how do I uninstall Lion OS, revert back to Snow leopard, access data on Quicken (PC powered) and reinstall Lion OS?

Lion is buggy, my most important App isn't supported and now I have to spend all day reverting back to Snow Leopard! Come on Apple, you can do betther than this!!

It's simple to revert to SL.

1 get out your old SL clone backup (you _did_ make a full, bootable, clone of SL _before_ you updated to Lion, didn't you? If not, why not?) and attach it to the system.

2 reboot the system holding down the Option/Alt key

3 select the SL system

4 you are now up and running in SL. Copy over anything which might have changed (except the OS itself, of course) from the Lion volume to the SL volume... except your Mail. If you have updated to Lion's Mail, it's a one-way street. You still have all the mail you collected under SL, but anything new under Lion is in a format which is incompatible with SL. You might want to keep a copy as there will likely be a tool which can convert it, but if it's only a few items, why bother?

5 launch Disk Utility and _repartition_ your Lion volume. Lion changes your partition map and you can't just copy stuff back to the Lion volume.

6 launch your cloning software and clone the backup back to the Lion volume.

You're done.

If you don't have a full, bootable, clone, you can try booting from your SL system disc that shipped with your Mac, repartition the Lion volume, and reinstall SL. Then when you get to where it asks for your Time Machine backup, apply that. Just be careful to apply just the backup from _before_ you installed Lion, or Time Machine will reinstall Lion on top of SL.

If you don't have a Time Machine backup either, well, then you get to get hold of some kind of external drive, copy over whatever you want to keep, and then boot from the system disc, repartition and reinstall and copy the stuff back. Be advised that copying over all you want to keep is likely to take a very long time and you might miss some things. This is why it's best to have a backup.

And, yes, I have a bootable clone backup _and_ a Time Machine backup. External hard drives are cheap and don't take up much space, there's no reason to _not_ have one or two of them, cloning software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! are free or cheap, and Time Machine ships with the OS.

It's been known for _months_ that Lion doesn't support Rosetta. You really should have checked. There's a reason why I, for one, will not be updating to Lion at any time in the near future.

If you have an installation DVD of the SnowLeopard OS, why can't you just install it? Will Lion not allow it?

Lion messes with the partition map to set up a recovery partition. If you just reinstall from the SL disc, you leave the Lion recovery partition behind and that has been known to complicate both reinstalling SL and installing Boot Camp later. For one thing, the SL version of Boot Camp will allow just two partitions, the OS X partition and the Boot Camp partition, and throws a hissy fit when there's three. Better to get rid of the recovery partition and avoid complications.

any tips re how to do a diff on the files that have changed between Lion and my bootable backup drive, so then I can selectively understand what files I want to update from Lion over to the backup drive (i.e. prior to then cloning back)

Nope, sorry. I just had a SL clone over to the side. I installed Lion, confirmed that it was as Not For Me as I'd thought, and then nuked it and went back to SL using my cloned backup.

I do know that Mail changes, considerably, and that there are a lot of changes in the /Library and ~/Library. I wasn't going to go chasing them down one by one, I just junked the whole thing.

If everyone who pretend to help would just stop saying "Why did you not make clone of your datas before updating to Lion ?", this is NOT helping okay ? this is upseting !

I did not clone anything,

I didn't even wanted to do the update to lion, my brother convince me to.

And no I did NOT check what it implied.

Now this is a real problem for me.

But what I stand the least is all the people pretending to help replying that I'm stupid and this is my fault entirely.

That's really what I need right now, thanks !

Deorman wrote:

If everyone who pretend to help would just stop saying "Why did you not make clone of your datas before updating to Lion ?", this is NOT helping okay ? this is upseting !

I did not clone anything,

I didn't even wanted to do the update to lion, my brother convince me to.

And no I did NOT check what it implied.

Now this is a real problem for me.

But what I stand the least is all the people pretending to help replying that I'm stupid and this is my fault entirely.

That's really what I need right now, thanks !

You can still return to SL if you want... if you have a Time Machine backup. Don't have one of those either? Well, man, then you have a problem. You should have had a backup. You can still recover, but you will _still_ need to back up your present configuration and then reformat your machine using your SL disc. Don't have anything to back up to? Buy an external hard drive. Don't have a SL disc? They're still available for sale, get one.

Your future is in your hands. Bye, now, I'm bailing out of this thread. What _I_ can't stand is when people won't take responsibility for their actions, admit that they made an error, and do what is required to fix it.

You need a backup. You really should have had a backup starting from the first day you got a Mac (or any other computer, for that matter). If you have a backup, recovering from many problems (including this one) is trivial. If you don't have a backup, you're in a world of hurt, and, yes, it's all your fault.

I had this same problem: I was using Quicken under Snow Leopard, then updated to Lion without having a Time Machine backup.

You will need your Snow Leopard installation disk. What you are going to do is to "partition" your hard disk to allow it to "dual boot"--this means that you basically set aside a chunk of your hard disk just for the old operating system (Snow Leopard) to use. Once that is done, you must install Snow Leopard on that partition.

Step 1: Creating the Disk Partition

The basic procedure for doing this is to Open Disk Utility, click the Partition tab, and select the icon corresponding to your hard drive in the left window pane. Then click the "+" icon below the graphical representation of your disk in the center of the window. The graphics will show a new partition. Click on that graphic. When you do you will be able to edit the "Name" in the "Volume Information" section of the window. I named my disk partion "Snow Leopard." The "Size" you select depends on how much memory you'll need to use in Snow Leopard. Since I really want to eventually totally migrate to Lion, I wanted to keep this number minimal. So I set it to about 25GB. I'm sure that 20GB would be enough. When you click the "Apply" button the hard disk will be partitioned.

Step 2: Installing Snow Leopard on the Disk Partition you just created

Launch your Snow Leopard install disk. When it prompts you for which hard drive to install it on, choose the option to specify your own location. You need to select the partition you created in Step 1 above (which I nemed "Snow Leopard.")

Your Mac will normally boot into Lion. But, once the disk is properly partitioned and Snow Leopard is installed on it, if you hold down the Option key while starting up, the Mac will give you an option to either boot from Lion or Snow Leopard. That's about it. I've been using my Mac this way for about three months with no problems at all (other than the fact that I'm finding more and more old applications that don't work in Lion, so it is good to have Snow Leopard to fall back on). Quicken works just fine.

By the way, I also bought an external hard drive and I set up Time Machine. It's easy and costs less than $100 for 1TB. I don't want to have to go through this hassle again. I suggest you do the same. Good luck!

I KNOW it's my fault,

Knowing it doesn't help that's all, so I don't need to be reminded of this in every single thread about reverting to SL.

Even so I do am thankfull for the solution given.

I have followed your intstructions for partitioning the hardrive between Lion and a new partition to put Snow Leopard back on, but when I try to install it, it says can't use this application of install with this version of Mac OS X. Is there a trick to installing the software?

Thanks so much,

Debra

I am replying to Scuromondo instructions.

Thanks!

I assume that you were able to correctly create the Disk Partition in my "Step 1," above. If so, then, with your computer running, insert your Snow Leopard install disk and RESTART your computer with the C-key held down to force your computer to boot from the Snow Leopard disk.

After your computer boots, you should be able to resume from my "Step 2." Hope that helps!

Thanks Scuromondo! It worked. I assume I have to load software again and can't transfer from Lion?