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

Snow Lep on a late 2011 15"?

MagicBoy

MagicBoy

macrumors 68040
Original poster
May 28, 2006
3,989
1,141
Manchester, UK
Anyone tried running Snow Leopard on a late 2011 15" MBP?

I've got the drive that has been taken out of my old uMB with 10.6.8 on it all patched up. Is it likely to work?
 
Yeah, I get that. I'm just curious...

The late 2011 hardware isn't that different (slight tweaks to the GPU and VRAM) and the early 2011 came with 10.6.6 when launched therefore it stands to some sort of reason that 10.6.8 would include the necessary drivers.
 
Hey, it's your Mac. Do what you want. I wouldn't recommend it, but knock yourself out!
 
I'm kinda in the same boat. I don't like Lion at all. Also the lack of a installation disk is really silly. I often travel to remote places with no internet connection for weeks at a time. A system down could mean a lot of time wasted. I'll be using bootcamp primarily. I want to like the Mac...but Apple does not make it easy. This is probably the last apple product I will buy.
 
I just bought a refurb 2.3 GHz 13" last week. The Serial number indicates that it was made in October and it shipped with Lion. However, I was able to install 10.6.0 and update to 10.6.8 via firewire target disc mode just fine.

I don't know whether the same procedure would work on the very latest machines, but it's certainly worth trying in order to delay moving to Lion until Apple and/or the 3rd party utility developers sort out some viable options.

Good luck trying and if you are successful, please be sure to post your experiences here, OK?
 
I'd forgotten about Target Disk mode, then again my old MacBook is the only one they removed the port from. The mini has firewire so thats a possibility.

I'll try directly transplanting the 10.6.8 MacBook drive tonight.
 
redbrick said:
I'm kinda in the same boat. I don't like Lion at all. Also the lack of a installation disk is really silly. I often travel to remote places with no internet connection for weeks at a time. A system down could mean a lot of time wasted. I'll be using bootcamp primarily. I want to like the Mac...but Apple does not make it easy. This is probably the last apple product I will buy.
Click to expand...

It would be silly if there was no installation media, but that simply isn't true in the slightest.

You're able to purchase a USB stick from Apple, or you're able to create your own or burn the Lion installer to a DVD.
 
I bought an early 2011 base 13" mbp refurb with lion installed from apple a couple months ago, took it to the genius bar and they easily downgraded me to SL. Four days ago i bought another early 2011 base 13" mbp open box with lion from bestbuy -- a steal at $800 -- and took it to the genius bar to downgrade. Came back an hour later and the bad news was that the unit shipped by apple to bb in late july had its firmware upgraded and could not accept SL. I want SL mainly because i have office 2004 on all my macs only using word. Office 04 wont work with lion. So i will go with one of the compatible ms word processors for the new mbp. The thing is lion seems to be ok. The mbp flys. Lion certainly does stuff that SL didnt do. Ive only used it a few hours mainly surfing. One question -- is there any lion upgrade from apple that i should stay away from? I dud do the 7.02 and safari. And got my wireless printer driver and put in flash.
 
redbrick said:
I'm kinda in the same boat. I don't like Lion at all. Also the lack of a installation disk is really silly. I often travel to remote places with no internet connection for weeks at a time. A system down could mean a lot of time wasted. I'll be using bootcamp primarily. I want to like the Mac...but Apple does not make it easy. This is probably the last apple product I will buy.
Click to expand...

Buy a cheap 8GB flash drive and make your own installation disk. :)

Here's how:
http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.html

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716
 
nicklad said:
It would be silly if there was no installation media, but that simply isn't true in the slightest.

You're able to purchase a USB stick from Apple, or you're able to create your own or burn the Lion installer to a DVD.
Click to expand...

...but what you're saying indicated you have not purchased the latest macbook pro, because this is not possible. The only way is to purchase their USB installer....that's ridiculous considering it should come with the system...or download.... The recommended OS is 11c74..nothing earlier.

----------
hfg said:
Buy a cheap 8GB flash drive and make your own installation disk. :)

Here's how:
http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.html

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716
Click to expand...

That won't work with the latest releases of the macbook pro systems... it only allows one way to have a self contained install disk...and that is to buy Apple's USB stick...or download it...which equates to a recovery over the net.. Again, this is the latest macbook pro release.
 
redbrick said:
...but what you're saying indicated you have not purchased the latest macbook pro, because this is not possible. The only way is to purchase their USB installer....that's ridiculous considering it should come with the system...or download.... The recommended OS is 11c74..nothing earlier.

----------



That won't work with the latest releases of the macbook pro systems... it only allows one way to have a self contained install disk...and that is to buy Apple's USB stick...or download it...which equates to a recovery over the net.. Again, this is the latest macbook pro release.
Click to expand...

My late 2011 15" MBP came with 11C74 pre-installed. It's the same build as the 10.7 from the app store updated to 10.7.2 via Software Update on my old Alu MacBook. I can't see the 10.7.2 on the App Store being a different build. Just re-download it and extract the DMG.
 
redbrick said:
...but what you're saying indicated you have not purchased the latest macbook pro, because this is not possible. The only way is to purchase their USB installer....that's ridiculous considering it should come with the system...or download.... The recommended OS is 11c74..nothing earlier.

----------



That won't work with the latest releases of the macbook pro systems... it only allows one way to have a self contained install disk...and that is to buy Apple's USB stick...or download it...which equates to a recovery over the net.. Again, this is the latest macbook pro release.
Click to expand...

If I am reading it correctly, the second method linked above is a way to capture the net-recovery image by "interrupting" it at the appropriate stage and saving it to another disk or flash drive. This is, as you mentioned, for the latest Air, Mini, and Pro restores.
 
MagicBoy said:
I'd forgotten about Target Disk mode, then again my old MacBook is the only one they removed the port from. The mini has firewire so thats a possibility.

I'll try directly transplanting the 10.6.8 MacBook drive tonight.
Click to expand...

Cool. Let us know how you get on. You'll likely have some firmware upgrades to do.

Nychot said:
I bought an early 2011 base 13" mbp refurb with lion installed from apple a couple months ago, took it to the genius bar and they easily downgraded me to SL. Four days ago i bought another early 2011 base 13" mbp open box with lion from bestbuy -- a steal at $800 -- and took it to the genius bar to downgrade. Came back an hour later and the bad news was that the unit shipped by apple to bb in late july had its firmware upgraded and could not accept SL. I want SL mainly because i have office 2004 on all my macs only using word. Office 04 wont work with lion. So i will go with one of the compatible ms word processors for the new mbp. The thing is lion seems to be ok. The mbp flys. Lion certainly does stuff that SL didnt do. Ive only used it a few hours mainly surfing. One question -- is there any lion upgrade from apple that i should stay away from? I dud do the 7.02 and safari. And got my wireless printer driver and put in flash.
Click to expand...

You can most likely install Snow Leopard on your macbook Pro from bestbuy if you want. Apple are actively encouraging people to use Lion, though, and this likely includes their geniuses refusing to perform the downgrade on "firmware grounds"

As long as Lion's hidden recovery partition is in place on your Mac's drive, it will refuse to boot from a Snow Leopard installer. There are a few ways to remove this partition. I used g-parted from a linux live CD to reformat both the Lion and recovery partitions, as I wanted to leave a Windows partition intact, but an easier way is to put the Mac into firewire target disc mode and reformat the whole drive from another Mac running Snow Leopard. If you perform this step in OS X, you must format the whole drive, not just the Lion partition.

Once the recovery partition is gone, the appropriate Snow Leopard DVD will install just fine. You'll need one of the later (10.6.6 or above) DVDs to install on the early 2011 MBPs. Note that it needs to be a retail disc. Apple still sell them, but only through their online stores. If you only have an old Snow Leopard installer DVD, say 10.6 or 10.6.3, then you'll have use another Mac and firewire target disc mode for the whole process, including the upgrade to 10.6.8.
 
cal6n said:
Cool. Let us know how you get on. You'll likely have some firmware upgrades to do.
Click to expand...

Works perfectly, posting from it now. Took a good couple of minutes to get to the logon screen, other than that it's fine. I need the bigger screen to fit the 8 CPU graphs for iStat Menus on!
 
redbrick said:
...but what you're saying indicated you have not purchased the latest macbook pro, because this is not possible. The only way is to purchase their USB installer....that's ridiculous considering it should come with the system...or download.... The recommended OS is 11c74..nothing earlier.
Click to expand...

An incorrect assumption! :p I have an early 2011 MBP that came with Lion pre-installed.

As long as Lion is shown as purchased in the AppStore, you are able to re-download it at any time.

1. Delete the copy of Install Mac OS X Lion.app from Applications folder if it already exists.
2. Hold down the alt/option key on your keyboard, and click the App Store icon.
3. With alt/option key held, click on Purchased.
4. With alt/option key held, click on OS X Lion.
5. With alt/option key held, click on Install.

The Installed button should change to Install, allowing you to re-download Lion. When the download finishes, the app will automatically open. The updated 10.7.2 Install Mac OS X Lion App can be found in the Applications folder.

Then, burn the InstallESD.dmg to a DVD or write it to a USB stick. Instructions for doing this are available all over the Internet.
 
Last edited:
cal6n said:
<snip>

You'll need one of the later (10.6.6 or above) DVDs to install on the early 2011 MBPs. Note that it needs to be a retail disc. Apple still sell them, but only through their online stores.

<snip>
Click to expand...

I got this completely wrong. The retail DVD in the Apple Store is 10.6.3, so it doesn't have the required driver support for the early 2011 Macbook Pros. Unless you can locate a set of the original DVDs, the only way to install Snow Leopard is to use one of the workarounds like FireWire target disc mode or a drive transplant.
 
I bought a new late-2011 15" MBP, 2.2 GHz, 4 GB in late June, prior to Lion's release. I upgraded to Lion in late July, and honestly, I'm sad I did. It's got some great features, but for all the solid reasons listed in coms above, I wish I'd stayed with SL. Feels a bit late to revert now though.

But yes, it ran excellent with SL, for the month I tested it.
 
cal6n said:
Cool. Let us know how you get on. You'll likely have some firmware upgrades to do.
Click to expand...

It only found one hardware related update and that was for Thunderbolt. Lion installed a similar one earlier in the day.

After the initial boot detected the hardware changes it now starts up very quickly. I'm pleasantly surprised by how painless it was. It's just a shame it's a 10+2 screw job to swap the HDD. The old uMB was a flip catch and a single screw.
 
If you try to install an OS that is older than your build set you will get an kernel panic or even an error tone if your just try to boot to the install disk. But if you have upgraded you can always down grade back to the original OS, but can not go back to a version older than your build set.

Example
Macbook pro 2009 build set 10.5.8, I can run anything after 10.5.8 however I can not run 10.5.7

For some of the mid 2010 devices they where really picky on the build sets, that you can not just grab a install disk with 10.6.3 on it, will create the same issue as trying to load an older version. If you want to take back to the original version you can do so with the disk that came with your computer. If you have lost that disk it can be reordered through Apple, by using that disk you will eliminate possible issues that could happen and lots of head aches.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back