Help... Anyone had any success downgraded from Sierra to El Capitan on their own.

(The recovery partition is deleted during the upgrade process and the machine will no longer boot from older OS X bootable media)

I know people have gotten their local Apple store to do it for them but I've seen know one achieve it successfully other wise?

Suggestions?

 

you need an other mac , you can boot your un-working Mac as an external Disk
when you hear the note at the boot , press cmd+t (2or3 sec)....a screen apears with logos
you can wire a firewire(depends the model) or thunderbolt or Usb-c to the other working mac
after that ....
Backup your Files & re-install the os you want (el'Craptain is very old for compatibility)
high sierra working great...
PS
there is clover from the hackintel world but it's not easy to understand when you're not in this game...

 

Jeen, sorry but your advice is inappropriate. He doesn't need to hook up the mac with FW or TB to another mac, does not need target disk mode. This would be the suggestion for case when the internal drive doesn't boot. But in his post there is nothing mentioned about any system failure, he just wants to downgrade a supposedly still working new system (that we all know have several issues with audio stuff).
The problem is, the upgrading process does never work downwards. You can export/import your Mail setup or some other preferences setups, manually. But for that you can save those files on an other (external) drive connected via USB or whatever.

Of course, the best advice that is already too late in his case: before any risky system upgrade, do a backup with Time Machine, in that case going back to the previous stage is easy.
Now there is one more thing, if he needs an El Capitan install, it can be found in Application folder, in case it was also downloaded for upgrading from earlier version. If it was but there is no such install file on your disk anymore, you can still re-download it from App Store, just go to the Purchased tab while pressing Option key, there you would find in the list and instead of the button "installed", it must offer "Download".
Or there is still a link from Apple providing this install:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/os-x-el-capitan/id1147835434?mt=12
(it will direct you to open your App Store app with the proper content to download)

 

Last edited: Aug 29, 2018

Ok, I admit (for Jeen) that that sentence is confusing but it doesn't say the new OS doesn't boot. However, saying that I can't boot an older system on a mac that already had a newer installed is silly. Of course you can boot an older OS from another drive (or perhaps from another partition, too). What it denies to do is running the installer of an older OS on a newer one.

 

ok i didn't got it , sentence confused me ...my bad

 

Last edited: Aug 29, 2018

Mine only says install OS X high sierra and nothing else .. Tutuapp 9apps Showbox