Rollback?

schrodie

Can you reinstall Leopard if you're currently running Mavericks on your Mac?

securityguy

schrodie wrote: »

Can you reinstall Leopard if you're currently running Mavericks on your Mac?

You can install it, provided your hardware supports it, but it's unlikely that things like Migration Assistant will work properly in transferring your data, settings and so on. So you'd have to transfer the rest of the machine yourself, or at least be prepared for the migration to not work.

Out of interest, why? I found Mountain Lion a deeply frustrating experience, but Mavericks has been working well on everything I've got it running on (ranging from a mid-2007 iMac to a recent Air). Rolling back always strikes me as a counsel of despair, as any new hardware you buy simply won't run the older releases, and therefore you're completely stuck.

schrodie

Thanks for the advice. The machine originally came with Leopard then I upgraded to Snow Leopard which I found fine. TBH I wasn't too enamoured with the following OSs like Lion ML and again I don't think my machine is really powerful enough to cope properly with Mavericks. Applications take an age to open and I do get that spinning beach ball of death on occasions something I rarely got with SL.

My plan was to insert the Leopard install disc then follow the instructions and install leopard then use the Snow Leopard upgrade disc to install SL but I take it this won't happen because mavericks is the newer of the operating systems?

Mr_Toad

Back up your data then format the disk, this will fix the Mavericks is a newer OS problem.

Reload Leopard from the original DVD then upgrade to SL and once working put your data back on.

securityguy

schrodie wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. The machine originally came with Leopard then I upgraded to Snow Leopard which I found fine. TBH I wasn't too enamoured with the following OSs like Lion ML and again I don't think my machine is really powerful enough to cope properly with Mavericks. Applications take an age to open and I do get that spinning beach ball of death on occasions something I rarely got with SL.

In which case rolling back would be sensible, but I confess I'm surprised: my experience of Mavericks on elderly hardware (seven years old, which is about the oldest that will actually run it) is pretty positive. How much RAM does the machine have in it (in fact, which machine is it?)

schrodie

Mr_Toad wrote: »

Back up your data then format the disk, this will fix the Mavericks is a newer OS problem.

Reload Leopard from the original DVD then upgrade to SL and once working put your data back on.

Not too sure what the underlined bit means. Also what do you mean by 'back up your data'? I have an external HD which I use for Time Machine.

securityguy wrote: »

In which case rolling back would be sensible, but I confess I'm surprised: my experience of Mavericks on elderly hardware (seven years old, which is about the oldest that will actually run it) is pretty positive. How much RAM does the machine have in it (in fact, which machine is it?)

Processor speed: - 3.06 GHz
Processor Type: - Intel, Core 2 Duo (Penryn)
Number of Cores: - 2
Bus Speed: - 1066 MHz
Cache: - 6 MB L2 cache
64-bit Support: - Yes
Turbo Boost: - No

Installed RAM: - 4 GB (2x2GB)
Max. Amount: - 4.0 GB
Amount of Slots: - 2
RAM Speed: - 1067 Mhz
RAM Type: - PC3-8500, DDR3, SO-DIMM.

It was apparently built in 2009 in April!!

securityguy

Whatever your performance problem is, it isn't Mavericks. That's a more powerful machine than the Air I'm using, and substantially more powerful than my old iMac (although to be fair, I've recently hot-rodded that to include a Fusion drive), and neither shows the slightest sign of being in any distress. Those machines have 4GB of RAM and lower powered processors. The other two Mavericks machines we have have got 8GB of RAM in them, but only because it was cheap. What does Activity Monitor show? What is the memory pressure?

schrodie

securityguy wrote: »

What does Activity Monitor show? What is the memory pressure?

Sorry but I'm a pretty basic Mac user. The applications that take an age to open are Numbers, Pages and iTunes. Also if I have more than one of those apps open and want to open another then I often get the beach ball of death.

I was told that computers should be wiped and start from scratch like giving it a spring clean.

securityguy

schrodie wrote: »

Sorry but I'm a pretty basic Mac user. The applications that take an age to open are Numbers, Pages and iTunes. Also if I have more than one of those apps open and want to open another then I often get the beach ball of death.

Look in Applications->Utilities->Activity Monitor, and click on the "Memory" tab. What colour is the graph at the bottom?

Short periods of the Beachball aren't, of themselves, a problem: it's not a beach ball of death, just a beach ball of hanging around a bit.

I was told that computers should be wiped and start from scratch like giving it a spring clean.

It's voodoo !!!!!!!!. I've got systems that are the results of twenty years of OS upgrades and have never been re-installed in that time. They're enterprise Unix machines, but the distinction between them and a Mac is small.

If I had to guess, and it is only a guess, I'd guess that the hard drive in your machine is on the way out. If you fancy spending a hundred quid, stick a solid-state disk in instead of the existing hard drive: it'll be like buying a new machine.

schrodie

securityguy wrote: »

Look in Applications->Utilities->Activity Monitor, and click on the "Memory" tab. What colour is the graph at the bottom?

Green

securityguy wrote: »

If I had to guess, and it is only a guess, I'd guess that the hard drive in your machine is on the way out. If you fancy spending a hundred quid, stick a solid-state disk in instead of the existing hard drive: it'll be like buying a new machine.

The hard drive is noisy now especially when I first turn the Mac on or when I carried out the operation you instructed me to do above.

I quite like the look of the new Macs so this may be a good excuse to get one!!

securityguy

schrodie wrote: »

Green




The hard drive is noisy now especially when I first turn the Mac on or when I carried out the operation you instructed me to do above.

I quite like the look of the new Macs so this may be a good excuse to get one!!

Click on the top-left Apple symbol, then hit "About this Mac". "More Info". "System Report". "SATA/SATA Express". You'll then get a report on the disks installed in the machine. Assuming you only have one, look at the entry for "S.M.A.R.T Status". "Verified" is good (or at least, not bad). Anything else, not so much.