I have an older mac, i purchased Snow Leopard so that i could upgrade to Yosemite but now it says Snow Leopard is too out of date to update to Yosemite!

Question

So i have an older Macbook that ran Leopard and i was told via Apple that in order to upgrade fully to Yosemite i would first have to purchase Snow Leopard, then i'd be able to update to Yosemite for free. I got the Snow Leopard disc (it was scratched which REALLY ****** me off, since i paid $20, but it seemed to work installing the new OS so whatever), and it's now at version 10.6.3 - i tried to run software updates and it says it's successful, but that i need to restart my computer. Every time i try, the screen just freezes with the desktop image and never restarts. And now i can't update to Yosemite because i need to have 10.6.8! I am very frustrated and not sure where to go from here. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

Don't panic. You can download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1. Then you can access the App Store in order to download Yosemite.
Meanwhile you need to reinstall Snow Leopard properly:
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer.  Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the  "C" key.  Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.)  Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.  Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. After you finish Setup Assistant will complete the installation after which
         you will be running a fresh install of OS X.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.