My Snow Leopard Disk Crashes

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Level 1

4 points

My Snow Leopard Disk Crashes

I've partitioned my new iMac (3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB DDR3, 2TB internal drive) into two partitions; one for 10.7.4 and the other hopefully for SL. Unfortunately, when I try to start up with the SL install disk, the dreadded gray screen of death appears, insiting that I perform a hard restart. All subsequent restarts (holding down the C key) result in the same gray screen.

What's happening here? Cannot I install SL on a blank (400GB) partition on this machine?

Thanks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 27" 3.4 GHz i7, 16 GB 1067 DDR3

Posted on Jul 31, 2012 8:06 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 31, 2012 9:38 AM in response to dmingo

You can't install from the Snow Leopard retail DVD (which is 10.6.3) on any iMac newer than March 2010.

Ref. A.Brodie's article -

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2455

If you can obtain the grey discs that would have shipped with the Mac had Lion not been installed (try Apple Customer Services with the serial no. of the Mac and a credit card handy), you may be able to install from that (10.6.7)

Otherwise there may be a workround, but I can't personally vouch for its efficacy.

It involves installing 10.6.3 on an external drive, updating to 10.6.8 with the combo installer, boot from the external drive and clone the Snow Leopard onto your partition.

The installation to an external drive may need to be done from another Mac running SL.

That's just a précis, and as I said, I've never tried it personally, so research it a little more.

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Answer 2

dmingo Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 31, 2012 12:19 PM in response to noondaywitch

I still have my old iMac with a bootable SL partition. Can I somehow tether these two animals together (maybe Target) and transfer SL intact?

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Answer 3

Jul 31, 2012 1:46 PM in response to dmingo

I don't know. As I said, I'm relaying third-party information.

There have been several threads on the subject, though, so try forum searches for "revert to Snow Leopard", "Revert to 10.6." and other similar criteria.

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