How to downgrade from mountain lion to lion?

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hamedpasdar


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hi, i have a imac and it came INSTALLED with the lion os x, and when the mountain lion was released my friend had a voucher code where i could download the mountion lion for free from the app store, but i regret that all now because it looks rubbish so i want to downgrade back to LION like it came with it..the only problem is i do not have a cd? so what can i do:'(..
 
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hamedpasdar said:
hi, i have a imac and it came INSTALLED with the lion os x, and when the mountain lion was released my friend had a voucher code where i could download the mountion lion for free from the app store, but i regret that all now because it looks rubbish so i want to downgrade back to LION like it came with it..the only problem is i do not have a cd? so what can i do:'(..
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can anyone then if you don't know the answer give me a youtube link or something so i learn how to do it.. i tried yesterday the INTERET RECOVERY but after nearly 2 hours nothing happened it took me back to the log in screen..
 
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Did you make a bootable flash drive with Lion on it when you got the Mac?
 
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hamedpasdar said:
hi, i have a imac and it came INSTALLED with the lion os x, and when the mountain lion was released my friend had a voucher code where i could download the mountion lion for free from the app store, but i regret that all now because it looks rubbish so i want to downgrade back to LION like it came with it..the only problem is i do not have a cd? so what can i do:'(..
Click to expand...

Looks like rubbish? Care to elaborate? It should look exactly the same. If you REALLY want to go back to Lion, knock yourself out, but Mountain Lion is a more refined version of Lion in many ways. Whatever issues you have with it, we may be able to help you fix.

As for going back to Lion, that's actually going to be difficult. Once Mountain Lion is installed, I don't believe you can reinstall anything but Mountain Lion from the Recovery partition. And as toMACsh implied, if you don't have a backup installer, then you don't have anything to reinstall it with. You'd have to call Apple.
 
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lifeisabeach said:
Looks like rubbish? Care to elaborate? It should look exactly the same. If you REALLY want to go back to Lion, knock yourself out, but Mountain Lion is a more refined version of Lion in many ways. Whatever issues you have with it, we may be able to help you fix.

As for going back to Lion, that's actually going to be difficult. Once Mountain Lion is installed, I don't believe you can reinstall anything but Mountain Lion from the Recovery partition. And as toMACsh implied, if you don't have a backup installer, then you don't have anything to reinstall it with. You'd have to call Apple.
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I just did a restart holding command option R, the Internet recovery started and after an hour it took me to download Mac OS X Lion , anyway thanks for letting me know it wouldn't have worked because really it does work to downgrade.
 
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toMACsh said:
Did you make a bootable flash drive with Lion on it when you got the Mac?
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No I haven't and bear in mind I'm
Only 17 so not all smart like the rest, I just did a Internet recovery and now it's downloading Mac OS X Lion so hope that's alright?
 
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Internet recovery should be downloading what is already installed. If you have Mountain Lion installed and do a internet recovery, it should download Mountain Lion. If you have Lion installed, it will download Lion.
 
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Stretch said:
Internet recovery should be downloading what is already installed. If you have Mountain Lion installed and do a internet recovery, it should download Mountain Lion. If you have Lion installed, it will download Lion.
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My iMac came with lion installed and couple months later when mountain lion was released I download that, so now that I did the Internet recovery an hour or so later it took me to recovery mode and it let me download Mac Lion, I first erased my hard drive then downloaded the Mac Lion! Hope I did it right.
 
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Yes. If you erased the main portion of the hard drive first then it should allow you to download Lion and install that.
 
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Slydude said:
Yes. If you erased the main portion of the hard drive first then it should allow you to download Lion and install that.
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Thank you that what I was hoping to hear haha, it's installing Lion right now as its saying its got another 4 hours left!:)
 
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hamedpasdar said:
...and bear in mind I'm
Only 17 so not all smart like the rest...
Click to expand...

Many 17 year-olds are genius's when it comes to computers, smartphones, iPad's, etc. Thus you can have 17 year-old genius's...and 17 year-old non-genius's. Just like you can have very knowledeagble 40-50 year-olds...and not so knowledgable 40-50 year olds.

When it comes to computers/electronics...stereotypes are not always very accurate.;)

- Nick
 
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lifeisabeach said:
As for going back to Lion, that's actually going to be difficult. Once Mountain Lion is installed, I don't believe you can reinstall anything but Mountain Lion from the Recovery partition. And as toMACsh implied, if you don't have a backup installer, then you don't have anything to reinstall it with. You'd have to call Apple.
Click to expand...

hamedpasdar said:
I just did a restart holding command option R, the Internet recovery started and after an hour it took me to download Mac OS X Lion , anyway thanks for letting me know it wouldn't have worked because really it does work to downgrade.
Click to expand...

No need to be snarky. I said I didn't believe you'd be able to. There's a big difference between that and outright asserting that it couldn't be done. Good to know for future reference though.
 
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Thank you for all your answers but the only option that helped me was the Internet recovery.
 

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