How can I uninstall OS X Yosemite and return to OS X Mavericks?

DId your " clean" install of OS X Yosemite involve backing up your internal hard drive and completely erasing and reformatting your internal hard drive and reinstalling all of your applications?

Regretting my decision to upgrade to Yosemite because.....

My sidebar menu in Finder reverted to a much older version - in other words, the files I use daily in the sidebar are GONE. I've asked the Apple community for help and got no answers. Where are the folders that disappeared? Your guess is as good as mine. Time Machine was no help.

iPhoto is now unusable - many photos that I cannot access now. Attempts to use the converter have been unsuccessful.

Yes, I would like to revert to the previous operating system but afraid I'll screw things up even worse considering the instructions I've seen.

Danna Tartaglia

Yes I completely reformatted my drive. I downloaded a fresh copy of Yosemite, used terminal, and put onto a pen drive. I used the migration assistant to migrate my apps and and documents, from time machine, so that might be causing some of the slowdown. I used Dupe Guru, to remove any duplicate apps, or documents that I may have had on my system. Still the slow speed, that I am experiencing is rather ridiculous. I just ran Etre Check, and all of my (15) System Launch Agents, and (21) System Launch Daemons plists are red. One launch daemons, and (3) user launch agents, are also in red. Could they be causing the slow down. I've searched for these plists in my preferences, but I can't seem to locate them. Could these faulty p.lists be somewhat responsible, for the slowdown. If so, is their an easy way to locate them, so I can remove them.

Can you post your Etrecheck results in a new forum posting so I and others can have a fresh post of your issues and take a look at what you have installed on your system?

FYI

Using any type of so called hare drive or duplicate file "cleaning" apps is a very, VERY BAD idea!

DO NOT USE ANY SO CALLED APPS CLAIMING TO "CLEAN", "OPTIMIZE" OR "SPEED UP" YOUR MAC!!!! EVER!!!!

Apps like MacKeeper or any other maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac, SpeedUpMyMac, MacCleanse or anything like these apps, installed on your Mac, while they appear to be helpful, can do too good a job of data "cleanup" causing the potential to do serious data corruption or data deletion and render a perfectly running OS completely dead and useless leaving you with a frozen, non-functional Mac.

Plus, these type of apps aren't really necessary OR needed. They really aren't.

There are manual methods to clear off unnecessary data off of your Mac that are safer and you have complete control over your Mac and not just leave a piece of auto cleaning software in charge of clearing off data off of your Mac. Their potential of causing OS X issues outweighs the implied good and benefits these types of hard drive or memory "cleaning" apps are written to do.

These types of system 'cleaning" apps are very poorly written and are really a scam to rob newbie and novice Mac users of their hard earned cash for a poorly written maintenance program that will do much more harm to a perfectly normal running OS X system than the good that the app developers purport these types of apps will do.

Plus, the software companies that write these apps make it hard to easily uninstall these apps if something DOES go wrong and these apps work in a way where you have no recovery or revert function to return your Mac back to its former, working state in the event something does go wrong.

It is best to never, EVER download and install these types of apps.

The risk to your system and important data is too great a risk!

Thank you Michel, I have posted my entre checklist in a new forum.

Where?

Couldn't find your post.

MichelPM wrote:

Where?

I found it at How can I uninstall OS X Yosemite and return to OS X Mavericks?, but he's managed to completely cripple his OS by removing a bunch of failed System LaunchAgents/Daemons, so probably beyond help now. Linc has him.

Thanx, I suppose ...

I would also like to revert to my previous software as, since upgrading to Yosamity I'm having problems with my Apple ID when I try to log into iCloud which was the reason for my upgrading in the first place! When I try to enter I'm asked for my Apple ID password for an email at me.com which I don't even recognise. I'm entering my Apple ID password and being told it's incorrect. I'm then told to reset my password which I've done 3 times now but even the new passwords aren't being recognised! I don't know what to do now. I can't just keep renewing my password as this isn't changing anything.

My iPhone is also asking for my password all the time now and not when I'm doing anything which should require it. It's not telling my I've entered incorrectly but it keeps asking again and again!

Hey, so I tried doing the third option but the computer told me "disk could not be ejected"or something along those lines. Is there a way to fix that?

Hi Allan,

I need to do the same so I can access my aperture library and relocate all of my photos. i don't want to buy aperture 3 since apple will no longer be supporting it but i need to get my images!!

Help!

Skateparkpiracy wrote:

Hey, so I tried doing the third option but the computer told me "disk could not be ejected"or something along those lines. Is there a way to fix that?

Very difficult to respond when we don't know the exact wording of the dialog and when it occurred. Screenshots are highly encouraged here. I'm not sure of the steps you took to get to that dialog. Did it come up when you choose to "Restart" or after holding <Command><Option>-R to begin Internet Recovery. Do you have an external drive connected? If so you need to attempt to eject and disconnect it before restarting.

You should be able to use iPhoto to do that.

Ah I'm sorry.

Well I tried to do go to disk utility so I could create a partition and then reinstall the same OS that came with my Mac when I got it. I currently have the latest Mac if that helps. When I went to make the partition I got a message saying the partition could not be made since the computer could not eject the disk (not the exact words). On the first page user Kippy has a step by step on what I did incase you don't understand. But that step with the partition could not be completed.

Skateparkpiracy wrote:

Ah I'm sorry.

When I went to make the partition I got a message saying the partition could not be made since the computer could not eject the disk (not the exact words).

OK, but note that Kappy said nothing about creating a new partition in order to do an Internet Recovery. You cannot re-partition the drive you are booted from, in any case. You would need to boot to an external drive and run Disk Utility from there in order to try and add a new partition. Complete instructions for an Internet Recovery can be found at OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support.