can you uninstall OSX Lion 10.7 and reinstate prior OSX 10.6?

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can you uninstall OSX Lion 10.7 and reinstate prior OSX 10.6?

I upgraded to OSX Lion 10.7, did all the upgrades to 10.7.5 and now experience Mail problems (unable to open Mail preferences, get spinning ball and mail is frozen), can not open Safari at all, get message "Safari Quit Unexpectedly" but it never opened at all. Everything was working fine when I had 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I have Mobile Me installed and never converted to icloud (had not used this iMac for much after getting a Mac Pro, but now wish to use it for photograph).

Reading many of the Mail issues with Lion I tried to get rid of Mobile Me but without preferences opening I'm lost.

I did open Google Chrome as my browser and new email but I doubt that was the cause. I thought of trying to upgrade further to 10.8 and 10.10 but

I have an older iMac 20" early 2007 unit which according to Apple can not handle Maverick or Yosemite.112 GB are available with 3GB of RAM.

i backed up my system before the upgrade, can I go to time machine and simple bring my system back to pre-Lion and if so how?

Thanks

Posted on Mar 6, 2015 6:27 PM

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Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Mar 6, 2015 7:03 PM in response to photo6

Restoring from a Time Machine backup requires that your backup not be contaminated by backups made since installing Lion. If it has, then you cannot use it to perform a full installation. To downgrade:

Clean Install of Snow Leopard

Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase

the drive and everything on it.

1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came

with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.

After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see

a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.

2. 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.

After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive

size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of

partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button

and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended

(Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.

3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed

with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.

4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup

Assistant. After you finish Setup Assistant will complete the installation after which

you will be running a fresh install of OS X. You can now begin the update process

by opening Software Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your

installation current.

Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

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.

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