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Trying to boot from snow leopard 10.6 disk on a 2010 iMac that use to run Maverick. Hard drive not mounted.

Here's the lay out. My Older iMac 2010 was running real slow because there was too much data. It was running the version before Yosemite. I did a hard drive repair and it said I had to erase the hard drive and re-install the OS. Fine, but I would need too re-boot from another drive.


I did option and it said it couldn't erase from that drive. I figured, if I booted from Snow Leopard and ran that on the computer, it wouldn't run so hot and would be better for such an older computer. So I got a snow leopard 10.6 disk to boot from.


Now I tried pressing "C" and I tried "option". Only thing left is to take out all USB items and try "C" and "Option" again.


It starts to load, then stops and stays on the grey apple screen and does NOTHING.


Is there a way to boot from this disk and then 'downgrade' back to snow leopard on this iMac?

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 500GB HD

Posted on Oct 8, 2015 1:25 AM

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5 replies

Oct 8, 2015 10:20 AM in response to Dana Hunter

I am not looking up the exact specifications for your particular Mac but often Macs which come with a particular OS such as "Snow Leopard" come with a higher sub-version than that provided on retail version discs. I believe the retail version on disc is 10.6.3 but you Mac may well have come with 10.6.5 or something and won't boot to a lower version. If this is the case you need to contact Apple customer service about obtaining a replacement disc (which will also have the bundled software).

Trying to boot from snow leopard 10.6 disk on a 2010 iMac that use to run Maverick. Hard drive not mounted.

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