Can I re-install snow leopard instead of Lion

Downgrade Lion/Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard

1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer

loads select your language and click on the Continue

button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the

Utilities menu.

2. After ** loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the

mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status

of the drive in **'s status area. If it does not say "Verified" then

the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART

info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on

the Partition tab in the ** main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions

from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS

Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the

partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on

the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Quit ** and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.

This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner.

If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion files.