get frustrated enough, just take it to a Mac repair shop and ask them what they would charge. $60?

I expect they would try to talk you out it.
for example, you can't get modern browsers...

 

[jandrso]

Well I have settled on High Sierra. All of the signs are pointing in that direction anyway and I am loathe to sink any more money into it. Besides it has good parental controls and is relatively stable. I am at 10.13.6 after updates. seems to be running pretty well with no major bogging down.

 

[hawkeye_a]

I do not know if this is the same issue I had over a year ago, but here's what happened to me.

I upgraded my 2016 MBP to the latest OS which involved upgrading the filesystem to the "Apple File System" (late 2017, i dont remember which OS, but it was the latest at the time). After the installation, I decided i wanted to downgrade to the OS which came with the machine, and the process was excruciating (I think it was the update of the filesystem which was the issue).

You might be experiencing the same thing? Try scouring the Apple support boards on how to down-grade. If I find anything, i'll be sure to post some links here.

Good luck.