Downgrading From Leopard to Tiger
 

Hi All
I'm not too sure i'm the only joker doing this. I'm trying to downgrade a intel iMac from Leopard to it's original Tiger OS. But every time i boot from the original boot disk, an alert will appear "This software cannot be installed on this computer". Have done all different format (Zero out, 35 pass..etc) and reset the PRAM and NVRAM but to no luck. Suspected that when upgrading to Leopard, the open firmware is some how updated. Can anyone confirm this and does anybody have a work around?:(

What is the reasoning for downgrading to 10.4 Tiger?

Also, are you SURE you are using the original boot disk?

People purchasing restore CD's from eBay frequently encounter phrases like "Compatible with all iMacs" or "Universal Install!" and the like. This is not true. Although many eBay sellers are honest, some have no clue what they are talking about, or just want your money. You MUST use a black "retail" disk, or the disc for the exact model for your Mac.

It's an overkill to do a 35 pass erase. It will just wear out the drive faster.

Resetting NVRAM should reset the Open Firmware, so this shouldn't be a problem.

When you erase your HD, make sure you choose the GUID partition scheme. Read this Apple article for more info:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303220

Need to disable some of the app in Leopard in a hurry. Didn't have too much time to test therefor wanted to downgrade so that the machine can be release to user.

Confirm disks is original. All CD are kept in original boxes label to exact machine.

Knew about this. Tried the steps but didn't work. :(

Interested too in this.

I have just installed Leopard, but am seriously considering going back. It's slower than Tiger and some apps don't work properly (adobe's suite for one).

I think that once you use graphically-demanding apps (that is, not only office ones), you do notice that the finder is using a lot of resources. :(

Allright. Done.

I'm HAPPILY back to Tiger via Archive and Install first, and then copied the various apps and app preferences over, it went as smooth as a baby's butt. Almost all apps started back without needing to be reinstalled. Two hours and it was all done.

I may check out Leopard next year...

You know, I think it might be for the best. One of the reasons I can be so laid back with my upgrade is I only have two mission critical apps, and both of them are made by Apple (XCode and Pages).

But yeah, if some app isn't quite working yet, and you really need it, going back makes a lot of sense. Apple and OSX developers really need to get on the ball here.

Did you user the original disk or the Retail version of "Mac OS X Tiger"

I used the original disc that came with my computer.

happily back to tiger too
 

Hi guys! I am also happily back to Tiger!! yeah!! I really missed my MacBook power!! I really missed my Hard Disk Space!! I really missed rock-solid stability!!I'd recommend everyone to do it, "archive and install" works... only some apps reinstall and reenter some serial numbers
:) i know this may be offtopic but hey im sooooooooo happy :rolleyes:

How?
 

Robus, What was the process you used to revert back to Tiger?

I really thinking about doing this, but want to know what the risks are and what I might lose. I have a Mac mini PPC with only 512 RAM. I probably should have known better than to upgrade to Leopard. It's cool, but a little sluggish on my mini.

What I have read here and elsewhere is that archive and install is the way to go. I have some questions:

1) Will some of the apps just work afterwards or will i need to resinstall all of them?

2) Will I lose my iPhoto and iTunes libraries? I have my mp2 and jp3 on an external drive, but will I need to rebuild the databases?

3) Will I lose my archived e-mail (sent / saved) and address book information? I recall the Leopard upgrade converting one or both of these when the apps were launched for the first time.

4) Anything else that I might unpleasantly surprised to find after downgrading? Are there good reasons not to do this?

Thanks,
John

Can't do it ??!!
 

Working on new (last october) iMac.

I installed Leopard and I don't like what it does.

Want to go back to Tiger.

I saved everything I thought I'd need, then put the Tiger disc in.
Clicked Install

"OS-X 10.4 can not be installed on this machine"

What does this mean?

Tony

Probably have to erase the HD and start from scratch.

Even if we can "successfully" install Tiger over Leopard,
it can't be a simple 'archive & install'... because Leopard
blows away the NetInfo database... and Tiger installers
were never designed to know how to handle that. So all
user accounts will need to be recreated anyway.

Do a full backup (to FireWire) and then a clean install of
Tiger... followed by "migrating" user accounts.

BTW... Leopard kicks Tiger butt, it's all a matter of one's
perspective I s'pose.

-HI-

I reinstalled Tiger using the "Archive and Install" option. That took care of Leopard.

After reboot in Tiger, I dragged the applications back in their folder, and also the whole Preferences folder, the Application Support folder, and others too but I now forget what honestly.

Almost all of the applications started without needing to reenter serials. A few I had to reinstall, but overall it went quickly.

I didn't need to modify my user account or anything. It was pretty smooth overall. And of course no regrets, I'm quite happy to stay with Tiger.

Tony, I don't know why you have that problem. IF you are using the disc that came with your computer, it should always work. Try archive&install.

Jraggio, I didn't lose any mail or photos, you just have to drag back the database folders from their archived place to the corresponding location in Tiger, after you reinstall.

In retrospect I think you could use Migration Assistant to save all your stuff to an external disk and then copy it back.

Or also Super duper...

Thanks all. I got Activity Monitor working again (copied missing fies from friend's Mac) . Xcode whacked some files during install or uinstall. Anyway, I've decided to stick with Leopard. Less risk and hassle than trying to downgrade. Seems to be working OK.

John

Recap please
 

So give me a recap please.
How do you archive and install?
Can you give me step by step instructions about the whole process?

Thanks

Adobe CS2 and Leopard incompatibilities
 

I am running Adobe CS2 on a MacBook Pro with Leopard. As a longtime Adobe customer, I've noticed several issues with Adobe apps, including slow-to-a-crawl rendering, crashes, and application conflicts. After researching several forum threads and reading Adobe's pdf on Leopard Compatibility, I am switching back to Tiger.

I Just bought my first mac cuz Im sick of Wondows. Did I get the vista of Mac with my new Macbook? Will apple downgrade me to Tiger if Im not satisfied?

No

No - you would need to buy a copy of Tiger on eBay.
And note that it is usual for new Macs to require the latest version of the OS - i.e. you usually cannot run any version of OS X that predates the design date of your Mac. (The new hardware requires the drivers etc that only come in the later OS versions.)

GUID partition
 

i have been installing tiger on a leopard minimac via firewire.

the destination disk MUST be GUID partition scheme or tiger wont install.

use disk utility to erase the destination.
this defaults to install 1 apple partition map.
go to partition, select options, select GUID partition.
create 1 GUID partition.

then install tiger.

Is this true??? I bought my MacBook with Leopard installed last December. I'm now trying to use it primarily for audio (Logic 8 and Ableton Live). The last 2 updates render my computer useless for this purpose, and I'm currently bidding on Tiger on eBay in hopes that it will make my computer usable again.

Has anyone tried installing Tiger on a Leopard-based Mac and succeeded?

This is getting seriously ridiculous. Do I have to look for a used MacBook circa Tiger OS? This makes me think seriously about getting a Dell and suffering Windows XP. Ugh.

Why would you want to install Tiger instead of merely re-installing the version of Leopard that it seems you were working happily with before the "updates"?

I can't verify one way or another whether Leopard w/o updates works or not, as I'm a recovering noob with both audio and Macs. I wasn't using Logic 8 until 10.5.1 or so, so I don't have a frame of reference to compare...but: the Leopard has little street cred it seems among many audio users, update or no.

Tiger on the other hand seems to win out hands down for stability. I guess I'll try to install Tiger on a GUID partition per skylab's suggestion and see how that flies. Meanwhile, yes, I'll also go back to 10.5.0 Leopard and review the performance quality there, as a slightly paler shade of noob green.

Still, isn't it a bit ridiculous how messy all of this has become? I'm starting to feel like joining a Mac's Anonymous support group :(

I've been able to successfully reinstall Leopard 10.5.3, and after a little fiddling (including removing my MIDI drivers and storing them in a folder, and the returning them again, as well as reinstalling one set of drivers), I now am back to having access to my drivers and being able to use Leopard for Audio.

I've gotten plenty of confirmation that I will not be able to install Tiger on an Intel MacBook that came with Leopard. Time to sell this puppy...er...kitty.

Fiz: What machine are you using? If you REALLY want to downgrade, you may try to see if you can obtain restore discs of an earlier iteration of the Mac you are using. IE, the MacBook. If you can obtain a Tiger disc for the previous-generation MacBook, you can do it no problem.

Do be aware that some hardware may not work.

That being said, I'm not exactly a Leopard fan myself. I understand your pain.

Downgrade from leopard to panther
 

because its the only way to install vp7 and xp for the one program that isn't available on mac (because the developer is short sighted! ie. read narrow minded)...drivers daily log.

If you are on an Intel machine, No way Panther's going to work.

Panther on intel?
 

who said panther on intel. Obviously if I'm running panther it will be on a powerpc. Tiger goes either way depending on when the computer was bought.:eek:

hey, how did you do it?
i have the tiger cd, but it doesn't allow me to reboot it from the cd

Leopard to Panther to Tiger :(
 

As far as i can surmise from this thread, to "downgrade" one needs to use the system disks that came with the machine. So in the case of my G4 Powerbook, that would be to Panther. Then an upgrade to get back to Tiger. This sounds incredibly tedious, but I can't see i have a lot of choice. Tiger was working like a dream, whereas Leopard is hideously slow and extremely unstable. This seems like the worst bit of coding i've seen from apple for many a long year.

Anyway, any suggestions on how to avoid having to reinstall all apps and generally how to keep the machine remembering who it is/was etc, would be greatly appreciated.

Looks like i've got a fun weekend ahead:(

does any one know how to use time machine on tiger? I want to go back but am too fond of the little bugger, saved my ass several times in the few months I'm using it. plus I am totally without space on my drive and the external is also full so I won't be able to archive and install nor can I backup my stuff on the EHD. what will happen to the database of the iPhoto and Mail, they were upgraded when I moved to Leopard, so won't they be lost if I downgrade?

You can't use Time Machine on Tiger - it is a Leopard only feature! iPhoto is not dependant on Leopard, so that shouldn't be a problem. The version of Mail in Leopard is different than that of Tiger, so I can't really say what will happen. You should probably export your messages just in case, that way you can re-import them if necessary. Do you have a good reason for wanting to downgrade to Tiger?

I guess I am just unhappy with the general performance of this OS, many MANY little bugs that I can't seem to solve. it is much slower than what I remember tiger to be. it is full of really cool features that would be missed but I guess I was happier with Tiger. iPhoto 7 is leopard dependent (I think). They removed few things that I really miss e.g. the ability to have two windows (even of the same app) working with two different input sources (which I used daily) and the ability to control the global appearance of the finder's window or the fact that search doesn't remember that I like to search in the folder I am in and file names (it keeps going back to "on the computer" and "content") or that search and "show all in spotlight" aren't divided anymore according types. or the side bar on each finder window - there are so many things I don't use and CAN'T remove and the icons are soooo small... and sooooooo many others. in short I am not sure it was a good upgrade to the OSX family... even though that preview and TM are really cool and even essential, and the new applications like mail and iCal are much better in some aspects (but even here they changed really good things to bad). it is like apple software designer's ingenuity was replaced by MS stupidity and tendency to make things the wrong way. may be apple was infiltrated by secret MS agents designed to lower the attractiveness of apple products. or like any small and good thing, it explodes when it is blown out of proportion. I liked apple when they were expensive and unique (up to around the time they changed to intel)... oh well... what can I do???

See the iLife '08 System Requirements.

True True :)

i'm having alot of problems with snow leopard. this is my first mac and so far, i hate it. nothing works. i've read that it is possible to downgrade to tiger. where do i get the tiger cd's? i've had this imac about a month and have had lots of problems transferring from a pc to this mac. faves/bookmarks will not transfer. some email addresses transferred but those that did were duplicated and if i try to remove one duplicate, it removes all contacts. also, cannot transfer over 500 saved emails with 40 different folders. have tried using mac's mail but it had the same problems as microsoft office for mac 2008 entourage. neither of them will show pics and the settings in both have been reset to download and to show all pics.

Your post would be best as a new thread, since you've joined onto a fairly old discussion about downgrading from Leopard. You may get more help if you post in the "System" section.

NOTHING works? That's unusual. Please be much more specific.

If you have bought a brand new Mac, it is unlikely that Tiger will work on it, as Tiger does not have the driver components for the newer hardware.
I'm also unclear why you think downgrading to Tiger will solve your problems.

As to your problems transferring data from a PC to your Mac, you need to provide a lot more information. What browser do you use, and what method have you tried for transferring bookmarks? Apple Mail is usually pretty good at importing MS Outlook emails.

Your problem with using email, in 2 mail clients, is that embedded pictures do not display? Images display fine for me in Apple Mail. Have you turned off Edit > Attachments > Always insert attachment at end of message ???

Im having compatibility issues with snow leopard with some nikon software, and there is no update planned. i therefore need to setup a second partition running leopard for this one piece of software. The issue however is that my machine is a 2009 MBP 2.66 that came with snow leopard. When i try to install it says cannot install on this volume.

Any ideas?

so what is the problem, that you don't have a leopard installation disk?

You cannot install versions of Mac OS X earlier than the one your machine was supplied with.

Your best bet is to identify a replacement for the Nikon software.

Is there a way around it, ie, install on external off another machine and clone across or anything else…

Sure - install Leopard to your external drive (connected to another Mac that will boot to Leopard), then update that bootable drive to latest updates for Leopard. Then, try booting from that drive on your MBP. Should work as that model did come with Leopard before SL was released.
One possibility that may not help, is if the Nikon software is also not working with the MBP hardware, and not just the OS X version. That may be less likely, but still possible...

Ok cool,
its not the hardware, ive spoken to nikon and they made clear to me by the nikon tech support dude that they will not be releasing a SL update for the software…. ignorant people
will carbon copier do the job?