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Downgrade from 10.7 (Lion) back to 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

I experienced major problems downgrading -- for some reason SL couldn't be reinstalled, and Lion reported that my Time Machine backup file couldn't be verified, so it wanted to create a new backup file from scratch. :eek:

I discovered that if you hold down the Option key while rebooting your computer, a startup option called "Recovery HD" appears. Click on that and you can restore from a Time Machine backup, even if Lion thinks it's a bad file. You don't even need the SL installation disks. (Just make sure to copy beforehand any files you've created or modified since you installed Lion, because you will lose them when you restore to SL.)

Glad to be back with SL. Lion looks promising, but it's still a little too buggy for my taste.
 
elrock said:
I discovered that if you hold down the Option key while rebooting your computer, a startup option called "Recovery HD" appears. Click on that and you can restore from a Time Machine backup, even if Lion thinks it's a bad file. You don't even need the SL installation disks. (Just make sure to copy beforehand any files you've created or modified since you installed Lion, because you will lose them when you restore to SL.)
Click to expand...

The "Recovery HD" partition is actually created by Lion when you install it. So if you want a totally fresh Lion-free installation, you'll have to reformat your entire hard-drive to remove that partition as well.
 
Jason S. said:
The "Recovery HD" partition is actually created by Lion when you install it. So if you want a totally fresh Lion-free installation, you'll have to reformat your entire hard-drive to remove that partition as well.
Click to expand...

Where is the recovery partition? When I hold the option key during boot all i see if my Bootcamp and my Lion Partition I don't see a recovery partition on there. I want to go back to 10.6 and I have time machine backup but I don't know how to go back. I tried the SL disc on boot and that just got stuck at grey screen. Do I need to use migration assistant?
 
i have tried booting from the disc on startup (with the ctrl+c) and it works, but when it asks which hard drive to install on, it says i can't install on Macintosh HD because a newer version of 'Mac OS X Installer' is required. weird.
 
I followed the procedure that you have described, but it tells me: "Impossible installing Mac OS X on this computer" ...

I have a 10.6.6 Mac OS X disc restore! Why??
 
1) Boot into OS X Lion
2) Insert your OS X Snow Leopard DVD
3) Applications / System Preferences / Startup Disk
4) Click your Snow Leopard DVD in the list and click Restart. Your Mac will now reboot fully to the installer, erase the partition and install!
 
Downgrading to SL

Hey guys,

I downgraded to SL by inserting the Mac OS X SL install disc into my MacBook Pro, holding down Option when I started my computer, and installed it. Nothing was lost, but this became a big problem. Install of plain old Snow Leopard, I had a hybrid version of both Snow Leopard and Lion. Mail had some features of SL and Lion, it kept the frameworks from Lion so Final Cut and Aperture wouldn't open (didn't really look through all of my programs), and none of my plugins worked in Safari, including Flash even after I reinstalled it. I then tried wiping and restoring from Time Capsule and while this fixed the hybrid problem, I am still experiencing problems opening up some programs due to frameworks issues.
 
jackhdev said:
Hey guys,

I downgraded to SL by inserting the Mac OS X SL install disc into my MacBook Pro, holding down Option when I started my computer, and installed it. Nothing was lost, but this became a big problem. Install of plain old Snow Leopard, I had a hybrid version of both Snow Leopard and Lion. Mail had some features of SL and Lion, it kept the frameworks from Lion so Final Cut and Aperture wouldn't open (didn't really look through all of my programs), and none of my plugins worked in Safari, including Flash even after I reinstalled it. I then tried wiping and restoring from Time Capsule and while this fixed the hybrid problem, I am still experiencing problems opening up some programs due to frameworks issues.
Click to expand...
I had similar problems when I downgraded. The bad news is that in order to fix the Final Cut and Aperture problems is to install an older version or wait for a new version to upgrade. Happened to me with iPhoto and Garageband too. Also, do you have Safari 5.0.4? That's where the plugin problems started for me.
 
Can someone confirm it please?...
I've tried to install Snow Leopard today ( I've created another partition through Disk Utility to install it ), but I couldn't install just because the media runs, runs, runs and runs and nothing, but the apple logo, happens! I'm quite sure that there's nothing wrong with the media...I'm using Lions last version.
 
This is how you do it without losing data.

I just posted a video yesterday on how to downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard without losing any data. It's a bit lengthy, but check it out if you need to know how to do it AND have the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaDMbmsRqkQ

Let me apologize for the horrid audio quality ahead of time; I used Quicktime to screen cap because ScreenFlow isn't compatible with Lion. The audio will get better throughout the video.
 
Lion Leopard hybrid

Just wanted to share my problem (a big one)... tried reverting back from Lion to Snow Leopard by doing the boot from SL and re-installing SL.... big idiotic mistake lol!! I now have a mongrel that won't let me login using my own credentials, so I tried going in as a "Guest" to my own system in order to partition the drive and do what Taylor was saying in his video. It won't let me do that because it is not accepting the administrator password (which was set by me), so I am now at a total loss what to do. All I have is the Snow Leopard disc and no other disc. Have I completely jammed this thing up now, it definitely feels like it!? How do you go back to SL if you have turned the system into a mix of SL AND Lion and cannot partition the drive because of keychain issues??!!
 
SL won't install

Hey all. Same problem here with SL not wanting to install on a partition on a Lion machine. Any solutions to that issue anyone?

Have all files backed up so no worries if a reinstall deletes everything. But I can't reinstall. Just get the grey apple logo screen :(
 
Downgrading is easy

I installed the latest OSX Lion beta, had a few problems with programs not quiting properly, so i decided to roll back to snow leopard.

I have had no issues when doing this. Here is how I did it.

Put Snow Leopard disk in and restarted, held c to boot from CD. When it loaded i just followed the install steps. This took slightly longer than normal but once it was complete it booted straight into Snow Leopard. My only issue was iTunes would not open as i had 10.5 installed when using Lion and snow leopard reinstalled 10.3.

I upgraded iTunes and this then enabled me to open my itunes library again.

I had not lost any of my files and all my settings are the same as they were on Lion.
 
OrganisedChaos said:
Just wanted to share my problem (a big one)... tried reverting back from Lion to Snow Leopard by doing the boot from SL and re-installing SL.... big idiotic mistake lol!! I now have a mongrel that won't let me login using my own credentials, so I tried going in as a "Guest" to my own system in order to partition the drive and do what Taylor was saying in his video. It won't let me do that because it is not accepting the administrator password (which was set by me), so I am now at a total loss what to do. All I have is the Snow Leopard disc and no other disc. Have I completely jammed this thing up now, it definitely feels like it!? How do you go back to SL if you have turned the system into a mix of SL AND Lion and cannot partition the drive because of keychain issues??!!
Click to expand...


There is a very easy fix for this and that is to insert your SL install disc, hold down c when you start your computer. Once its loaded go to Utilities at the top then select reset password. Select your account and change the password, it can be the same as it was before. Once you have changed this just restart and you will be able to log in again. You should also find you havent lost any of your old files.
 
Hey Guys

Tried to downgrade to Slow Leopard on an iMac and had no success

booting off the retail SL CD gives you a grey screen of death with some error about CPU family not supported

also tried running the SL CD from Lion which gave me a rather funny error about needing OS version 23.1? I need to screenshot this error it was quite funny.

I called apple and they said there was no way.
 
Mack Daddy said:
Hey Guys

Tried to downgrade to Slow Leopard on an iMac and had no success

booting off the retail SL CD gives you a grey screen of death with some error about CPU family not supported

also tried running the SL CD from Lion which gave me a rather funny error about needing OS version 23.1? I need to screenshot this error it was quite funny.

I called apple and they said there was no way.
Click to expand...

How old is your iMac?

Have you tried using your original OS disks that came with your iMac?
 
Blue Sun said:
How old is your iMac?

Have you tried using your original OS disks that came with your iMac?
Click to expand...

sorry, it's brand new came with Lion pre-installed (they didn't even warn me it would have Lion on it!)

I also tried a grey disk from another newish iMac which didn't work
 
Not sure what you can do then.

If you've already tried the OS disks that came with the same spec iMac as yours, but purchased pre-Lion, then you're most likely stuck with 10.7.

Don't worry, it will improve, it just needs some time.
 
Restored Almost

Downgrading worked great ... almost.

I created a Time Machine Backup, booted off install disk, reformatted drive, installed SL, and restored from Time Machine. When the machine rebooted, I was back to SL, but it would not let me log in - didn't accept my single space as the password. Anyone know if Lion was using a different keyboard character for a [space]?
 
Big Ouch

I see that others want the same thing that I do, getting my completely workable Snow Leopard back. I have always like Leopards better then Lions anyway, that should have been a clue. As some of the posts are saying they dont know if there files will work with the reload of Snow Leopard, I have read that they will not.

I personally have tried to use logic and reinstall Snow Leopard from Cd and got a message saying that I could not go back.
 
Installed .. Almost - FIXED

I had the same message - you need to reformat your disk.

Once I did that, SN installed, but the password was lost - I had to use the "Reset Password" utility on the Install disk, and then reinstall SN again, but it is now working and applications that require Rosetta now work again.

I love Macs - hate Lion.
 
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