Downgrading Lion to Snow Leopard

Hello all,

I was trying to help out someone and downgrade there computer that came stock with Lion to Snow leopard. Of course it has to be more complex than just inserting the disc and installing it. I read that I could use Disk Utility, erase the hard drive and reformat with Snow Leopard. Well now the computer doesn't have any operating system. When I turn it on it just keeps beeping at the grey screen, and it wont eject the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 disc. I'm assuming the downgrade is possible but not with the current Snow Leopard disc I have.

My question is can I somehow install Snow Leopard or just re-install Lion.

Thanks so much.

Unless things have changed you can not downgrade a Mac lower than the system it was shipped with so you should be able to re-install Lion.
If it were me I would put ML on it for the speed gain that most have noticed with added features.

Yea I thought I read it was possible to downgrade but it was a pain. The guy doesn't want Lion because he uses rosetta and other apps that wont run on Lion

osxx said:

Unless things have changed you can not downgrade a Mac lower than the system it was shipped with so you should be able to re-install Lion.
If it were me I would put ML on it for the speed gain that most have noticed with added features.

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I wouldn't be so sure of that. A retail copy of Snow Leopard should work, technically speaking.. so long as the hard drive is reformatted and installed clean. Though why one would want to do that at this point is beyond me, since many features are lost as such.

Doug

The retail copy of Snow Leopard (assuming 10.6.8) may or may not have the drivers necessary to run on a late 2011 or a 2012 machine. My Mid 2011 iMac came pre-installed with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 so it could be downgraded if I chose to do so.

Certainly worth a try if one has the disc though.

Doug

Think you will need to use Lion Recovery and get Lion up and running then partition the drive and see if Snow Leopard is able to be installed that way, or from an external drive formatted Mac OS Extended (Journalled) and connecting preferably by firewire. It will be bootable but think you need to get back to Lion first up.


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

Thanks guys, if I was my computer I would try those suggestions. But its a huge hassle so I'll probably just put Lion back on it via my flash drive. Thanks again.

If my wife's MacBook Air came with Snow Leapard, how can I go back to that after upgrading to Lion? She likes the scroll bar on the right when she is using Safari.

Yes. You did get the SL DVD? Pop it in and boot from it, format and run. Then update to OS X.6.8 or if the drive is large enough, partition and install SL there.