downgrade from mountain lion to lion, downgrade from mountain lion to lion

Thank You!!

Ill confirm this when i get home. I have a late 2011 MBP it came with lion, had awesome battery life, upgraded to ML. NO ISSUES besides battery life. Even my old Final Cut Pro works fine from 10.5. But Ill do a backup of my files and try to do a re-install from the Apple Server (without typing in my AppleID) to ensure it does not see my (mac up to date) upgrade from the Apple Store. All the threads I have been reading say this will work. But i WILL confirm this tonight.

IT IS POSSIBLE!! So here is the deal. DiskUtility will not allow you to remove the disk0 (which has the information telling the recovery partition to install which version of OSX to pull from the server) I tried numerous times to unmount/mount, format, etc. Nothing worked (while still in the computer) so i did a fresh install of Mountain Lion then removed the drive. I placed this 500GB drive to the side. I tested another blank HDD, a 320GB 7200RPM drive that was laying around. Command -R on boot up. And the world was spinning, Accessed the Apple Server then went into recovery mode, at this point I was able to reformat this drive (as it was prevously formated exFAT for both win/mac read/write) to mac (journaled) to go and try to install OSX LION. Since this drive never did not have the orignal disk0 as the other drive did. It did manage to download the original files as to what originally came with my MacbookPro 8,2 Late 2011 Model. (iMac, MacMini, MacbookAir are the same) Mine shipped with 10.7.8 and that is what was pulled to the HDD (earlier when the world was spinning, the graphic on the background) So now that it was formatted I selected Install OSX and it is now updating the last few patches on OSX Lion. Successfully backdated my software, i DID loose all my documents, or would have if i did not backup my files before hand, which i did. So keep that in mind.

Only way this is possible to backdate is to remove the drive, hook it to an external USB to SATA connector, place it in a desktop computer, (PC, MacPro, PowerMac) and as a secondary drive you can fully erase the drive. Doesnt matter what you format the drive as, because when you get back into the DiskUtility on Recovery Mode you will reformat it to your preference.

iMacs might be harder to access the internal drive, DiskUtility wont allow you to fully unmount and delete the entire disk, atleast my 15yrs of computer expierence didnt allow me to figure out a way. I went techy and removed the drive. MacbookAirs might be the same way, I was holding Command -R for a while so maybe boot and holding those buttons for a while (over 10-15 seconds) may bypass the original menu and redownload the info from the server instead of the 300mb recover partition?!?! No Idea.

Longstory short, it works, feel free to reply back and id be glad to help or walk anyone through my process i did. Fairly simple. Hope this helps!!

But as always....BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE you try anything.

<Email Edited by Host>

Thanks for the feedback. So you tried CMD+OPT+R while with the ML drive installed and that didn't allow restoring to factory specs? If so, File a bug reportwith Apple for a crappy restoration process.

Option-click reveals Lion in my Purchases list. Clicking Download shows" We could not complete your purchase. You can't upgrade this version of Mac OS X because a newer version is installed."

Okay Apple. Fix the AD issue. I've rendered my Mac Air nearly useless because of the bug that locks AD/Exchange or whatever and I can't get email/calendar, etc.

Then, ML and MAS are more screwed up than I thought. Try http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact.html?form=account sort out the nonsense.

Same probs as outlined above. Did the CMD+OPT+R procedure and managed to reinstall Lion. Everything works again: Safari; App Store; iTunes Store. To reinstall Lion, I followed the link to disk utilities and erased the HD partition on my laptop . Bearing in mind that the OSX partition can not be erased. I was then able to reinstall Lion. All is now good. Don't forget to back up anything worth saving!!!!

I just upgraded to ML from Lion on my late 2011 MBP. I backed up all my data on time machine before doing this. I want to continue backing up my data on TM. If I backup with ML will I be able to downgrade to Lion and still recover my data and settings from time machine if I ever was so inclined?

Not qualified on that topic!

Step one would be to start your own thread. Step two would be to try restoring to an empty volume and seeing if it'll work. Step three would be to have created a bootable backup/clone before upgrading so restoration would be simple and painless. For TM details, see Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

Thanks for the tip. Apologies....I did not mean to hijack your thread.

I hope someone is still following this thread.

I've been underwhelmed with ML and irritated by several issues (Bluetooth implementation is terrible, battery life, etc.) and I'd like to go back to Lion. I do have an install image of Lion on a thumb drive.

Is it possible to install Lion over ML, and retain all of my applications? Or do I need to do an Erase & Install?

Try it. It might balk and say you can't install an earlier version. If that's the case, install Lion onto an empty volume and use the Setup Assistant on first boot to migrate from the current ML volume.

I'm doing the same thing and it seems to be working. Installed ML last night and it'll only boot into safe mode, otherwise it starts and restarts and says "your computer restarted because there was a problem. Press a key or wait a few seconds to continue" or whatever it is. Tried reinstalling with command+r, repaired the disk and permissions, and that still didn't work. JUST had the idea to check purchases and try to redownload Lion

The message I got was simply "OS X 10.8 is already installed on your computer. Are you sure you want to install 10.7?" These aren't the exact words, but close enough. I said yes, and it's downloading again so we'll see if it works. At the very least, it let me TRY to downgrade.

So I'm having the exact same trouble.

late 2010 macbook pro and I've never had any trouble with it. Over the last week it's been near impossible to use with numerous panics, restarts and apps closing.

I'm hoping that downgrading OS will solve all my trouble. Please! 🙂 lol.

I'm downloading lion as we speak from the app store (which already crashed once trying to do so... happy days :-(.

I'll let you know how I get on installing it over crappy mountain lion

🙂