Reverting back to 10.6.2 with Time Capsule Restore
I am running a Mac Book Pro, and recently upgraded to 10.6.3. Strange things have started happening to my MBP since upgrading and I wanted to revert to OSX 10.6.2 (for trouble-shooting purposes). Is it possible to 'down-grade' to a previous release by restoring from a Time Capsule backup that was taken when the o/s was at that revision? If so, has anyone got any simple instructions (steps) I can follow to do this?
Many thanks in advance.
Mac Book Pro 15.4",
Mac OS X (10.6.2),
iPhone 3GS iPod Classic iPod Nano iPod Shuffle
Thanks for the response - sorry if the question seemed a bit basic.
One final point of clarity (at the risk of asking yet another stupid question !!) .... from the instructions in the User Tips (now book marked, and subscribed to) will this allow me to down-grade/restore the o/s to 10.6.2 but leave my personal files intact?
Reg Gomez wrote:
Thanks for the response - sorry if the question seemed a bit basic.
Nope. Apple doesn't make it particularly obvious.
One final point of clarity (at the risk of asking yet another stupid question !!) .... from the instructions in the User Tips (now book marked, and subscribed to) will this allow me to down-grade/restore the o/s to 10.6.2 but leave my personal files intact?
No. A full system restore puts
everything back the way it was at the time of the backup. Open Finder windows, for example, will re-appear in the same locations, with the same contents.
You can simply reinstall OSX, then load the 10.6.2 "combo" update. That won't touch anything else, but there are some potential problems:
If 10.6.3 changed any of your data, it may or may not work on 10.6.2. I don't think there were any "data conversions" with 10.6.3, but I'm not sure.
Some complex 3rd-party applications, that came with special installers, put various files in assorted places, including your system folders. Usually, Snow Leopard is quite good at preserving them when you install a new version this way, but there's a chance some pieces may be lost and some apps (particularly Adobe, I understand) may not work properly and have to be re-installed.
Some 3rd-party purchase keys may have been "hidden" in your system folders and the installer may not preserve them, so they'd have to be re-entered. | An alternative is to do the full restore, then use the Time Machine "Star Wars" display to selectively restore changed items from the last 10.6.3 backup. If you have made relatively few changes, and have a pretty good idea what & where they are, this might be your best bet.
Thanks for the clarification. I will do a bit of delving when I get home tonight and work out the best course of action.
So just to make sure I understand one of the points you make, as long as I have a copy of the 10.6.2 combo update (allowing for the limitations you point out) I should be able just to apply this to the existing o/s and this will revert me back to 10.6.2 ?
The reason I'm interested in this option is that it seems the simpler of the two options. I was away from my Time Capsule for 3 weeks. In this time I upgraded to 10.6.3, updated iTunes to 9.1, bought a bit of content off iTunes, and uploaded some photos. It was only after I got back that I then did another Time Capsule backup and by this stage I had quite a bit of changed content. But it is worth noting that I am not running any particularly special applications - just Photoshop (very limited use), Light Room, Aperture 2, Office for Mac and a handful of other little utilities, so things aren't that complicated.
However, as you say, I could choose to restore from a Time Capsule backup taken before this activity, the photos aren't too much of a problem as I have secondary backups of these. The iTunes content well I could always get hold of it again.... so yes I think this is another way to go if applying the 10.6.2 combo upgrade doesn't fully work (although I would be surprised if it didn't).
Reg Gomez wrote:
Thanks for the clarification. I will do a bit of delving when I get home tonight and work out the best course of action.
So just to make sure I understand one of the points you make, as long as I have a copy of the 10.6.2 combo update (allowing for the limitations you point out) I should be able just to apply this to the existing o/s and this will revert me back to 10.6.2 ?
No, you have to
Install a fresh version of OSX (10.6.0) from your Snow Leopard disc,
then apply the update to get back to 10.6.2. Info and download available at:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL959 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
Great joy - my MBP is back after downgrading to 10.6.2 (via 10.6.0) from 10.6.3.
I have an MBP - late 2009 - 15.4", 2.66ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, , 4gb memory, 500gb HDD. Recently updated (via Software Update) to 10.6.3 from 10.6.2 and that's when my problems started. It would not restart, I had to press power button 10+ times to get it to boot, it would drain the battery after I shut it down and a few other 'strange' things.
I reset SMC but to no avail.
I then decided to revert back to 10.6.2 and see whether the problems were really linked (IMO) to 10.6.3 update.
Steps I went through to down-grade :
1. backed up my MBP to my time capsule.
2. Then inserted Snow Leopard upgrade CD.
3. Selected install Snow Leopard/Repair. The MBP then rebooted from CD. I followed on screen questions, and it went into Installation (got slightly worried that it was doing a full install I hadn't selected the Repair option from the drop down menu, but maybe because I'd already selected this option before the MBP rebooted it didn't seem to matter).
4. Re-installed 10.6.0 which took about 50 minutes.
5. Ran 'repair disk permissions' in disk utility which took about 7 mins.
6. Applied 10.6.2 Combo update having previously downloaded it
..... and normal service appears to have been resumed on my MBP. And all my personal data was still on the hard drive.
I then ran Software Update just to see what other patches, etc were available, but did not install any of them as I wanted to see what effect applying raw 10.6.2 had on my desire to restore normal service. I have a fairly simple installation - Photoshop, Light Room, Aperture, mail, Office for Mac - all seem to work. The only thing that went missing was Firefox, but for me that's no great issue. I will selectively apply updates and monitor impact (but will not be installing the 10.6.3 update from Software Update as this seem to have been the cause of my issues).
My MBP now restarts correctly, does not appear to drain the battery after shutting down, boots on the first press of the power button (had to press it 10+ times to get it to boot). So am very happy that my machine seems to be ok.
Therefore I have not needed to restore from Time Capsule backup after all.
Reg Gomez wrote:
Great joy - my MBP is back after downgrading to 10.6.2 (via 10.6.0) from 10.6.3.
Yay! 🙂
(but will not be installing the 10.6.3 update from Software Update as this seem to have been the cause of my issues).
It may have been a "glitch" while installing the 10.6.3 "point" update. While certainly not common, that does happen from time to time. Most likely, you could install the 10.6.3 "combo" successfully.
