GeraldButton

Q: Cannot downgrade to Mavericks.

Hello all,

 

As with many, I upgraded to OS X Yosemite on launch day. At first I enjoyed it, however now I wish to return my system to its factor settings with OS X Mavericks. The problem is, going into the Restore Utility accessed by holding down a few keyboard commands upon startup, my machine will now only let me reinstall OS X Yosemite.

 

This iMac was purchased with OS X Mavericks running on it, and lacks a disc drive. The iMac was purchased late spring 2014 brand new.

 

Is there anyway I can downgrade? Thanks in advance.

 

- Gerald B.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Feb 19, 2015 12:26 AM

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Q: Cannot downgrade to Mavericks.

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  • by rafaespada,

    rafaespada rafaespada Feb 19, 2015 12:34 AM in response to GeraldButton
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Feb 19, 2015 12:34 AM in response to GeraldButton

    With the restore partition you only can reinstal the same system.

     

    If you can install Mavericks you must make a bootable Mavericks USB and install from there. But i think you must format the disk, and i don't know if you can restore a user information from a Yosemite Time Machine to a Mavericks installation.

     

    Now... i think you can't donwgrade but you can remove all and install Mavericks from zero.

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Feb 19, 2015 4:11 AM in response to GeraldButton
    Level 8 (49,742 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 19, 2015 4:11 AM in response to GeraldButton

    To reinstall Mavericks, you need to boot into Internet Recovery (cmd-opt-r), repartition the disk, then reinstall.

    If you don't have a backup prior to installing Yosemite, there won't be a way to restore your files except manually from a backup. Some things, like the iPhoto Library and Mail, will have been "upgraded" to the Yosemite versions. You will have to manually import those things from the old Libraries, I think.

     

    These were written for Mavericks, but they would still apply:

    Apple: Restoring a previous OS X version

    How to revert OS X back from Mavericks