Upgrade/downgrade woes

[vindunn]

Hi. I hope someone can help me. I made a stupid mistake. I thought I could solve a problem I was having by upgrading to Mojave from (I think) High Sierra. It might have been an even earlier OS. I’m on a 27inch late 2013 iMac. I’ve been backing everything up on TimeMachine for well over a year. This was a couple of months ago that I upgraded.

The problem is that now that I have Mojave, some of my necessary apps and even peripherals won’t work. I want to use TimeMachine to revert to my previous OS, and what I don’t know is whether I can select a specific backed up version from prior to when I moved to Mojave. If when I try to restore everything, I just say back up to TimeMachine, I’m afraid it will just reload Mojave from the latest backup.

I guess that if I restore from a previous archive, I will lose all of the files created since that, unless it’s possible to just restore the OS. Is that possible?

So, the questions are: 1) can I selectively backup from TimeMachine? 2) where do I look on the backed up archives to verify which OS was running (I want to be sure I select a version that predates Mojave) and 3) is it possible to just revert to High Sierra without losing all my current files?

Sorry for so many questions. Thanks for any advice.

Vin

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

You should be able to choose which Time Machine backup to restore from: Restore your Mac from a backup

-What issues were you having before upgrading to Mojave?
-What applications/peripherals will not work under Mojave?

C

 

[vindunn]

Hi Cory,

Thanks for the reply. Actually, it was you who helped me with the issue I was dealing with when I upgraded to Mojave. I was getting wild characters when I typed, especially in email. You suggested that I try using a USB keyboard, which I did. It worked, and I thank you for that.

The applications that no longer work are Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and Soundtrack Pro (all archaic versions by current standards but working until my upgrade.)

The peripheral in question is a Canon CanoScan 9000f scanner. Canon no longer has a driver for that model that’s compatible with Mojave.

What little I understand is that it has something to do with 32 vs 64 bits, but that’s where my skill level stops.

Thanks for your interest.

Vin

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi Vin,

Sorry I didn't recognize that! Things all run together at times.

Yes, I would guess you were using something like Final Cut Studio 2 or 3, which has all three of those applications: Final Cut Pro 6/7, DVD Studio Pro 4, and Soundtrack Pro 2/3. They were know to work through macOS Sierra. And yes, it partly has to do with the 32-bit/64-bit issue, as Mojave was the last version to support 32-bit apps in any way. Mojave also had issues with some older 32-bit applications, so not all were supported. In addition, those versions of the Final Cut Studio applications were released 10+ years ago, which is prehistoric in computer life terms.

I would think the High Sierra driver for the Canon scanner would still work, but maybe not. The Canon apps that came with it may not work, but you could try the Image Capture application, as it still may recognize the scanner.

You basically have two options: Try to restore from your Time Machine backup to revert back to High Sierra, or purchase the updated versions of the Final Cut applications, which is quite expensive. You could use another external hard drive to restore to. That way, you can test it before messing with your internal drive.

Hope that helps,

C