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Install Lion on a Leopard machine using Disc Image?

T

Travisimo

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 22, 2009
991
226
I'm certain this has already been asked, but a quick search did not yield any concrete results.

I have an iMac running Snow Leopard and plan to purchase Lion via the Mac App Store. My wife has a Macbook that's still running Leopard. Will I be able to create a disc image (using the method described after downloading but before installing Lion) and install it to her machine without having to first upgrade to Snow Leopard?

I know the original thinking was that you'd have to upgrade to Snow Leopard first in order to upgrade a Leopard machine since there is no Mac App Store in Leopard. However, the disc image of Lion work or do we still need to upgrade to Snow Leopard first?

Thanks!
 
If your wife's machine meets the required specs you'll be able to perform a clean Lion install on a freshly formatted drive. Not sure if Lion can be installed "on top of" Leopard though. Never tried. I'd get her documents off that thing and just do a clean install.

The only reason Apple mentions a prior OSX requirement is for access to the App Store. But once you transfer that Lion image to bootable media you're fine.
 
I'm 99% sure Apple have already confirmed you can only install Lion on a partition that currently contains the latest Snow Leopard release, meaning you need to install Snow Leopard, then update it, then install Lion onto that
 
Paulywauly said:
I'm 99% sure Apple have already confirmed you can only install Lion on a partition that currently contains the latest Snow Leopard release, meaning you need to install Snow Leopard, then update it, then install Lion onto that
Click to expand...
Nope. Plenty of us here that have done otherwise. Snow Leopard is not required.
 
Ok, thanks guys. One followup question, if I may:

On her Macbook, there is also a Windows XP partition that she boots to with Boot Camp. If I do a clean install of Lion using the disc image, will this wipe out her Windows install as well, or will that still work with the Option key on startup?
 
Travisimo said:
Ok, thanks guys. One followup question, if I may:

On her Macbook, there is also a Windows XP partition that she boots to with Boot Camp. If I do a clean install of Lion using the disc image, will this wipe out her Windows install as well, or will that still work with the Option key on startup?
Click to expand...

It shouldn't do- just make sure OS X is installed on its own partition, for example Macintosh HD. If you choose that disk when you install the software, bootcamp will work as normal.
 
Travisimo said:
Ok, thanks guys. One followup question, if I may:

On her Macbook, there is also a Windows XP partition that she boots to with Boot Camp. If I do a clean install of Lion using the disc image, will this wipe out her Windows install as well, or will that still work with the Option key on startup?
Click to expand...

When you boot up off your created Lion disk and go to disk utility just make sure you don't repartition the drive to one partition, instead just erase the partition that currently holds leopard then install Lion there. This will keep the XP Partition as is.
 
Just wanted to followup and say thanks for the tips. I was able to upgrade my wife's laptop from Leopard to Lion without issue. I simply did as you guys suggested by erasing the Leopard partition and installing Lion via the USB image I had created from my iMac install. The Windows XP partition was untouched and works just fine.

Thanks again!
 
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