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Downgrading to Yosemite from El Capitan (Help)

J

JMarkyBB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 17, 2015
10
0
JMarkyBB
Help! Tried downgrading back to Yosemite, it only gave me the option of El Capitan, so I think I've cocked up by rebooting from OS Utilities, now how I have a white screen with a flashing folder with a question mark on it, what do I do now? No time machine back up. Thanks in advance.
 
Hi,

you can not downgrade OS X without wiping the drive out.

So, basically you can't downgrade if you don't have a backup, unless you don't care losing all your data and applications.

As for the folder with a flashing question mark, it means your hard drive is no longer here.

Try booting into the Recovery partition (cmd + r on chime) : what happens there, do you get an OS X Utilities window, or a spinning Earth ?

And what model of Mac is it, what OS did it ship with ?
 
When I turn on and off it just goes back to white screen with question marked folder. It came with Yosemite.
 
All my files are backed up on Dropbox, apps I can re install, so no loss on that front.
 
JMarkyBB said:
When I turn on and off it just goes back to white screen with question marked folder. It came with Yosemite.
Click to expand...

Plug your device into an ethernet connection.

When booting up your computer, press and hold Command+Option+R, until a globe appears.

This will download the recovery partition specific to your Mac (since you said your Mac came with Yosemite, it will download the Yosemite recovery partition).

When you update to a newer version of OS X, it also updates the built in recovery partition. So the reason it only gave you the option to reinstall El Capitan, is because that's the version of the recovery partition. However, the Internet Recovery Partition downloads the recovery partition of the OS X version that shipped with your specific machine. For example, my old Mac shipped with Lion, so if I ever went into internet recovery, it downloaded Lion.
 
Again, hold cmd + r down on chime sound to boot into Recovery.

Let us know what happens.

Once you get the OS X Utilities window, select Disk Utility to check if the internal drive is visible there.
If yes select and Repair the Macintosh HD partition.

Please report back.
 
Last edited:
Done the Command+Option+R, got the globe, it now won't find my Iiternet connection, but will find others around me.
 
Ok, found my connection, globe is turning and progress bar is filling up.
 
Ok, its given me OS Utilities back, its given me OSX Lion as OS, at least it's not El Capitan.
 
Mmmm just installing Yosemite as we speak, thanks to both of you, your help has been invaluable.
 
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