Why won't Lion let me revert to Snow Leopard?

"Late 2006" 17 inch iMac with Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB ram, and plenty of space. Mac OS 10.6.8 fully updated at the time Lion was released.
Lion won't allow me to run several "must have" apps, so I want to revert to Snow Leopard. I have a perfectly good Snow Leopard disc (installed once, returned immediately to its original package, and tucked inside a clean cabinet). I try to restore from Time Machine as described in the Apple article "Reverting to a previous Mac OS X version". Step one, insert the Mac OS X installation disc.
I insert my perfectly mint condition Snow Leopard disc. It spins, then ejects. Lion does not eject any of my other discs, including discs for apps that Lion claims are PowerPC apps. Can anyone help?

This is a very valid point.
I have two SL disks, a grey one that came with my iMac and a retail one I purchased for the rest of the family.
In trying to create a partition and install SL on a lion machine, the retail one did not work on the iMac, even thought it loaded on my sons older iMac. When I tried the Grey Disk that came with the iMac, it worked first time. I wasted about 6 hours trying to work this out!!
Hope this helps!
Regards
Richard

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Why is mountain lion so slow compared to snow leopard?

Just installed Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard (skipped Lion).   I like the features of Mountain Lion but it is incredibly slow in overal start-up and general system responsiveness compared to Snow Leopard.
Running iMac and Macbook Pro and both are the same in really slow performance.

OK, been a busy week but I've installed RAM.
Had iMac 2007 model (iMac7,1) with 2GB of RAM (two 1GB modules).   Upgraded recently to 6GB of RAM (one 2GB and one 4GB module), yes, I know this is above the original specs of 4GB, but this model does indeed support 6GB with Snow Leopard or newer.   This now works fine under Mountain Lion with no spinning multi-colored ball.   With a couple of applications like Safari and Mail open, it has (using Activity Monitor) just under 2GB free memory.   Page Outs are now a very small (close to zero) fraction of Page Ins.   So, it works well.     If you are not upgrading memory then stick to Snow Leopard as it is a much lower memory footprint.
Had Macbook Pro 2008 model (MacBookPro5,1) with 4GB of RAM (two 2GB modules).   This wasn't performing as bad as the iMac with Mountain Lion but was still slow.   Anyway, upgraded to 8GB of RAM (two 4GB modules).   This is also now working fine with no major issues observed.
If running VMWare fusion, then a lot of the memory will be used up.   The free memory is very slim on on an iMac when running VMware Fusion with MS Win XP (ugh!), which I only do for a couple of scientific antenna analysis programs that I like to use that just aren't available on the Mac, but it is workable. Occasional memory address messages appear from the guest OS but othrwise fine.
So, in summary, if you have older machines (with low RAM) or have a multitude of apps open then Mountain Lion requires careful consideration as it needs just over 4GB when a couple of memory hungry apps open. Do anything exciting andmemory usage will increase causing tons of Page Ins compared to Page Outs and you'll be running in slow virtual memory.   So, for machines that you won't upgrade in RAM stick to Snow Leopard.   For modern Macs with 8GB, 16GB or more, then all will work well.
I still wish they could make the memory footprint leaner though.

Why I reverted to Snow Leopard from Lion....

Mac Mini (Late 2009)
2GHz Processor
2G RAM
320GB Hard Drive
I've loved this computer from the moment I got it....used...on eBay...Leopard disk included, but wiped clean by seller. My second Apple purchase after the iPhone 4. I loved the way that Apple products did away with the annoying "thinking time" so familiar to PC users....they just worked (bleugh!). They didn't get sick, they didn't slow down, they made your whole computing experience less computational and more creative.
Snow Leopard, when it came out, made my second hand Mac even better, took up less space and just seemed to run extremely smoothly. As a musician, I record into CPU-intensive programs like Ableton, and yet, my ickle 2 Gig box handled the loads superbly.
Lion, on the other hand has turned out to be a major disappointment....
After the initial 'excitement' of side-swiping webpages had worn off, I began to notice that the computer was very slow, with that beachball appearing much too frequently for my tastes...I got several spinning hourglass flashbacks! I thought I had left those days behind me....Ableton started using massive amounts of CPU and doubling it's RAM consumption, to the point where the mouse would freeze, drop-down menus would appear blank, basically the whole system freezing until I closed the offending program...in this case Ableton. I was seriosuly considering upgrading my RAM, but my gut instinct was that Lion was causing it. I checked the forums, and found a few incidents of people with similar problems, saying Lion was the culprit. They were being arrogantly dismissed as fools for daring to criticise anything Apple related. I'm no expert, but I know when my computer is not working the way it should. So I searched YouTube for the method of reverting to Snow Leopard...sat up late last night completing it...but it was well worth it. I'm back on 10.6.8
I now love my Mac Mini again.....all my programs run faster, RAM and CPU usage is down, no more spinning hourglasses, I mean BEACHBALLS
My verdict:
Snow Leopard is a fantastic operating system.
Lion is not.
I don't know or care for the politics of why it is not, but a few gimmicky tricks and full-screen apps do not even begin to make up for the frustration of using a slow, buggy operating system, that developers say was rushed out and no't tested properly...I believe them!
I have heard a few people refer to possible power management problems with Lion....sounds plausible
Lion is Apple's Vista.
Cheers for reading my first post
Paul

Welcome to the crowd.
I reverted my MBP 3,1 back to Snow and the Lion black death and video artifacts are gone.
Yes, Lion certainly needs to go back into the oven for more cooking, unfortunately they release it and inflict millions with it and don't have a easy, user friendly method to revert.
Not only that they make UI changes that people just have to blindly accept, with no option to turn them off.
Things needs to change, even Windows has System Restore and some measure to revert some features back to what they were and let change be accepted gradually.
Storage drives are fat, some with as much as 750GB, there isn't a reason in the world not to provide two OS''s on one drive to ease the transition between the two. Let those who can afford to beta test with arrows in their backs do so.
Let the rest of us who just want our computers to work left alone, we don't want new features if it they don't work reliably yet.
The way it is now, when a new OS is about to be released, one has to run out and buy new hardware prematurely because the whole next year will be nothing but misery.
Really nice way to treat newcomers to the Mac experience.
Change and improvement is welcome, but it has to be gradual and reliable. Not sudden and drastic.

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Anyone in similar position:
Open iTunes app on iPhone, and pick an option from bottom, such as music. Then scroll down to bottom of page and where your iTunes ID is, press on it, and pick sign out.
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How do I revert to Snow Leopard from Mountain Lion? I do not have the setup disk that came with my MacBook but I do have the Snow Leopard software.

I upgraded to Mountain Lion and very much regret this move. I cannot use Parallels or Bootcamp for Windows XP which I need for some of my 'older' accessories. How do I revert from Mountain Lion back to Snow Leopard? I have the Snow Leopard software but I do not have the original setup software disk that came with the MacBook (leant to a friend and never seen again).

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AppleMan...I have the same iMac you have...i-7 16GB with a SSD....just bought it second hand and it is about 1.5 years old....it was maxed out with upgrades when the original owner bought it. It was also restored back to factory settings prior to me taking possession.
I am making home movies in iMovie 11....max length 30 minutes or less. I am totally new to this editing. I am using HD footgage filmed from my Hero GoPro 3. I am finding that the movies that I am creating are skipping, staggering, hanging up etc...usually where I had transitions. I am certain I have enough power and memory in my iMac, so what's the issue? I read one of your other posts about optimizing each event or clip to 1080p? Is this what I need to do for every clip I import? Can I do this for all the clips at once on import? I also read that I may need to export the movie to quick time for smooth playback??
Any help you can provide would be appreciated!
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PS=How do I e mail you directly here in the posts? I went to your profile but didn't see any "e mail" or "contact" member button to click on.

How do I uninstall OS Lion and revert to Snow Leopard

Hi all, I need to use Microsoft Office Mac Version in my work. And OS X Lion don't support that. I am desparate to know how do I unistall the OS X Lion, and revert to Snow Leopard so that I can resume working on my MacBook Pro. Please help.....

MS Office for mac 2004 is indeed incompatible I believe but 2008 onwards isn't. You should consider upgrading your MS Office to be compatible. Apple is not responsible for making 3rd party software compatible with its OS, its the 3rd party developers who updates their softwares and drivers.
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IPhoto says it won't import photos from my Fujifilm Finepix S1000 camera because it's the wrong format (jpeg). It always has before... but I upgraded to Lion then went back to Snow Leopard and now it's not working. Suggestions? Thanks!

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I bought a macbook pro on november 2011 wich had Lion OS installed on it. Playback plug-in in Mainstage 2.1.3 does not play files from the beginning (it leaves out like 50 mSecs or so). Is there a way to revert to Snow Leopard OS?

I bought a macbook pro on november 2011 wich had Lion OS installed on it. Playback plug-in in Mainstage 2.1.3 does not play files from the beginning (it leaves out like 50 mSecs or so). Is there a way to revert to Snow Leopard OS?

BrettGoudy wrote:
...Is there any way I can install a partition that runs snow leopard on my early 2011 MB pro with what I have (new SSD, New RAM, Current version Lion running, no external drive, lack of original snow leopard disks [I lost them ] and the general 10.6.3 snow leopard boot disks)...
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How does one un-install Lion and revert to Snow Leopard?

Anyone know how to un-install Lion and revert to Snow Leopard?

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.
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Why won't Lion let me revert to Snow Leopard?

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