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Pls how can I downgrade to snow leopard from lion?

jamesbond05

jamesbond05

macrumors member
Original poster
May 24, 2010
46
0
Houston!
Hey guys. I bought lion and upgraded from the app store a day after it was released. A lot of features I like and use a lot are now missing or different and would like to go back to snow leopard. I didn't have a time machine back up prior to upgrading but now I do. Is there a way of reinstalling SL without losing any of my files and applications? Can I just reload the snow leopard CD that came with my mbp. Btw, I'm using an i5 mbp from 2010. Pls any assistance would be really appreciated.
 
Try using the DVD that came with your MBP. I think you'll have to boot from it and use Disk Utilities to erase your HD. Then install Snow Leopard. Then restore with Time Machine or manually drag files back onto your computer.

I suppose there's a chance some of the files won't work on Snow Leopard now that they've been modified on Lion but if that's the case you can just upgrade to Lion again. That would be a lot of trouble for nothing but I would expect your backed up files to work fine in SL.
 
Thanks a lot for the info luigi. Yea I really want to go back to snow leopard. I'm not enjoying not even 1 of the new features. I would really appreciate anymore info from someone that has downgraded from lion to snow leopard successfully. tia
 
jamesbond05 said:
Thanks a lot for the info luigi. Yea I really want to go back to snow leopard. I'm not enjoying not even 1 of the new features. I would really appreciate anymore info from someone that has downgraded from lion to snow leopard successfully. tia
Click to expand...

James, if you wait 8-10 hours, I'll be downgrading back to SL today, so I'll let you know.
 
This isn't a difficult process at all, just time consuming, depending on how you back things up.

1. Back up your stuff. Time Machine, manually, or otherwise.

2. Boot to your Snow Leopard DVD, or the DVD's that came with your computer.

3. Once you've booted to the Snow Leopard DVD, go to Utilities in the menu bar, click Disk Utility and chose your hard drive in the sidebar. Usually the first one on the list. Go to the "Erase" tab, make sure the format is set to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and type whatever you want in for a name. The default is Macintosh HD.

4. Click the Erase button. This will wipe everything off of your hard drive. Your hard drive will be a blank slate.

5. Close Disk Utility and proceed with the Snow Leopard install process.

6. Once Snow Leopard is done installing, proceed to restore your applications and files.

And there you go, you're back to Snow Leopard.
 
I used this method:

1. create a new partition for SL (keep the Lion partition)
2. install SL on a new partition
3. use migration assistant, select the Lion partition
4. you now have a fully working SL with all your data from Lion. now you can erase the Lion partition and run software update so you get all the updates for SL.
 
^Thanks a lot for the info. I think I'll try that
shrx said:
I used this method:

1. create a new partition for SL (keep the Lion partition)
2. install SL on a new partition
3. use migration assistant, select the Lion partition
4. you now have a fully working SL with all your data from Lion. now you can erase the Lion partition and run software update so you get all the updates for SL.
Click to expand...
 
I've tried the method of doing a time machine backup whilst in Lion and then doing a clean install of Snow Leopard, which all goes fine. But then when I try to migrate all my files from the Time Machine backup it says it can't do it because it is from a more up to date version of OS X.

How did none of you get this happen when moving your files back onto Snow Leopard?
 
jgbhardy said:
I've tried the method of doing a time machine backup whilst in Lion and then doing a clean install of Snow Leopard, which all goes fine. But then when I try to migrate all my files from the Time Machine backup it says it can't do it because it is from a more up to date version of OS X.

How did none of you get this happen when moving your files back onto Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...

I'm just speculating here, but I suspect the part in bold (above) is your problem.

I would imagine that what other people have done is do an install of Snow Leopard, and use the last Time Machine backup they took before they upgraded, as the restore. So you're using an SL backup -> SL OS, not Lion backup -> SL OS.

For the work that you've done between the upgrade and the re-install... Hmm.
All I can think of is:

Reinstall Lion
Restore from your latest (Lion) TM backup.
Attach a non-TM drive
Drag and drop any docs, photos etc that you've altered, to the drive
Reinstall SL, and restore with your last SL TM backup.
Try and drag your updated folders / files back, maybe renaming them first.

Only a suggestion, and no guarantee it'll work. There are many Mac whizz's round here with more experience than me.
 
shrx said:
I used this method:

1. create a new partition for SL (keep the Lion partition)
2. install SL on a new partition
3. use migration assistant, select the Lion partition
4. you now have a fully working SL with all your data from Lion. now you can erase the Lion partition and run software update so you get all the updates for SL.
Click to expand...

This is great advice, I'm going to be using it, thank you!
 
shrx said:
I used this method:

1. create a new partition for SL (keep the Lion partition)
2. install SL on a new partition
3. use migration assistant, select the Lion partition
4. you now have a fully working SL with all your data from Lion. now you can erase the Lion partition and run software update so you get all the updates for SL.
Click to expand...

Pls will all my apps like photoshop and word transfer with migration assistant?
 
Boo The Hamster said:
I'm just speculating here, but I suspect the part in bold (above) is your problem.

I would imagine that what other people have done is do an install of Snow Leopard, and use the last Time Machine backup they took before they upgraded, as the restore. So you're using an SL backup -> SL OS, not Lion backup -> SL OS.

For the work that you've done between the upgrade and the re-install... Hmm.
All I can think of is:

Reinstall Lion
Restore from your latest (Lion) TM backup.
Attach a non-TM drive
Drag and drop any docs, photos etc that you've altered, to the drive
Reinstall SL, and restore with your last SL TM backup.
Try and drag your updated folders / files back, maybe renaming them first.

Only a suggestion, and no guarantee it'll work. There are many Mac whizz's round here with more experience than me.
Click to expand...

No I know that is why mine isn't working but it seems like the original person as stated as well didn't do a backup whilst on Snow Leopard and was still able to transfer their files from a Lion backup to Snow Leopard. Wanted to know if they did anything different
 
shrx said:
I used this method:

1. create a new partition for SL (keep the Lion partition)
2. install SL on a new partition
3. use migration assistant, select the Lion partition
4. you now have a fully working SL with all your data from Lion. now you can erase the Lion partition and run software update so you get all the updates for SL.
Click to expand...

Couldn't get this to work.
 
I recently purchased one of the brand new iMacs that came with Lion on it. I'd like to make a SL partition, but when I try to boot from my SL disc, the screen goes black with a bunch of text and says I need to restart the computer. Is anyone else having this issue?
 
Odds are your SL disc isn't going to work unless the version number is higher than the number it came with.

I'm guessing the new iMacs shipped with 10.6.7 before Lion launched. Find a version of SL higher than that, or an SL disc designed for those iMacs and it should work for you.
 
SideStepSociety said:
Odds are your SL disc isn't going to work unless the version number is higher than the number it came with.

I'm guessing the new iMacs shipped with 10.6.7 before Lion launched. Find a version of SL higher than that, or an SL disc designed for those iMacs and it should work for you.
Click to expand...

This is what I figured. I have read that You have to have SL 10.6.7 or 10.6.8 to instal Lion (as you have to have the App Store). But how do I get a copy if a disc or DL of 10.6.8 to be able to do this? There might be a disc at work I could use, but no idea what version it is. I got mine just about as soon as SL came out. I was briefly reading at work that I could download the 10.6.8 Combo update from Apple and make a boot disc but I wash unable to read the whole article. I may try that routes.

Lion isn't so bad for me, and now that I have everything set how I want it, I probably won't go this route, but would be nice to have as a backup.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I booted to my SL install disc and then did a restore from Time Machine to my last backup of SL pre-Lion. It completed the restore but now just hangs and has the spinning gear on the apple boot screen. Advice?!?
 
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