I can't load Snow Leopard on an empty partition

In February I bought a new Mac Book Pro that came loaded with OS X Lion. I want to run Final Cut Pro on it. I bought FCP on ebay but can't load it because it is a PowerPC app and Lion won't load it.
I added a partition to my hard drive to load Snow Leopard, bought SL online and am trying to install SL.
If I try to run the install app from within Lion I get this message: "You can't use this version of the application install Mac OX X.app with this version of Mac OS X." Then in small print this: "You have Install Mac OS X.app 23.1"
If I try to boot from the SL Install DVD I get this message: "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button until it turns off, then press the Power button again." I do this and it always comes back to this same message.
I tried booting to the Recovery HD but can't get that to allow anything either.
Is there a way to get this running? Or have I wasted a lot of money?
Thanks for any help!
// -- Phil

If you purchased the current model of MacBook Pro, then to the best of my knowledge it cannot boot from Snow Leopard. You would have to run Snow Leopard as a virtual OS under one of the virtualization solutions (Parallals Desktop, VMWare Fusion, or VirtualBox). There's been debate about whether the desktop version of Snow Leopard is licensed for such use, but the developers of the solutions believe that it does not and hence allow installation of Snow Leopard Server, which is licensed for virtualization, only.
Regards.

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I had Leopard on may Mac. I upgraded to Mountain Lion using Snow Leopard. I can't use my video with Mountain Lion. Can I load Snow Leopard on an external hard drive so I can use it with my camera?

I had Leopard on may Mac. I upgraded to Mountain Lion using Snow Leopard. I can't use my video with Mountain Lion. Can I load Snow Leopard on an external hard drive so I can use it with my camera?

First, you cannot do this if you have a Boot Camp partition.
Second: Create a new partition.
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.
Third: Install Snow Leopard.
Boot from your Snow Leopard DVD. Follow instructions for installation being sure that before you actually install Snow Leopard you have selected the new partition as your target destination.
Booting From An OS X Installer Disc
1. Insert OS X 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.

If I purchase a brand new I-mac today do I have to run OS Lion or can I load Snow leopard?

If I purchase a brand new I-mac today do I have to run OS Lion or can I load Snow leopard?

Just faced that question, and the answer should be that you can run SL on the latest iMac.
(Our scenario: Bought 3 iMacs in August. Was surprised -- and relieved! -- to see that they arrived with SL installed on them, and grey system restore disks. One of the machines was DOA. Futzed around with it for 6 weeks trying to get it to work, decided it was dead, drove it 4 hours to the nearest Apple Store. They gave us a new iMac, which when we got it back, turned out to have Lion on it. Popped in one of the three grey restore disks that had come in August, installed SL, it works without any problems.)

Can't load snow leopard to my mbp it is runing leopard it is saying can't load on this unit?

Can't load snow leopard to mbp. It stops after language selection.

Does you machine meet the system requirements?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4949
Is this a retail Snow Leopard disc from Apple, (the one with the white cat on it, not a grey one from someone else, if it is a grey one it will not work as most of those were designed to be machine specific.
This what the retail disk looks like and you can get it here: http://store.apple.com/us/search/snow-leopard-10.6.8#!!
If it does take your original install disc 1 power up the mac and push in the disc holding the OPTION key. This will bring up the start up manager and allow you which disc to start from, select the install disc. After if finishes booting, select your language, click continue. On the next page in the menu bar select utilities/disk utility. select)highlight) your volume (default name Macintosh HD, unless you named it something else) from the left column, under the First Aid tab click verify disk, if it comes back with errors (they will be in red font) then run Repair Disk, you may have to do this more than once (untill it comes up with this disk seems ok in green font)
Quit out and eject the disc.
Then power off and power back on holding the C key, select your language and follow the prompts

Can I install Snow Leopard on a new partition on a Macbook Pro (Late 2011)?

I need to get Pro Tools 9 up and running again after I migrated from PC to Mac, but I know that Pro Tools 9 doesnt work with Lion.. I dont have the money to upgrade to PT10 so my thought was to go downgrade to Snow Leopard to get it working. But I dont want to leave Lion, so my question is if I can make a new partition and install Snow Leopard on the new partition and have both OSs bootable?
The guy in the store I bought my mac from said Snow Leopard probably wouldnt play nice with the mac since its adapted to Lion but I dont trust people that get money for preaching about the constant need for "the latest". So I thought I'd ask the experts instead, so here I am! What do you guys think?

theoretically, it should work - but the guy at the Apple Store is correct....computers that ship with the latest operating system do not support being downgraded.
You might not get past the spinning beach ball & gray screen if you try to boot from the Snow Leopard install disc.
It's worth a shot though if you want to try it. Just don't try to 'downgrade' the current Lion installation back to Snow Leopard. Try instead to create a new partition specifically for Snow Leopard. Disk Utility - select the top HD (probably reads Hitachi something)...select it, click on the Partition tab. Select the top partition, and you should then be able to see the + so you can add a new partition. I would probably make it about 20GB give or take depending on how much space you think you will need - but i believe the Snow Leopard installation by itself takes up around 8-10GB.
Once this partition is created, insert your Snow Leopard installation disc, restart the computer and hold the C key down to start from the install disc. When it walks you through the steps for installation, select the newly created Snow Leopard partition. Install. Be sure to go through all the Software Updates (numerous times) after the installation is done.
You can select which startup disc you want to boot from by holding the Option button down at startup until you see the gray startup manager that shows your Lion partition, Recovery Disc partiton, and your Snow Leopard partition.
If for whatever reason this doesn't work, simply just erase the partition. It likely will not work but you should be able to just erase that newly created partition without any other problems.

I have OS X 10.5.8. Can I load Snow Leopard without losing data and then upgrade to Lion?

I am using OS X 10.5.8. I have a disk with Snow Leopard on it, but I don't know if I downloaded it. Can I download this Snow Leopard disk without risking a loss of data on my MacBook Pro?

If by "download" you mean "install," then you can install Snow Leopard over a Leopard system. But anything can happen, so it would be wise to backup first.
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from the 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. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Install Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Boot from the Snow Leopard installer DVD. Follow the onscreen instructions. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

Can't Install Snow Leopard on Formatted empty HD

I have Lion installed on my primary HD (Mac Pro) and I want to install SL on my external 500G HD. I have 3 Leopard install disks but none of them will work. Each pops out when "c" key is depressed while loading. Any thoughts?
Thanks
JB

Sagittarius1 wrote:
1.MacPro OSX Install Disc 1 & 2 - Both Grey and 10.5.1
Well it's possible 10.5 has be depreciated, I know I can't boot from it on my 15" that came with it.
2. Snow Leopard DVD 10.6.3 - this is like the one above from WZZZ with Pic.
This disk should boot as the machine came with 10.5 and you may have to go the 10.6 to 10.6.8 to 10.7 route reinstalling.
I was having a problem and they sold me ($19.95) Mac OSX Snow Leopard DVD "replacement not for resale". 2010 Apple, INC
not sure, #2 should have booted.
Clean the bottom of the #2 disk with a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol on a very soft, clean cloth and buff to a shine.
Stick the disk in and see if it appears on the Desktop that means it's being read and the optical drive is fine.
Reboot holding the c key down on a WIRED Keyboard and see what happens.

Can I install snow leopard server in a partition ofsnow leopard?

Hi, there!
I have a Mac Pro with snow leopard and windows 7 in boot camp. I also bought the server software and I'd like to know if it's possible to install the server software without losing the other installations. Is any of the following possible?
1.-Installing SL server in a new partition without losing SL & windows or,
2.-Replacing snow leopard with SL server without losing windows in bootcamp
3.-If none of the above is possible I'll have to lose both, I guess.
Thank you all in advance.

You can at least either upgrade SL to SLS or replace SL with SLS - shouldn't affect BootCamp.
I don't know what happens if you try to repartition the drive.
It should be possible to repartition it without losing any data but BootCamp might not accept more than 2 partitions on one drive.
If you want all 3, install another drive, internal or external.

I can´t install snow leopard in one lion partition

I have created the partition running Mac OS X lion, rebooted the system with option (or C) key and my macbook crashes and shows a sign saying 'you need to switch of the computer, hold down the .... and restart' and I am not able to install snow leopar in my new partition.

Thank you for your answer. My macbook pro cames with snow leopard, however, I bought lion and completely formated it to install lion. Now, I need to run snow leopard in orden to run some rosetta applicastions such as No Machine. The new version of now machine runs in lion but does not allow me to connect to the server (it runs older version of no machine). That's why I need to create a partition to install snow leopard and run older version of no machine remote desktop software.
Than kyou.
L

Can't install snow leopard on partition after upgrading to lion

I rushed out too early to install Lion via Apple Apps store. Now, I realize that Rosetta is gone and so are my options to use older apps. As I was reading on the web and Apple Support, I have tried various things and get a window saying that I can't install snow leopard.
I have never partition my hard drive, but using disk utility I created a partition called "Snow Leopard." It divided my HD in half which is okay. I closed the disk utility window, rebooted holding down the "C" key, and saw the OS X Install DVD. When I select it a window pops up saying, "You can't use this version of the appl inst Mac OS X with this version of Mac OS X. You have installed Mac OS X 23.1.1."
Before downloading lion, I made a backup of my existing HD using Time Machine to an external HD. When I open up a saved version dated a month ago, I see that the applications that were working in snow leopard now have the icon circle saying that it is not supported by lion. This is strange since I used Time Machine to back up my HD, then turned off the app before downloading lion. Even older versions saved on the external HD show the circle.
I read about lion and the "Recovery HD," but when I hold down the Command-R key nothing happens when I restart my computer. It also talks about using the option key but that does not work. It talks about reinstalling lion using this system, but I don't see it working.
How can I install snow leopard on my new partition, then I would go to "Software Updates," to get the latest version, or use one of the versions on my external HD to have both operating system.
Thanks,
DaisyMay

Hi Scottiemn,
As I was trying different things to make a partition on my HD, I made notes as to what I did, and I finally got it to work. I will try to explain what I did.
Before installing “Lion,” I backed up Snow Leopard using Time Machine to my external Seagate HD. I installed “Lion,” and found out that I could not use some of my old apps, so I did the following.
Since I am running “Lion,” I opened up disk utility and selected my MacHD (1TB), then I selected partition, and it showed “Macintosh HD” under the partition information name. I believe I selected the plus, + and it divided my HD space in half, and I named it Snow Leopard.
I then installed the Snow Leopard DVD, and restarted my computer holding down the “C” key, I held it down for about 30 seconds or more and then took my finger off of the key. As I waited I finally saw that I was on the install DVD, and on the top menu bar I saw “Utilities.” I had my external Seagate HD mounted on my desk top before I restarted my computer, I selected the “Utilities,” on the menu bar and it gave me the option to back up from Time Machine, I selected my external Seagate HD to the newly created partition I named Snow Leopard and I said “Yes.” I followed the instructions and after it was done, I went to the menu bar and selected System Preferences, System, Startup Disk, and selected to start up with Snow Leopard. On my desktop, I can see two Hard Drives, one is Macintosh HD with “Lion,” and the other is Snow Leopard.
Then, I started up my computer and I was on the Snow Leopard partition and I saw all of my apps working. I then went back to the menu bar and selected System Preferences, System, Startup Disk, and selected to start up with “Lion,” and restarted my computer and I was running “Lion.”
I am not sure why I was not able to use the DVD of SL before, but somehow I got it to work, and I hope that I have explained what I did above.
One thing, when I installed “Lion,” from the app store, I did not make a bootable DVD of the application. I went back to the app store and downloaded “Lion” again and kept it in the dock until I got Snow Leopard to work. I burned a DVD of “Lion,” and so I have a backup of it.
Since my Seagate HD has only 250 GB of space and it is an EIDE HD 7,200 rpm using an OWC Mercury Elite FW400/USB2 with the Oxford chipset 911 enclosure which I bought in 2008, I decided that since I now have my 27 inch iMac quad core i5 with 1TB that I needed a larger hard drive.
I researched the web and decided to go back to OWC and just bought a 2.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro “Quad Interface” 64MB with eSATA/FW800/FW400/USB2.0 with 7,200 rpm speed for $219.00. I partitioned it for Time Machine, and Carbon Copy Cloner.
I ran Time Machine, and both partitions “Lion, and Snow Leopard” are on the Time Machine partition and both HD’s are under the Carbon Copy Cloner.
I am self taught on my many iMac’s over the years, and I go to the forums to ask questions and follow the helpful hints to resolve my problems. I carefully try different things and write down what I did so I don’t repeat things.
I hope that I have explained what I did, and hopefully it will work for you.
When I want to run SL, I select in the System Preferences to start up from that disk, when I want to run Lion, I go back and select that and start up my computer running Lion.
Since I have many old apps that Rosetta uses to open them up in SL I wanted to keep that operating system. I will go back now that I have everything working and see if I really need them. I won’t rush to remove my SL partition that I created, but in time if I don’t need the older apps then I may clean out my system and just run Lion.
I run Lion now all of the time, but when I need to go back to SL, I now have the option.
Good Luck,
DaisyMay

How can I reinstall Snow Leopard?

How can I reinstall Snow Leopard?

Jan,
You can use the Disk Utility "app" to partition your hard drive so that you can (clean) install Snow Leopard on the new partition. This leaves Mountain Lion intact on one partition. This worked great for me. I was becoming increasingly annoyed, seeing that Mountain Lion ***** due, as another poster said, to its "increasing iOSification".
With Disk Utility you can name the new partition "Macintosh HD 2". Be sure to use the exact same format as the original (Macintosh HD) partition. You can access all your files/apps on the old (ML) partition from the new (SL) partition, and vice versa.
However, know this:
I still have NOT found a way to transfer any my OS X Mail folders from Mountain Lion BACK TO Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion's Mail gives you the false impression you can export your Mail folders to Snow Leopard's Mail, but you cannot. From what I've read here, the newest version of OS X Mail is not compatible with earlier versions. This is a HUGE problem.
My short list (to date) of crappy Mountain Lion behavior; items marked with a double asterisk (**)represent the worst of Mountain Lion for me.
** No up/down arrows in scroll bar slider;
Expose` not as easy to navigate as in Snow Leopard;
Mail does not request passwords for either receive or send;
No "Save Draft" icon in Mail compose window;
"Save As" selection missing in most app menus;
No separate Search window in Safari (workaround: use Firefox or Opera);
** Can't export Mail from Mountain Lion into Snow Leopard if downgrading;
iWork 09 seems to have "circled the wagons" re compatibility with MS Office or LibreOffice (workaround: just use Libreoffice);
I truly regret "upgrading" to Apple's "Vista".

I recently loaded Snow Leopard. I have iPhoto 08. I can no longer play the video clips in iPhoto.

I recently loaded Snow Leopard on my iMac. I have iPhoto 08. I am now unable to run the video clips in iPhoto.

Upgrade iPhoto.

Can I install Snow Leopard on MacBook Pro 2013

Can I install Snow Leopard on my new MacBook Pro 2013. I'm so tired of the UGLY grey icons. I keep thinking that the mail or iPhoto window is not the active one because everything is grey. I use Snow Leopard on my 27inch iMac and love it. Nice RED delete button for mail, etc. Thanks

Firmware restrictions prevent directly loading any OSX earlier than what came with the system.
The *only* way around is to load SnowLeopard *Server* (not Client) into a virtual machine (Parallels, VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox). But that costs $20+shipping/tax for the disk and is a learning curve into SL Server. And you *still* need your host OSX to run it, and the VM will not most efficiently use the hardware resources.

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My MacBook running 10.5.8 won't load Snow Leopard. I can hear the disk drive trying, but then it just ejects. I have run the repair disk permissions, no luck still. Any advise?

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How can I remove Snow leopard from my Mac, it crash all important programs

Please tell me how I can remove Snow Leopard from my machine & revert back to Leopard 10.5.8
Since I loaded Snow leopard, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Quark & Mail all quit over & over again. I never had ANY of these issues before loading snow leopard. I rely daily on the programs I listed. I am not saying once in a while, but constantly; opening the programs, exporting, placing graphics, emailing, you name it, it quits the program I am in. I keep sending apple the crash reports, but I am afraid I have reached my end. (Apple must have a folder fu;l of crashes with my email address in it by now.)
To maintain my sanity PLEASE tell me there is a way to do this without risking loosing any of my data.
I do have time machine hooked up.
Please be a life saver (sanity saver) and tell me how to get Snow Leopard off my machine!!!!!

First, Welcome to the Discussions,
Second, there is no way to successfully degrade an OS to a previous version. You would have to install anew a previous OS, thereby erasing all your data. Then you would take that version up as far as you want to go.
Of course if you've been using Time Machine you can recover to the prior system and retain your files using that.
Best of all would be to have a firewire external drive and use an app like this to make a clone on. No worries then if one wants to go back before any major changes very precisely.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Good luck.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html
Message was edited by: Samsara

I can't load Snow Leopard on an empty partition

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