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

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

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 3:09 PM

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Posted on Oct 17, 2014 3:17 PM

  1. You must have a fully bootable Mavericks system from which to boot the computer. You can then erase the volume with Yosemite, then clone the Mavericks system to the empty volume you just erased.
  2. You can erase the drive and reinstall Mavericks if you have a USB Mavericks installer flash drive.
  3. You can boot the computer via Internet Recovery and reinstall the original version of OS X that came with the computer. This is only feasible on models from 2011 to the present.
600 replies

Nov 27, 2014 7:01 PM in response to babowa

Don't think you quite understood the situation. When I turned on my new 2009 mac it asked (via text on the screen, and paraphrasing because it was 2009) "Is this your first Mac? Do you have an older Mac? Would you like to clone your old Mac to this one? Make sure your old Mac is turned off. Connect a firewire cable. Cable detected. Now turn on your old mac while holding down the 'I' key (not sure, it might have been the "T" key). Transferring your information, this will take about 3 hours"


That was it. How perfect! So here I am in 2014 with a Mac I can't clone onto new hardware. That's not progress. Next steps are to put in a call to Tech Support to see if they can think out of the lead-shielded, titanium lined box they've placed their paradigm in. If they can give me a solution, great. If not, I'll return the Mac on my way to buy some external drives that will get me by in the meantime.

Nov 27, 2014 7:08 PM in response to chopper_pilot

chopper_pilot wrote:


Glad you think that upgrading two applications is all I have to do as well. You've been really helpful

So now that I have a vague idea of exactly what it is you set out to do, there might be something out there that will do the job. You say you need more RAM than you can install in your 2009 MBP, so looking all that up I'm guessing that is more than 8.0 GB. It would appear that you can accomplish that by finding an Early 2011 MBP (which Apple only certified to 8.0 GB, but MacTracker says you can actually use 16.0). The Apple Store is down for maintenance at the present time, but that's the first place I would look for a refurb which will come with a like new warrantee that can be extended with AppleCare.

Nov 27, 2014 7:12 PM in response to chopper_pilot

chopper_pilot wrote:


Don't think you quite understood the situation. When I turned on my new 2009 mac it asked (via text on the screen, and paraphrasing because it was 2009) "Is this your first Mac? Do you have an older Mac? Would you like to clone your old Mac to this one? Make sure your old Mac is turned off. Connect a firewire cable. Cable detected. Now turn on your old mac while holding down the 'I' key (not sure, it might have been the "T" key). Transferring your information, this will take about 3 hours"

That was a migration not a clone, which is exactly what you could have done with your new one using either your old MBP or TimeMachine (which is a more recent way to do things).

Nov 27, 2014 7:18 PM in response to chopper_pilot

chopper_pilot wrote:


Funny, Parallels says it won't http://forum.parallels.com/threads/parallels-desktop-8-and-yosemite-update.31229 8/

Well it's clear from that discussion that Parallels isn't supporting it's use with Yosemite, but several users claimed that they were able to use it with whatever Windows version they were using at the time, so I guess it isn't really clear. RoaringApps has been wrong before, but they rely totally on user input so it's only as good as what is reported to them.

Nov 27, 2014 7:21 PM in response to chopper_pilot

chopper_pilot wrote:


You're close. I have a 500GB hard drive that has 5GB free space. It's not DRAM that's the problem it's storage. The MBP I purchased has 1TB of storage, that would have bought me a lot of time. So external drives will be the next step

Agree. You can also install a larger internal at some point and if you can spring for a large enough SSD drive, you'll enjoy an unbelievable speed boost.

Nov 29, 2014 10:10 AM in response to borjonx

Hi,

I read your response from Oct. '14 and have a few questions. Hopefully, you can help.


Like many others, I want to restore to my previous OS as I am fed up with Yosemite for various reasons. First, I want to confirm that the Internet Recovery is NOT the same as Time Machine. I did not do a time machine back-up before Yosemite.


Is the process to launch the Internet Recovery pressing the option, command and R keys? I as because the instructions for launching Recovery (not internet recovery) are simply command + R. I'm wondering if the addition of the option key is what boots Internet Recovery.


You mentioned that you formatted your OS partition and not the whole hard drive. What are the advantages of doing it this way? Why not the whole hard drive? Is that the way it came from the factory?


Thanks in advance. Hopefully, I can get this mess ironed out.

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

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