Downgrading from mountain lion to snow leopard

What about all your programs? Will you be able to re-store all your application for a ML backup into SL?

I don't have any previous programs that I want to keep.

Update: I was able to use the old Plextor USB DVD drive to install SL after wiping the harddrive clean, and some trouble and mistakes. I had to use a flash drive to install SL on first, because I did something wrong when I wiped the hard drive, and I couldn't install SL on it. After a 15 hour install to a 16 GB flash drive, I could boot up from the flash drive and wipe the hard drive clean once more. Then I installed SL from the Plextor onto the hard drive.

/Hans

In addition to Mail data format being changed on ML, iPhoto has also changed it's data format and unlike the terriffic Emailchemy suggestion from Kirk ... I haven't yet found a way to recover all my photos 😠

Thanks for nuthin Apple, sell us on a premature OS and then make it difficult to drop back a rev. Pity those who don't have physical install media for their previous operating systems.

Couldn't agree more with Kirk's comment:

Steve, you are sorely missed. Apparently no one left at Apple has a clue about what made Apple fanatism what it was.

After upgrading to 10.8 i realized 10.7 was just right (originally 10.6) In terms of downgrading 10.8. to 10.7:

Resisting the idea of reconfiguring my settings (user library items specifically), i decided to take a blank drive, install 10.7 and set up a new "test" admin user. After, i copied in my User/XYZ folder into the "Users" folder and reassigned my "home directory" to the XYZ folder i just copied (containg my data, settings, etc). When i was done, logged out, then back in and voila!

This maybe isnt something a tpyical Mac user would be capable (comfortable with rather) of but, it can be useful for reducing the time lost configuring after a "downgrade". What was unfortunate was that i didnt get my applications, however hile applications aren't crucial; worst case is to reinstall.

I know its too late now but i hope someone else can find this informative!

Physical media.. this is why no matter how you spin it, you need it and it must be available if we are to be able to control our devces.

Hey. I had Snow Leopard on my macbook pro and when lion came out I convinced apple to send me a lion usb for free after I tried downloading it from the app store and it got to over 99.99% complete and if you can believe it had only 26KB to go and failed due to the apple server not responding. after all that it wanted me to re download over 4GB of **** and i was like **** im doing that. Anyway i got lion and installed it, of the 250+ new features i litterally found 3 of them and other then that was far from happy. I wanted to go back to snow leopard but could not find my discs. i thought ahh ok i will give it a go and just wait for some updates, before i knew it Mountain Lion came out. i went into my local apple store and copied ML off onto a DVD-DL and brang it home and installed it. First thing first my battery litteralally lasted about 2.5hrs fully charged, programs kept crashing, internet kept dropping out and my computer was running and looked like a 17" ipad. was the worst mistake i had ever made with my machine.. the poxyest opperating system ever made and what apple claimed were new features i couldnt even find and the ones i did find hardly worked. My machine was so unstable i did not dare using it to DJ at a club or party as Traktor and my other DJ software was unstable and my computer got so hot and used up 16GB of RAM doing nothing. I was having Page Outs of upto 6GB within 4 hours of use.!!! I done a drag and drop back up onto my external hard drive (DO NOT use time machine because ML must do something to it because when you go to access it in SL it wont work. it says you do not have pemission to view your own files :/ ) I got everything off i needed and shut down my computer with my SL DVD and done a fresh install and formatted my HDD now im happily running osx 10.6.8 and love it.. everything is perfect 🙂 By far the best OS ever made 10.6.8

HI, I just changed my old mac for a new retina display with mountain lion, I can't use any of my office programs, oracle, or connect through open VPN , I need to go back to snow leopard

is it possible to go to an apple store and ask them to install it, then use my time machine.

My understanding is that if you are trying to get Snow Leopard on your new Retina display MBP, it is not possible. The drivers for the hardware simply aren't compatible with any OS X version that came before the one you bought it with. You could revert your old mac back to Snow Leopard if you wanted, but I doubt you'd like that Retina screen going to waste.

Perhaps someone smarter than me can help you with getting those programs to work on your new toy. You could go to the Apple store and ask them; which they should be able to help with. They'd likely only give you apologies (and maybe a little condescension) if you asked them to downgrade to a pre-mountain lion OS.

Good luck, and I'd very very eager to hear if someone knows otherwise on this. It's what's kept me from upgrading so far.

Hmmmm, Lots of people here complaining about Mountain Lion which is definitely an upgrade from Lion. I am assisting a friend and he has similar issues.

The core problem that needs to be looked into is your system's RAM and CPU if you have only 2 GB of RAM then you should not upgrade above Snow Leopard.I will be upgrading my 2009 macbook pro to 8GB RAM but I think I am near the edge of my envelope. If you are not intel chip based yet, then I don't think you could install Mountain Lion OSX if you wanted to. I have 4 GB of RAM but even this is sometimes challenged and I have to not open too many 'heavy apps' at the same time.These could include Microsoft Word, iPhoto, and any number of video or graphics tools.

Another key issue to investigate is whether your graphics are operating at 32 bit or 64 bit. Again, if you have only 32 bit speed then you should probably avoid anyhitng beyond Snow Leopard and be sure to check that any third party software upgrades are not 64 bit.

Your comment has nOthing about downgrading from mountain lion.

Sorry, but no. I have done everything but when I get to the point where I go to Recovery Disk, then it is labeled Recovery Disk 10.8 and will not let me install anything but OSX 10.8

And what do you do if your DVD disk drive doesn't work???? This is really frustrating.

It is really incredible that Apple does not allow what Microsoft does : to re-install a previous version of the system when the last one is clearly a nightmare... Number of people I know that still use Windows XP because it is the most stable in all Windows systems created so far...

If Apple was trying to find the better way to lose customers, they got it with Mountain Lion !

Cheers.

It can be downgraded, but an installation CD/optical drive of Snow leopard is required. The usual inserting the disk and booting with it is to be done. But the additional thing to do, is to erase the disk wholly with journaled option. Only then the installation disk of snow leopard is recognised as an option.

Only after going back to Snow Leopard could my MacBook Pro breathe easily. What a waste this Lion has been! It ruined my battery.

Cheers!

I believe, this might help.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389334,00.asp