How do I revert back to Snow Leopard from OS Lion without losing files etc

I need to revert back as my work VPN cannot operate with the java cocoa version that is part of safari due to the OS Lion upgrade I performed. I have done a ton of work on my system in the last week and don't want to lose any of it - and no I didn't use time machine. HOw much am I going to lose when I uninstall Lion and then reinstall Leopard?
Thank so much for your help,
cmw

First, do a full backup of your current system.
Reformat your hard drive's main partition that you want to revert to Snow Leopard from Lion. This will delete EVERYTHING on the partition, which is why you need to do the backup first.
Reinstall Snow Leopard from the installer media you own.
Download then install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Combo Updater.
Run Software Update repeatedly until there are no updates left to install.
Reinstall all your third-party applications.
Connect the backup you made of the Lion system and copy over your data. You should only have to copy over the files you know about within your own user account folder.
If you do this right, you'll have everything back in Snow Leopard with no loss. If you do it wrong, well, that's another reason we made a backup all the way back in the beginning of this process - you can always start over.

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No easy way.
If you have no backup of your previous system and data, you basically have to erase your Mac's internal hard drive and install OS X Snow Leopard from scratch as a clean install and run all software updates as well as reinstall all of your applications and any updates.
You will now need some way of backing up all of your important data. Backup data to CD/DVD, large capacity USB flash drive OR an external hard drive.
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Foolishly I just jumped straight in, downloaded Lion and installed it, and well... I really don't like it. It's not a patch on SL.
So I'm trying to work out the best way of reverting back to Snow Leopard.
I have:
My Snow Leopard install disc.
A SuperDuper, bootable backup from 48 hours pre-upgrade.
A Time Machine backup from 48 hours pre-upgrade.
I'm fairly sure that just putting the SL install disc in, isn't going to work.
I think I have a couple of options.
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2. Boot from the SuperDuper backup, then restore the last TM backup.
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Before I go ahead, can anyone:
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b) Suggest a better, safer method?
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Thanks.

For ref.
Dragged and dropped copies of important files (Docs, Pictures, Downloads, Movies etc) to a spare drive.
Printed off any docs that I absolutely could not afford to lose.
Shut down Mac.
Attached USB drive with SuperDuper backup, and powered up drive.
Powered up Mac, and immediately pressed the option key.
From the window that popped up, chose my USB drive as the boot disk and pressed return.
Mac powered up running Snow Leopard from USB drive.
Started Disk Utility, and erased the disk labelled 250.06 GB Fujitsu.... etc In the 'name' field, entered 'Macintosh HD'
Started up SuperDuper! and copied my backup over Macintosh HD.
Incidentally, the first step it took was to erase Macintosh HD anyway, so I could probably have skipped the first erase.
Let SuperDuper! do it's thing for 90 mins.
Once it had completed, closed the machine down (it wouldn't let me eject the USB drive, as presumably it was still using that as the boot disc).
Detached and powered off USB drive.
Pressed Mac power button and crossed fingers...
And goodbye annoying Lion, hello again, good old Snow Leopard!
Didn't even need to restore the last Time Machine backup.
I may take another look at Lion again, further down the road, when hopefully Apple will have realised that OS X and iOS are two completely different animals, and that we don't all want our Macs behaving like our iPads.
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Since updateing to Snow leopard my computer has become very slow. The nice man at the White Cathedral said it was because of the age of my computer (bought 2007) and he wouldn't advice me to update to this level. I now wish to revert back to Snow Leopard. Is it Possible and how do you do it. I have a complete Time Machine backup on an external drive.
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Thanks to everyone for their help. It would appear that I want be able to access my documents from the Mountain Lion Time Machine backup disk after I have reverted to Snow Leopard. I guess I'm just stuck with a very slow machine.

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Having installed Lion on my MBP I have realised there are too many incompatibilities for me to work effectively at present.
How do I downgrade back to Snow Leopard without losing data?
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When will we see Lion work with all MS Office Apps, AutoCAD and SL Server?
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https://discussions.apple.com/message/15706096#15706096

Can I revert back to Snow Leopard from Lion?

Hey guys,
Last night i upgraded to Lion. Have since found out my Focusrite 24 DSP audio interface wont work with Lion (No Drivers yet).... can i simply re-install Leopard from the install discs that came with my imac until such time as drivers become available for my hardware, then re-install Lion? Can this be done without clearing my entire hard-drive and starting again?
Cheers
Sean

mscys wrote:
If you have a complete Time Machine backup of your previous Snow Leopard system, going back to SL is really quite easy.
Just boot from the Lion Recovery partition (option key at startup) and choose to restore from Time Machine backup. (You'll be able to see your last dated and identified SL backup, even if you'd already been using TM with Lion.) It will erase the drive for you and restore a bootable SL. No DVD required.
Works great.
(If you don't have a complete TM backup, then you'll have to wipe the drive, install SL and updates, then use Migration Assistant to bring over your partial TM backup, ie: does not include system and apps.)
Thanks very much for this. I've just restored Snow Leopard from Time Machine, and it only took 30 mins. Worked perfectly. Now I have an OS that works properly (hooray!).
Bob.

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I have a 27" iMac that came with Lion on it. I want to go back to Snow Leopard so that some of the old software that I liked can be used again. I do not use apps, do not have an iphone or ipad, would never put information in to a Cloud, so Lion aor Mountain Lion are not for me. Is there a way to go back to Snow Leopard and still have the ability to upgrade should I change my mind?

Install Snow Leopard into Parallels in Lion:
[click on image to enlarge]
Full installation instructions are here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

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Hello,
I've had it. I can't take Lion any more!! I am one of the idiots who downloaded Lion the first hour it became available. Since then, my life has become a nightmare. Lion is so buggy---Apple blew it big time with this software. Multiple crashes every day, I've lost thousands of saved emails, my calendar is all messed up....I am at my wit's end and I want NOTHING to do with Lion any more.
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I am using a MacBook Pro, my OS is 10.7.1. Please---can someone point me in the right direction so that I can begin the process of dumping this terrible software so that I can go back to something that works?
Thank you very much.

Well, if you made a bootable clone with SL before installing Lion, it's easy - if you didn't, it's a bit more difficult. It will involve having to erase your hard drive, so back up your stuff first. Then, if you have the clone, simply boot from it, erase your drive and clone back. If not, insert your SL install disk, boot from it, erase your drive and reinstall.

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Installing a new version of OS X should not lead to any data loss. Of course, it's best to have a backup if anything 'goes wrong' but simply isntalling the new OS shouldn't damage any data.
Clinton

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See Kappy's going back to SL from Lion guide and Bombich's Get Ready for Lion tutorial.

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Hi,
i have recently installed my HP printer CD software, after i did this it started to cause problems with some programmes, so i uninstalled it.
However since doing this i have lost the relevant printer driver (however have now managed to print but do not have most of the functions e.g. print quality levels etc) and now want to revert my system back to a state when it was working fine. i have time machine and leopard cd and go through the process as described on the apple website however i have not done the restore from time machine back ups as i'm not sure if i will lose my third party applications (some of which i dont have the cd's for as they came pre-installed). can anyone help, will i lose my third party applications?

Have you been using Spotlight to backup?
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To my surprise it installed!
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I assume by "back up your data" you mean a Time Machine backup?
Preferably, yes.
I have a BootCamp partition to run Windows; does Time Machine back that up, too?
No, but it won't be affected unless something goes wrong. You still need to back it up, of course, just like all other data.

How do you switch back to snow leopard, lion is crap?

How do tou switch back to snow leopard? Lion is crap, so dissapointed.

Keep the inflamatory comments down or the thread will disappear, as long as your questions are supported related it's fine.
Here's how to go back to Snow.
How can I uninstall OS X Lion and go back to Snow Leopard?
1: Copy your user file folders (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music, not Library) to a external blank Disk Utility formatted HFS drive (not TimeMachine) and disconnect all drives. Make a note of your username and hard drive name. Write down any essential information like passwords stored in keychains and product serial keys.
2: Stick the 10.6 installer disk into the machine and reboot holding the c key down. Second screen in choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
3: On the left select the hard drive makers name of your internal boot drive (important) then click Erase and Erase... button (if you want to wipe the drive of all lingering data then choose Security Option>Zero all data) when choosing a name for the drive, use the same drive name as before.
4: Quit and install 10.6, then go through setup, reboot and use the same user name as before. Software Update, install programs from fresh sources (enter any serial keys) Hold Option and click on Purchases in AppStore to redownload (not Lion of course) and then finally return user files to their respective folders on the Snow Leopard drive.
5: If you have issues with iPhoto, you can right click on the iPhoto Library and "Show Package contents" and in there is a folder with all your originals. Copy them out and delete the iPhoto Library and reboot, restart iPhoto and it should be recreated, which you can then import your copied originals again.
Note: using the same drive and user name as before, returning files exactly into their respective Music, Documents and Pictures folders like before matches any pathnames some files like iTunes has to the location of your files. If not done, then exclamation points will occur in iTunes when you click on a song. The iTunes Library will have to be opened in Text Edit and all the partial pathnames "find and replace" corrected to repair.
Optional, but recommended.
Ideally it's best to first Carbon Copy Cloner the 10.7 internal to another blank external HFS drive before doing the above steps 1-5 as that way you have a copy of everything in case you missed something or you need to hold option boot from the 10.7 clone. The clone can later be erased and used as a 10.6 clone. Or reversed cloned back onto the internal drive or as many external drives as needed. (don't boot a clone on a different Mac, you can access the files though)
Clones are hold option key bootable, TimeMachines drives are not.
Note: The above steps are ONLY for Mac's that didn't come with Lion preinstalled. For reverting a factory Lion to Snow Leopard requires other methods.

Stuck in Lion installation *LIMBO* - disk damaged, disk wont repair, disk is locked, wont revert back to snow leopard

I'm stuck in Limbo. I cant complete the install and cant revert back to snow leopard. All I have are the installer utilites (including safari).
I'm running a summer 2009 release macbook pro 17 inch. I downloaded the Lion install app and proceeded to follow the instructions and guided. After less than a minute the install stopped to say that it could not be completed because the hard disk is damaged and can’t be repaired.
So...I went to disc utility to verify the disk and this is what I got.
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Incorrect number of file hard links
Bad hard link creation date
(It should be 3325742596 instead of 3340504404)
Hard link record has data extents (id = 2888169)
Checking multi-linked files.
The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
So I put in my Snow Leopard disk and went to repair disk. Now, THIS is what I got.
Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
So then I wanted to go back to Snow Leopard at least, but I cant. When I go to “Startup Disk” and select my Mac 10.6.8 drive, it says:
You can’t change the startup disk from the selected disk.
Startup Disk could not gather enough information on Selected Disk.
So that’s annoying because it keeps me stuck in that installation "limbo" - not able to finish installing and not able to go back.
I restarted, holding down the OPTION key, but it only gave me one boot selection - the installer itself.
So then I try yet again to install this thing because there’s not much else I can do...but now it won’t even start installing...when the installer screen asks which drive I want to install it on, for which I would of course choose my Macintosh HD, it says in subscript underneath Macintosh HD:
“This disk is locked” and it wont let me select the “continue” button to begin the installation.
Please help, someone.

phew, just got everything back to "normal"
I turned off my mac for about 10 minutes and then started it up again. Also I think this time i inserted my snow leopard disc at just the right time, not too early not too late.
Whatever it was, when i went to "Startup Disk" the snow leopard disc showed up!
So then I went to disk utility after booting the snow leopard installer for the first time. It said it repaired one thing but then stopped and said it couldnt repair it and told me to back up and reformat.
Then I just ran a simple verify again and it said the HD was "OK" - it gave me a clean bill of health?!?!
So then I went to startup disk again, and was finally able to get out of limbo and back to good old snow leopard.
Now I'll install Lion, but taking all cautions beforehand...maybe i'll wait a few days first though.
Thanks to everyone.

OSX Lion, It is slow and really lumpy/jerky Can I revert back to Snow leopard?

Where are Apple?
Had OSXLion for a week and it is nothing like as fast as the last OS, screen changes are really slow and jerky and the whole thing feels slower. Is there anything that I can do, or can I revert back to Snow Leopard?
This is a real shame never had this type of issue with Apple before.

This is a user to user forum. You can only revert to Snow Leopard through your backup. You might attempt piecemeal data recovery after backing up your Lion system, and copying your e-mail folders to IMAP if they weren't stored there before. Spotlight frequently needs to finish updating in the menu in the upper right (it will only have a search field if it is done, and say it is indexing if it is not), or some plugins may need upgrading to be Lion compatible before you upgrade to Lion. See my FAQs*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
http://www.macmaps.com/upgradefaq.html#LION

How do I revert back to Snow Leopard from OS Lion without losing files etc

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