How to downgrade from SL to L ?

[PJohnson]

I am done fighting the wireless problem in SL....

My new to me MBP has SL on it. I did not get the disks with it.

I have the hard drive from my now deceased PB that has Leopard on it. It worked flawlessly until the logic board fried.

I want to put Leopard from the PB onto the MBP. What is the best way to do that?

Swapping drives won't work, different types.

Background on the wifi for those that are curious...
I have been fighting wifi drops constantly since I got the MBP. I searched and tried every solution suggested. All failed. I suspected it was how SL manages the Airport card. To test my theory, I booted the MBP off the hard drive from my PB (via USB drive case) running Leopard. The problem disappeared... I went MANY hours with a SOLID connection. Never dropped.

I think Airport in SL constantly tries to connect to 802.11(n) networks whenever it sees them as they would be the fastest. I do not have an 802.11(n) capable home wifi network. Each time a nearby network, one in particular I identified, was seen by the MBP, it would try to connect to it and drop my home wifi.

Thanks in advance for the help

Phil

 

[vansouza]

What recovery disks or OS disks do you have because installing Mac OS is going to require one or the other, I would think.

 

[maflynn]

If your mbp came with SL then you cannot downgrade to leopard. The lowest version any Mac can revert to is the one they came with

Swapping hds wont work because the old HD wont have the drivers for your mbp

 

[PJohnson]

I do not have an disks for the MBP.

I believe it originally came with Leopard.

 

[old-wiz]

I do not have an disks for the MBP.

I believe it originally came with Leopard.

If you don't have the disks you are out of luck; you need the disks to re-install.

 

[vansouza]

You can contact Apple Support to get the replacement set for recovery DVDs; I am under the impression that they do not cost very much... if the unit came with Leopard then that would be your best choice of action to reach your goal.

 

[PJohnson]

Maybe this is a dumb question....

I am able to run the MBP booted from the USB drive that has Leopard on it. In fact, I am doing so as I type this.

Could I just copy the System somehow from the USB hard drive to the MBP hard drive and reboot? (it sounds too easy)

Phil

 

[PJohnson]

Anyone?

Seriously, can I copy Leopard from a booting drive onto my MBP to replace SL?

Phil

 

[Mal]

Not really. You can use Disk Utility's "Restore" functionality, but you would either have to wipe your drive clean, or risk problems by letting it leave files that don't have the same name (this means anything that didn't exist in Leopard but was part of Snow Leopard would still be on your system, and you'd probably risk running into issues). I wouldn't recommend going that route, although if you're desperate you can try it.

You can do it booted from the USB stick or booted from any OS X install disk.

jW

 

[BittenApple]

Anyone?

Seriously, can I copy Leopard from a booting drive onto my MBP to replace SL?

Phil

You can create a partition on your drive, then restore the Leopard DVD image onto it. Then boot using that partition drive, erase the original partition and reinstall. After you reinstall just delete the Leopard partition you made.