Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

burningbright

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2008
110
0
Hello, 10.6.2 kind of broke my Mac- it now frequently takes a minute of beachballing for it to process that I want to make another window active, for example, and I'd like to go back to my last 10.5.8 system. Unfortunately, I got my Mac 2nd hand w/o Leopard disc from my brother, who has since moved 3,000 miles away. Is there any way to restore a leopard system without the OS disc? Help would be appreciated, as it is driving me nuts! Appreciating a 3 minute beachball on clicking 'submit', BB
 
You need the install disk to but from if you plan on restoring your system. There's really no way around this.

I'd recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner as you can boot off the external disk that has your cloned image and then use CCC to "restore" your internal drive.

I use both, Time Machine for the those day to day things I could screw up and when I totally mess the system, the CCC partition is there.
 
You could talk to Apple, they will send out new disks for a very small fee.

Alternatively you could always 'obtain' a copy from somewhere ;), as long as your particular license is not being used anywhere else then technically speaking its not illegal. ( I am not a lawyer)
 
You could talk to Apple, they will send out new disks for a very small fee.

Alternatively you could always 'obtain' a copy from somewhere ;), as long as your particular license is not being used anywhere else then technically speaking its not illegal. ( I am not a lawyer)

Neither am I, but common sense tells us this.

He could even download it from a torrent and it would still be legal (or at least ethical), as long as he installs it on a computer for which he possesses a license.

What's illegal is installing it on a computer without a license.
 
Right, thanks for the advice! Pity you need the OS disc- if I'd known I'd never have upgraded to SL so soon... Really should go back to Leopard as the next witness to my SL travails who smiles smugly and starts their sentence "That's the thing about Macs- they look pretty but...." will receive a glare that would make small children and some cats cry. Farewell, slightly more efficient Expose!;)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.