Downgrade from Lion to Leopard

Hi, I want to sell my Macbook that has Lion on it. My question is can I downgrade to Leopard using the install disk that came with it in 2008 when I bought it. I did upgrade to Snow Leopard before Lion, but must have thrown away the DVD install disk. Because my Macbook had Leopard on it when I bought it it should work right?
Or if I were to borrow my brothers Snow Leopard install disk that he got with his Macbook pro, could I use that? Is there any licensing thing that would prevent me from using an install disk from another computer?
Thanks

My question is can I downgrade to Leopard using the install disk that came with it in 2008 when I bought it.
Yes. Launch Disk Utility while booted from the disc and partition (don't erase) the internal drive with a single data partition. Give it the name "Macintosh HD". Then erase the volume you just created with the option to write zeros. Finally, run the Installer. When the installation finishes, the machine will reboot into the setup procedure. Just shut it down at that point.
Is there any licensing thing that would prevent me from using an install disk from another computer?
Yes. You have no right to copy or distribute someone else's copy of Snow Leopard. Sell the machine in the same state it was in when you got it.

Similar Messages

Password issue when re-instaling Leopard (downgrade from Lion)

Hi there!
I'm havig a problem:
I need to downgrade from Lion to Leopard, because some of the programs i use, dont work on Lion!
But im havig a problem, after Leopard instalation (and after i erased Lion)... the instalation of Leopard runs with success, but when i have to put user name and password to LOG IN... my password doesnt work! And im sure i only have this password! HELP! Any ideas on how i could reset it some how?
Without this correct password, i need to restore (from my MAC OX 10.7 backup) my MAC to Lion again, because i just cant LOG IN!!
I've made the whole process 3 times already!!
Hope i've explained myself ok.
Thanks for your help in advance... and sorry about my english!
Benny

Well, you cannot do a clean install of Snow Leopard without going through the Setup Assistant. There is an automatic suggestion for the username - typically your first name - and a blank password field you must fill in then confirm by entering a second time. If you did not do that then you have no password. Although this will not impede the ability to log in you cannot change a blank password and you cannot install software with a blank password.
So you will need to try this:
How to change your username and/or password from the Terminal
1. Boot into single-user or verbose mode
2. At the prompt enter the following commands. Press RETURN after each:
fsck -fy
mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
dscl . -passwd /Users/username password
Replace username with the targeted user and password with the desired password.
reboot
This allows you to reset the password in single user mode without booting from the install media. The above tip is attributed to Satcomer.

From lio to leopard, from lion to leopard

Salve!
I have a 2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo
Running OSX 10.4.11
No Apple Store app
How can I move to Leopard??
Thanks
s

Your post is confusing as well as possibly in the wrong forum.
Do you wish to downgrade from Lion to Leopard or do you wish to upgrade to Snow Leopard? The latter requires that you purchase a Snow Leopard retail DVD either from Apple's Online Store or from a local Apple retailer.

How can I downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard?

Hello.
Yesterday, I upgraded my Mac to Mac OS X (10.7 Lion) from 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. However, I wish to downgrade.
Obviously, I would like to not lose any data at all. However, I have never downgraded before.
I still have the Snow Leopard installation disk that came with my Mac.
How should I do this? I was thinking it would be easiest to simply head on over to an Apple Store...
I did some research (aka Googling), and I read up on the subject quite a bit.
If I simply put in the disk, will I be able to downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard as easily as the upgrade was?
Also, I have heard about holding down the "C" button to do this... how exactly?
I have never backed up my Mac, nor used Time Machine.
Also, is it possible to install Snow Leopard on a separate disk, and set it up so that I can switch between them on command?
Will all of my preferences be saved, or does this wipe everything, not just the system and libraries folders?
I realize that I have a lot of questions, and therefore I appreciate everyone's help in advance. Thanks again.
Sincerely, Zach

Backup your files.
Booting From An OS X Installer Disc
1. Insert Snow Leopard Installer Disc into the optical drive.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
4. Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo appears.
5. Wait for installer to finish loading.
Erase Drive
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. 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.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Upon completion quit DU and return to installer. Install Snow Leopard. Restore your files after the installation has completed.

I recently Downgraded from Lion to Snow Leopard 10.6. How do I update to 10.6.2 or beyond?

This is the problem... How do I fix that?

app61 wrote:
I recently Downgraded from Lion to Snow Leopard 10.6
How did you do that ?

How do I downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard without losing iWork 09? I upgraded my MBP from 10.5 (originally 10.4) to 10.6, then again to 10.7. Should I go back to 10.4, 10.5 or just to 10.6?

How do I downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard without losing iWork 09? I upgraded my MBP from 10.5 (originally 10.4) to 10.6, then again to 10.7. Should I go back to 10.4, 10.5 or just to 10.6? I don't remember which system included iWork 09 and don't want to lose it. Thanks for any help.

Thanks for the information! My sister gave me the MBP for my daughter with Leopard installed. I purchased Snow Leopard and installed it, then my daughter purchased Lion. So I do have all the installers. If iWork wasn't included with any of those, I guess my sister purchased it while running Leopard. I'll have to contact her. Thanks again.

Downgrading from Lion 10.7.5 to Snow Leopard 10.6 w/o Time Machine

I've been trying to solve this issue for a bit, and would appreciate any fresh perspectives on the issue.
I recently purchased a 2006 Mac Pro 1.1. It has a dual 2.66Ghz Xeon processor. I'm fairly sure nothing has been customized in the machine hardware-wise, and that it is in the original configuration apple sold it with in 2006.
The machine arrived with the Lion 10.7.5 OS on it, which was incompatible with some of the software plug-ins I use for editing audio, so I decided to re-install Snow Leopard 10.6. I inserted my install DVD like I would normally, and was greeted with the error message "OSX cannot be installed on this computer, please use version 23.1.1".
I checked out the forums, and seeing that this was a common problem (with what seemed like an easy fix), proceeded to try and install anyway. I booted from the DVD by holding "C" on start-up. After booting and asking what i wanted to use as my language, the error message "Mac OSX cannot be installed on this computer" was displayed. Thinking this was another glitch, I clicked "restore from back-up, then managed to use Disk Utility to wipe my HD and zero out the contents. I reformatted my HD to Mac OS Extended Journaled, Re-partitioned it, and then reset my NV or Pram (Command+option+P+R) until i heard the start-up noise twice.
Next, I restarted the computer, booted it from the disk again, and crossed my fingers it would let me install. No luck.
I don't have a second mac pro to clone, or a Time Machine back-up from this machine (as it is brand new to me). Furthermore, it's previous owner left me with no restore disks, or usb sticks to even put Lion back on (which i don't want to do anyway, but would at least make the machine functional until i can correctly install 10.6SL).
I do have a spare 2009 imac to work with in the meantime, with Snow Leopard, though I'm assuming attempting to clone that drive would screw with the drivers and firmware in the Mac Pro. Are there any tricks to re-install my OS without using a Time Machine back-up or clone? I have the DVD, my machine just doesn't seem to want to install from it. The nearest repair shop is several hours away.
I'm at a loss for what to try next. Any ideas?

The following will only work on a Mac that is capable of being booted by a retail Snow Leopard DVD. Fortunately, you can do the following on your model should you prefer. As an alternative you could simply create a second partition on the hard drive and install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard without having to erase the drive.
Downgrade Lion/Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. 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.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the
      mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status
      of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then
      the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART
      info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on
      the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions
      from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS
      Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the
      partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on
      the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner.
If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion/Mountain Lion files.

ICal and Mail don't work after downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard

Hey everyone, after an extremely awful time with with Lion (it knocked out of my audio interface AND my wireless) I downgraded back to Snow Leopard yesterday. I made a Carbon Copy of my Lion drive with all my data on an external drive (which I still have) and after wiping my local drive clean I reinstalled Snow Leopard from my disk. After it was done I chose to transfer data from another system local system (I selected everything) and an hour and a half later everything was transferred over. After doing a software update, I've found that I get big error messages with iCal, Mail, and even the App Store that say they can't open and I'm assuming that it has to do with incompatible data that got transferred from Lion. Any ideas on how to get those programs back up and running?? Thanks so much for you help!
Luke
ps. here's the error message from iCal
Dyld Error Message:
Symbol not found: _kSecOIDX509V1ValidityNotAfter
Referenced from: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ApplePushService.framework/Versions/A/ApplePu shService
Expected in: /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ApplePushService.framework/Versions/A/ApplePu shService

> In the device manager the two ports are listed under "other devices" and no driver is installed for them.
Indeed the USB issue seems to be related to missing drivers.
You have to install this USB 3.0 driver:
[AMD USB Driver v 2.0.7.176 Windows 7 - 64 Bit|http://www.toshiba.eu/innovation/download_driver_details.jsp?service=EU&selCategory =2&selFamily=2&selSeries=178&selProduct=7534&selSh ortMod=null&language=13&selOS=30&selType=all&yearu pload=&monthupload=&dayupload=&useDate=null&mode=a llMachines&search=&action=search&macId=&country=al l&selectedLanguage=13&type=all&page=3&ID=87792&OSI D=30&driverLanguage=42]
Furthermore you have to ensure that chipset driver was installed too.
The notebook supports ATI graphic chip and AMD chipset. The chipset driver is part of the ATI graphic card driver and therefore you should ensure that this driver would be installed too.

IMovie won't open after downgrading from Lion to Snow Leopard

Okay iMovie 08' and 11' both worked absoloutly fine on my MacBook Pro (17" Core 2 Duo 2009 model) when I had Snow Leopard installed.
I then upgraded to Lion and iMovie 11' still worked fine but Lion had a lot of bugs so I decided to wipe and install Snow Leopard again. I then used the Migration Assistant to move my Apps from a Time Machine backup to my Mac. Everything worked okay except Java was broken. Everytime I launched a Java application it would say Java 1.5 not found. I managed to fix this with a lot of Googling.
But now I've come across another issue. I noticed that iWeb, iPhoto and iMovie will not open. The icons bounce in the dock and then they finish bouncing and it appears to have loaded, the top menubar says the application name and I can click on File, Edit from the top menu and all the normal options are presented to me. But the main interface of these programs simply does not open. I managed to fix iPhoto by reading online about removing a folder called ProKit.Framework in my Library and that worked for iPhoto perfectly it now comes up and loads like normal. But iWeb and iMovie still do not load. I don't really care about iWeb but I do care about iMovie not working as I use that all the time.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this?
So far what I've tried:
1. Remove all traces of anything iLife releated on my Hard Disk including pkg receipts, cache files, .pref files and so on
2. Tried just reinstalling the entire iLife suite several times
3. Tried installing Quicktime 7 from the Snow Leopard Optional Installs DVD
4. Tried changing colour profiles on my Display (I read this worked for someone else, did nothing for me)
5. Made a new user account on my Mac and tried to run iMovie from that account, same result it 'runs' but the interface doesn't show up.
Thanks for any help you can provide

I just thought I'd reply to say that I just fixed this by deleting the following folder and afterwards running software update.
iLifeMediaBrowser in /Library/Application Support
It would appear that if you erase this folder and then reinstall iLife it does something that brings this folder back or recreates it. But if you run Software update after erasing it, it downloads this folder from Apple (about 2.5MB) and that fixes the problem completely.
Hope this helps someone else!

Downgrading from Lion to 10.6.8?

Is it possible to downgrade after installing Lion back to 10.6.8? As of last night I installed Lion onto my MBP 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (mid-2007) and my laptops performance has basically gone to **** due to Lion trying to use up all my active memory and I'd much rather go back to Snow Leopard where everything ran smoothly and I didn't have to deal with Lion's sluggish performance.

Back to Snow Leopard from Lion install method
Read and print out these instructions, your computer is going to be offline and you wil be cutoff from help until your machine is restored.
Clear the Desktop, Downloads and Trash of anything you wish to keep by placing their files in the respective Documents, Music, Pictures, Movie folders.
If you have a TimeMachine drive, update it and disconnect for the duration of this restore time. It will be your second backup system and will have to be wiped and setup again after successfully going back to Snow Leopard if it was connected to the OS X 10.7 boot drive. If it wasn't, then leave it disconnected without updating to Lion.
Backup ALL your Users folders (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music etc) manually (drag and drop methods) to a (not TimeMachine) external powered drive (HFS+ journaled formatted in Disk Utility) and disconnect, your going to be wiping the entire disk of ALL DATA. (warning, everything will be gone and not recovered)
Here we go!
Hold c and boot off the 10.6 installer disk that comes with your computer and second screen in just STOP.
Look at the Utilities Menu for Disk Utility.
On the left is the name of your hard drive maker, click it and Erase (format HFS+ Journaled), give it the same name as before, and click Erase...
This should wipe the drive of ALL partitions (GUID, OS X and 10.7 Recovery, Windows if present)
When it's done, quit and install OS X 10.6. Then install all your programs from fresh sources and validate/update.
When you setup a first account, use the same user name as before, this way you can simply drag and drop the content of your previous Users folders from the external drive right back into the new Users folders and everything should work peachy. Links in iTunes to music, playlists and iPhoto links especially.
Update OS X to 10.6.8 using the Combo Update for best results.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
(Note: If your original machine had 10.5 and you want the free iLife that comes with the disks with the computer, then you'll have to install 10.5 first using the same c boot/erase/format methods as above, then update to 10.6 via the disk, then Combo Update 10.6.8)
Final step optional but highly receommended.
A lot of people use a Carbon Copy Clone of their boot drive to a HFS+Journaled external drive as a "hold the option key" bootable backup in case something goes wrong with their boot drive or need to restore to a previous OS X version.. (in addition to TimeMachine drive for more immediate backups.)
It's not advised to have a Bootable Clone and a TimeMachine partition on the same external drive, as two drives gives hardware protection in case one fails.

Downgrading from Lion w/o having SL Installation DVD?

After two month of using Lion I am so disappointed that I would like to downgrade to Snow Leopard. I bought a new iMAC in Oct 2011 with Lion pre-installed. I know that the mid 2011 iMac model has been delivered with Snow Leopard before Lion was released and published.
I do not have any SL Installation DVD. Can I buy just a standard Snow Leopard DVD set or do I have to find someone which has the original SL Installation DVD delivered with the mid 2011 iMac model before Lion was released.
Would be great if someone can provide help. Thanks.
Regards,

Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. 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.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.
If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion files.
You will have to purchase a retail Snow Leopard DVD that installs a version of OS X later than the version that was originally installed from the factory. According to my information that was 10.6.6. If you cannot find a Snow Leopard DVD that installs 10.6.6 or later then you will have to order replacement discs from Apple. I suggest you do that anyway because those discs also have the installers for all the pre-bundled software that came with the computer along with the Apple Hardware Test. None of that will be on the retail DVD.

Help (please) w/ Full System Restore after downgrading from Snow to Leopard

Yes. I should have created a separate partition, cloned the drive, etc…. But everything was working so well I figured an upgrade to SL would make things amazing. Wrong.
So I downgraded from Snow Leopard to Leopard, using a clean Erase and Install from the OSX DVD that came with my Mac. Told by an AppleCare techie that I could restore my system from a Time Machine BackUp, I was confident that when the install successfully completed I would be able to restore from the TM Backup I made PRIOR TO installing Snow Leopard.
However, the 'restore system from time machine…' option that came up at the end of the Leopard installation told me I only have one TM backup, the latest one made under Snow Leopard (which obviously cannot be used to restore a system now running on Leopard.
When I log into the OS, I can open TM and choose the last 10.5 (Leopard) backup I made, but it seems to only let me restore the 'Macintosh HD' as a folder. So here is where I am stuck:
How can I restore my system - now on a clean install of Leopard - to the last TM backup I made under the selfsame OS. {Sorry if this is a simpleton question - I just really do not want to ** anything up}.

.adamo wrote:
Thanks, Pondini -
Good to know the AppleCare rep. I talked to (apparently) knew nothing about time machine or how to restore a system from it. I was given nothing but wrong and bad advice…
Yeah, unfortunately that seems to happen on occasion. They don't seem to have access to decent info on things they don't understand, or just "wing it" or something.
Anyway, the erase and install happened, so at least my system is 'fresh'. I booted from the OSX DVD, went into the Utilities menu, found the TM Back-up I wanted, et voila. But it seems I could have bypassed the whole erase/install thing and just restored with the BackUp from TM.
So I must say, to Apple's credit, that TM works extremely well, and exactly as described; couldn't have been more painless (not what I'm used to with computers, at all).
That's why you got a Mac! (They're certainly not perfect, but they're pretty good!).
Glad it's sorted out, and thanks for the star!

Downgrading from Lion on Intel iMac (2008) problems

After upgrading to Lion on our iMac (2008) [Intel Core 2 Duo], which had been originally running 10.6.8, we began experiencing lots of strange problems (intermittent crashes, freezing). On Saturday, the whole computer just shutdown and couldn't be restarted.
I attempted to install a new OS from a Snow Leopard CD purchased when we upgraded from the original software (10.5.2) by first building a new partition (Mac OS Journaled, GUID) and then installing Snow Leopard, but at the very end of the process, got an error message stating the installation failed.
I then went back to the original installation disks that came with the iMac (10.5.2) and did the same process and have been able to get Leopard running. From that point, I thought I could pop the Snow Leopard install CD in and do the upgrade, but got the same error message stating the installation failed.
I'm now back to installing the original OS again (10.5.2), but am unsure how to go about getting Snow Leopard to install. Do I need to go through the software updates to get it up to 10.5.8 before installing Snow Leopard, or has Lion just done some irreparable harm to the system.
At various points during this whole process, I've sometimes been able to boot from the CD from startup by pressing C, but sometimes that fails, and I have to hold down the option key. Sometimes that even fails, and I've had to clear the memory, and restart, going through various iterations just to get the Mac to see the CD.
Any advice on how to get from Leopard to Snow Leopard would be much appreciated. Before Lion was involved, there were no problems in the upgrade process, but now that I'm trying to rebuild, it seems like things are going massively awry.
Also, it seems like the specs on Lion indicate it should be stable on this type of machine, but clearly it isn't. I've read about some incompatabilities with graphics cards (we have a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS), but I don't know if this was the problem or not. If anyone knows what could have happened with the Lion issue, I would be curious about that too.

After "successfully" installing a version of 10.5.2 onto the iMac, I ran a Verify Permissions and received a long list of Open Error 5 problems, which could not be fixed using the Disk Utility on the Mac itself, nor with a downloaded copy of DiskWarrior. Also, when verifying the hard drive, there was an invalid sibling link error, and it stopped the verification process - there was no option to repair.
I'm a little confused because I started the clean install from the Disk Utility via the installation CD by building what I thought was a "clean" partition.
Is the next step to try and run disk utility from the install CD to try and fix these errors?
I now have a copy of Disk Warrior (downloaded) sitting on another machine and my Time Machine. I'm not sure how these could be useful in the rebuild process, but if so, please let me know.
Thanks so much,
Marie

Downgrading from SL to Leopard

Last week I got a new 24" imac which came preinstalled with SL. What I am wondering is if it is possible to downgrade the OS to Leopard. I am having all sorts of issues with printers not talking to the computer and other minor things and was just curious if it is even possible to do this downgrade?

Macs can general run the OS version it came with or LATER (up to hardware limits), but not earlier.
Since the iMac model did not change, unless Apple updated the firmware to only allow Snow Leopard or later to run, it may be possible to run the version of Leopard that model came with previously or later. If you have a Leopard retail disc that is earlier than the version that came with that iMac model (when it had Leopard pre-installed), it will probably NOT work.
The best course of action is to try to resolve those issues and keep using Snow Leopard. Perhaps the printer's manufacturer's web site will have some advice. What other "minor things" are causing problems?

Retrieve backed up emails from Time machine in snow leopard after downgrading from Lion?

I installed Lion, but after putting up with it for the last month with problems like: computer crashes, slowing my computer to an unbelievably dismal speed and computer freezes at least once a day, I have now reformatted my hard drive. I have reinstalled Snow Leopard and restored all my settings, folders and applications from a time machine backup.
However, I am now back in my desktop (that's another story as all of a sudden it asked me for a password, even though I've never created one to log in) and on snow leopard- BUT I have no address book contacts and as for my email- well my email accounts appear in mail, but all my emails are lost (sent, received, inbox.... nothing there).
I desperately need those emails back as I run my own business and this has just been a nightmare. I thought that after reformatting and then restoring from a time machine back up life would go back to normal but obviously not.
Can anyone please shed some light on where I would find the folder in my time machine back up to cut and paste back over for snow leopard to show my emails again?
Thanks in advance.
Andrew

I'm on Lion but iPhoto 09 so it might have changed in iPhoto 11
But this is what I see
If yours is different try looking in the iPhoto Help pages for restoring from Time Machine

Downgrade from Lion to Leopard

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