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Reverting back to snow leopard from lion

V

Vertiku

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 19, 2011
4
0
I recently purchased the new MBP with Lion pre-installed from a 3rd Party tech company (licensed by apple)

{15 inch, 8 gigs of ram*, 7i quad core, 750gb 7200 rpm*}
[* = Installed by company]

I got it for the sole purpose of running the audio program Protools through the laptop for sessions, and mixing. As of now, its pretty useless in the sense that lion isn't compatible with Protools and alot of the plug-ins I use.

My next step was to try and put a snow leopard disk that was bought from a retail store and reformat the hard drive back to snow leopard. This method failed... every time I put in the disk It would give me 3 repeating beats in till I would ultimately have to turn off the computer.

Now I'm having trouble finding the next method of trying to install snow leopard.
I tried trying to boot from the supposed lion recovery hd, that I should have, but My MPB Doesn't have it .I think it might of not installed because I did a time machine migrate from my brother's laptop (he has the same exact one as me just with snow leopard) to save some time and it might of some how miss installing that recovery partition?

My next step was going to be installing my 750gb hard drive on my girlfriends old MacBook and trying to reformat from there with the snow leopards disk, then pluging the hd back into my MPB.

If anyone knows if the above method will work or has any other ideas please let me know would really appreciate it.

Thanks for your time and knowledge

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Case Closed
-Best Solution = Obtain a Recovery disk with your same computer specs
 
Last edited:
Are you pressing the option key while booting with the SL disk in the drive and selecting the optical drive?
The recovery partition with Lion is auto created unless someone deleted it on purpose... Time Machine will not do that.
 
I called Applecare and here is what a guy in the tech department told me, IF your machine comes with Lion pre-installed (which it sounds like yours did) then you CANNOT format the drive and re-install snow leopard - not from a retail disk or by any other means. I asked why, he told me it was a firmware issue.

Either way, the reason I even asked the question was because I wanted a new MBP, but DID NOT want Lion. So I bought mine a couple weeks ago through the refurb apple online store. It came with SL pre-installed.

Now this may not be the case, maybe there is a way to get SL on your machine, but I'm just telling you what was said to me by an Apple tech.
 
Acron- I did make sure to hold down the option key when restarting my mac so to boot from the SL disk. Still not sure why i didn't get the recovery hd... maybe because the store installed a new 750gb 7200 rpm drive and it didn't create a recovery drive with it?

Mac-key- I've read online of people already reverting back to snow leopard on there mac's so I'm sure there's gotta be someway to do it. It might have to do with just getting my lion recovery drive up again or maybe the new method I'm going to try today by installing my 750gb hd on my g/f macbook reformatting it then putting it back into my MBP

Thank you both for your quick comments appreciate it

If anyone else has any thoughts or ideas I would welcome them
 
i dont understand why u would downgrade.

lion is the mot up to date and apple will continue to put out updates for it over snow leopeord. ur gonna have to upgrade evnetually so stick with it.

lions been working fine for me
 
Mac-key said:
Now this may not be the case, maybe there is a way to get SL on your machine, but I'm just telling you what was said to me by an Apple tech.
Click to expand...

Wow. A firmware block.

I know you're just relaying what a tech told you but I find this hard to believe. (You're just the messenger).

Don't know why Apple would care what we run on our macbooks. After all, SL is still supported.


randomrazr said:
i dont understand why u would downgrade.
lions been working fine for me
Click to expand...
It "works" for a lot of folks but that term is relative. Many of the complaints are because of what it doesn't do that Snow Leopard still does. (e.g., Spaces & Expose').
 
Randomrazr- The reason I need to downgrade is for the purpose I bought the MBP for Protools. I can’t wait around for Protools to eventually start working the same way it does with Snow leopard. That being said if in the future it does get to a point were Protools works optimally with lion then I will upgrade till then I need to find a way to actually get work done on my laptop.

Steve’s Barber- I do find it hard to believe a firmware block was put in, just hoping for my sake were both right…..

Still welcoming any suggestions
 
randomrazr said:
i dont understand why u would downgrade.

lion is the mot up to date and apple will continue to put out updates for it over snow leopeord. ur gonna have to upgrade evnetually so stick with it.

lions been working fine for me
Click to expand...

The OP is considering downgrading as the piece of software he needs to use (and the reason he bought the MBP) isn't currently compatible with Lion. A very reasonable request if you ask me.

From my understanding , if you can get a hard drive loaded with 10.6.6 SL or later you can then swap that HDD into your MBP be able to boot from and use that HDD as the master drive to run SL on your '11 MBP. You might also be able to boot from a SL disk included with a new '11 MBP (would have to find a friend that had one to do this (although technically if you don't already own SL this would be pirating software_, but I am not sure the results on those whom have tried that method.
 
Steve's Barber said:
Wow. A firmware block.

I know you're just relaying what a tech told you but I find this hard to believe. (You're just the messenger).

Don't know why Apple would care what we run on our macbooks. After all, SL is still supported.


It "works" for a lot of folks but that term is relative. Many of the complaints are because of what it doesn't do that Snow Leopard still does. (e.g., Spaces & Expose').
Click to expand...


that and lion is super slow on anything less than 4gb of ram i do not want to upgrade to lion
 
squeakr said:
The OP is considering downgrading as the piece of software he needs to use (and the reason he bought the MBP) isn't currently compatible with Lion. A very reasonable request if you ask me.

From my understanding , if you can get a hard drive loaded with 10.6.6 SL or later you can then swap that HDD into your MBP be able to boot from and use that HDD as the master drive to run SL on your '11 MBP. You might also be able to boot from a SL disk included with a new '11 MBP (would have to find a friend that had one to do this (although technically if you don't already own SL this would be pirating software_, but I am not sure the results on those whom have tried that method.
Click to expand...
ah ok
 
Crap. Im in the same situation as OP, need Protools on a SL MBP (until PT works with Lion). So from what i'm reading (and googling), I cant put Snow Leopard back on a brand new MBP with Lion already on it? Man... I just got my MBP, put in two HD and 8GB of ram. Took a break to browse the forums and this caught my eye.
 
Audio programs are very slow on adapting to new operating systems. That's why my MBP is still on lion since my DJ software & Ableton still have issues with it.
 
randomrazr said:
i dont understand why u would downgrade.

lion is the mot up to date and apple will continue to put out updates for it over snow leopeord. ur gonna have to upgrade evnetually so stick with it.

lions been working fine for me
Click to expand...
What are you running it on? desktop or laptop? I bought my MBP a few weeks ago and was lucky enough to have leopard on it. I upgraded to Lion and lost battery life. It went from 7 hours to 3.5 hours under normal (for me anyway) use. the bottom was so hot I could not have it on my lap for longer than 10 minutes. the GUI started to have lag as well. I even burned the Lion install to a DVD and did a fresh reformat and install and it did no use same issues. So after a week i went back to SL and everything is back to normal. I will wait for an update before trying Lion again.....
 
Dear OP. New Macs that comes pre-installed with Lion will not work with retail copy of Snow Leopard simply because it has a very minute variations in the OS due to new hardware being addressed by new firmware, drivers, and kexts, hence sometimes the difference in OS build number. (This happens for example a new Mac pre-installed with 10.6.8 very likely will have a different build number compared to all other Macs that has been upgraded to 10.6.8).

One possible solution is to obtain the Apple Restore Disc that contains Snow Leopard which comes only from the same exact model and configuration as your Mac. Your current model came before Lion was released, so it should be able to work using that copy of Snow Leopard. Contact AppleCare again to see you can obtain that disc for a small fee.
 
Eithanius said:
One possible solution is to obtain the Apple Restore Disc that contains Snow Leopard which comes only from the same exact model and configuration as your Mac. Your current model came before Lion was released, so it should be able to work using that copy of Snow Leopard. Contact AppleCare again to see you can obtain that disc for a small fee.
Click to expand...

Found 1 on eBay for the 15" 2011 MBP (10.6.7), brand new too. Crossing my fingers that this works.
 
Eithanius- Your solution worked perfectly, Luckily my brother has the same exact MBP as me and got it before lion hit so i was able to obtain the disk from and and had no problems reformatting the drive.

Thanks everyone for your input

-Case closed
 
Steve's Barber said:
... Many of the complaints are because of what it doesn't do that Snow Leopard still does. (e.g., Spaces & Expose').
Click to expand...
That's part of the problem. The real underlying issue are problems that surface simply by installing Lion. For example machines which had zero problems under Snow Leopard all of the sudden have issues in Lion.

I know about the issues involving upgrading to Lion versus installing it from scratch, however I've seen many Lion-related issues from the latter where no other app other than what comes on Lion are installed.

That indicates a serious problem with the OS and I'm surprised at Apple's seemingly lax attitude towards putting out a much more aggressive update/patch/fix.

As a previous poster mentioned, it's not unreasonable to want to use an OS that simply works, not something that works sometimes. When Windows Vista gave many users an upset stomach, many ran back to Windows XP with hardly any issues when installed from scratch, I sincerely hope the claim about how there's a firmware block preventing Macs bought with Lion preinstalled isn't true. At this point I'd be upset to not have the option to go back to Snow Leopard.
 
I doubt there's a firmware block as well. As a matter of fact I just bought a refurb MacBook that had Lion installed and I requested a "downgrade" from Apple to Snow Leopard because the refurb page was still advertising inclusion of Snow Leopard.

The problem, as others already pointed out, is that the 2011 Macbooks need at least 10.6.6 to run - and probably a customized version at that. I did a brief Google search to see it's complicated (if not impossible) to create a "slipstreamed" later version of Snow Leopard from a 10.6.0 disk.
 
Just some info, I'm in the same boat as the OP, bought a 15" MBP for protools and it came with no Snow Leopard disks. I phoned Apple Australia and after some persistance and lots of time on hold, I have convinced them to send me a free copy of the 10.6.6 restore disks that came with this machine when it was first released.

At first the support agent wanted me to buy a copy of SL retail. I explained that there were 2 problems with that...

1. It wont install (seems I know more about the issue than he does)
2. I'm not willing to pay for it as I just spent $2700 on a brand new CTO machine.

I was transfered to a "senior agent" and after explaining the issue he agreed to send me a copy of the disks free of charge.

I'll let you all know how it goes when they arrive next week.
 
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