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Downgrading 2011 MBPs from Lion to Snow Leopard
- Thread starter mrmister
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maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Sure, if you installed Lion yourself and the MBP came with SL, its easy. Pop the disc into the drive, reboot and proceed. Make sure your data is backed up though.
If the MBP came delivered with Lion, then its a bit trickier. For the new 2011 MBAs it won't work, but since current MBPs already had SL on there you should be ok with installing SL.
The issue is that generally the lowest version of OSX you can install on a Mac is the one that came on it. Since however there are no hardware changes on the MBPs you may be able to reinstall SL
If the MBP came delivered with Lion, then its a bit trickier. For the new 2011 MBAs it won't work, but since current MBPs already had SL on there you should be ok with installing SL.
The issue is that generally the lowest version of OSX you can install on a Mac is the one that came on it. Since however there are no hardware changes on the MBPs you may be able to reinstall SL
However, if your MBP did not come with disks (my new 15-inch for my son has Lion and no disks), then it's impossible to downgrade to SL. There are no published SL disks that include your 2011 hardware, and without those drivers the install will fail when it sees it doesn't support your hardware. If you know someone with a 2011 MBP with SL disks, those will probably work with your MBP.
That said, there are some VERY complicated workarounds to use the published SL 10.6.3 disks involving getting the SL Kext files from an MBP with SL, but that's not for the faint-of-heart. When many people did this to convert the 2010 Mac Mini Server to SL Client, the installation was able to be forced but things like wi-fi still didn't work properly.
That said, there are some VERY complicated workarounds to use the published SL 10.6.3 disks involving getting the SL Kext files from an MBP with SL, but that's not for the faint-of-heart. When many people did this to convert the 2010 Mac Mini Server to SL Client, the installation was able to be forced but things like wi-fi still didn't work properly.
Icy1007
macrumors 65816
If you have the discs, it will work. If you don't then you can't do it.
It's not a matter of "trying to do it"
If it comes with Lion, just use Lion.
You'll probably need to 'acquire' a 10.6.6 restore disc from a 2011 MBP, because they were shipped with a modified build of 10.6.6 which you won't find on a retail SL disc.
EDIT: Everything PenguinMac said 😛 Obviously it will work with restore discs because those discs work on the very same hardware, the OS the MBP comes with is irrelevant (in this case).
EDIT: Everything PenguinMac said 😛 Obviously it will work with restore discs because those discs work on the very same hardware, the OS the MBP comes with is irrelevant (in this case).
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Icy1007
macrumors 65816
ok, so just to be clear... IF I bought a 2011 MBP today, and it shipped with Lion and NO SL install disks, I couldn't use my retail SL disk to clean install the OS???
What if I just swapped out my HD in my 2009 MBP with SL on it? Or what if I just cloned my old drive to the new one? would this work??
What if I just swapped out my HD in my 2009 MBP with SL on it? Or what if I just cloned my old drive to the new one? would this work??
Not quite. It has to be the 10.6.6 build that shipped with the 2011 MBP's, which is usually later than the vanilla 10.6.6 that upgraders received through Software Update.
my guess is wifi problems, I just got a 13.3" 2011 MBP today and since upgrading to LION the wifi is dooooog slow, there are quite a few people complaining about it on apples site
since I just got it today and have spent most of the time trying to figure out this wifi issue I am tempted to go back to sl on it because it worked perfectly
I just got my 15" MBP a few weeks ago and it came with SL. I upgraded to Lion last week because I was curious to see how it was. After I upgraded I noticed my machine was running hotter, fans louder, battery wasn't as good, etc. etc. Also I wasn't impressed with mission control and launchpad. Needless to say I successfully downgraded to SL using the discs that came with my machine, but I kept getting kernel panics and stuff. I ended up wiping my harddrive and reinstalling SL since I hadn't put too much on my machine yet. So yes it's possible but it might be a little buggy. I'm not a tech pro by any means so maybe I didn't do something properly when I downgraded but who knows. Just back up your stuff before switching OS's and take comfort knowing if everything goes terribly wrong you can do a full wipe and clean install.
I'd be interested to hear what happens if you call Apple and ask for disks. After all, the "What's in the box" section of the specs states that software DVDs are included...
Macsavvytech
macrumors 6502a
There are plenty of people who still need to run PowerPC Applications for work. Some product don't have a choice!
You'll have to wipe the disk and do a clean install of SL. Don't think you can 'downgrade' as such.
Its possible
1. Using disk utility in Lion, you can divide up your current partition in order to dual boot lion and snow leopard.
2. You can boot from the snow leopard disk and reformat the whole drive to create 1 snow leopard partition by using the disk utility under "utilities"
1. Using disk utility in Lion, you can divide up your current partition in order to dual boot lion and snow leopard.
2. You can boot from the snow leopard disk and reformat the whole drive to create 1 snow leopard partition by using the disk utility under "utilities"
If it helps any i just downgraded from Lion using my SL retail OS disks because OS X Lion sucks with wifi connections, i did a clean install via disc boot (power on & hold C) & voila im back on SL.