Downgrading from 10.10.3

[sitryd]

Upgraded to 10.10.3 at the end of the week, and this is the first time I've ever been truly frustrated with an update. My new MacBook Pro Retina (13") has gone from flawless operation to buggy and slow. I've had numerous kernel panics (including one that panicked a few times while rebooting from a panic), my wifi menu is no longer accessible (clicking on it locks up the SystemUIServer and I have to force-quit from Activity Monitor), and Preview.app now crawls when viewing PDFs. My fans are also on constantly, and the computer runs hot even when I'm doing nothing more than posting a comment on this site.

I need to downgrade back to 10.10.2, but would prefer to do so without wiping the users (since it took a while to get them set up properly). If I do a recovery install without wiping the drive, will it preserve the installed applications and users? Any concerns if I have FileVault active (i.e., do I have to deactivate FileVault before attempting the downgrade)?

Advice is much appreciated... Thanks!

 

[Taz Mangus]

Upgraded to 10.10.3 at the end of the week, and this is the first time I've ever been truly frustrated with an update. My new MacBook Pro Retina (13") has gone from flawless operation to buggy and slow. I've had numerous kernel panics (including one that panicked a few times while rebooting from a panic), my wifi menu is no longer accessible (clicking on it locks up the SystemUIServer and I have to force-quit from Activity Monitor), and Preview.app now crawls when viewing PDFs. My fans are also on constantly, and the computer runs hot even when I'm doing nothing more than posting a comment on this site.

I need to downgrade back to 10.10.2, but would prefer to do so without wiping the users (since it took a while to get them set up properly). If I do a recovery install without wiping the drive, will it preserve the installed applications and users? Any concerns if I have FileVault active (i.e., do I have to deactivate FileVault before attempting the downgrade)?

Advice is much appreciated... Thanks!

A recovery install would probably just reinstall 10.10.3. I think the only way for you to get back to 10.10.2 is clean install 10.10.2 again. The kernel panics don't sound normal. Can you provide more specific information about the issues you are having.

 

[Jess13]

Prior to updating from 10.10.2 to 10.10.3, my trackpad wasn't being erratic. It seemingly wasn't noticeably messed up in general from 10.10.3. After supplemental update for 10.10.3, my trackpad is haywire. Constantly selecting, clicking, cursor jumping, look up / quick look selecting, double-tap zoom safari, scrolling up or down, highlighting, and when I sent majority of this as feedback report to Apple, when I pressed the spacebar after typing 'safari', the cursor jumped up to the word 'for' in "update 'for' 10.10.3, my trackpad is haywire." And it did that twice while typing that explanation sentence. This. Is. Retarded.

 

[simonsi]

Prior to updating from 10.10.2 to 10.10.3, my trackpad wasn't being erratic. It seemingly wasn't noticeably messed up in general from 10.10.3. After supplemental update for 10.10.3, my trackpad is haywire. Constantly selecting, clicking, cursor jumping, look up / quick look selecting, double-tap zoom safari, scrolling up or down, highlighting, and when I sent majority of this as feedback report to Apple, when I pressed the spacebar after typing 'safari', the cursor jumped up to the word 'for' in "update 'for' 10.10.3, my trackpad is haywire." And it did that twice while typing that explanation sentence. This. Is. Retarded.

That sounds like a broken trackpad, some hw failures will just occur coincident in time with an update.

 

[Jess13]

That sounds like a broken trackpad, some hw failures will just occur coincident in time with an update.

Part of my trackpad became messed up previously months ago from splash of water. It was only part of trackpad, an approximate 1 cm horizontal strip across length of trackpad just above left-click/right-click area (not on left-click/right-click area.) That strip is, and has been unusable for months, from shortly after 10.10.10 release. I otherwise had no unusual problems with trackpad while using 10.10.1 after update, no problems with 10.10.2 after update. I noticed no problem with 10.10.3 for the short duration I used it, 1 day? This started only after the supplemental update for 10.10.3. I am convinced the issue is related directly to the supplemental update.

Twitter, for example. I just went to Twitter 'timeline' bookmark. The cursor nowhere near any link or button to my Twitter 'profile' page. After few seconds, Safari went to my profile page anyway. I have no idea how that happened, my hand wasn't on trackpad and cursor nowhere near link or button to profile page. It just auto-"redirected"? As I said, 10.10.10, 10.10.1, 10.10.2. All good. 10.10.3 seemingly good, then supplemental update and my computer is haywire. I'm quite frustrated!

 

[simonsi]

Part of my trackpad became messed up previously months ago from splash of water.... I'm quite frustrated!

So replace your trackpad, it was damaged by the water splash and likely subsequent corrosion over the intervening period of time.

Any failure ?due to a software update" is VERY likely completely coincidental.

If any version of OS X habitually made the cursor go at random as you describe these forums would be on fire from the moment the update went out.

 

[sitryd]

I don't know what other detail I can give... I can't say I've noticed any pattern to when it panics. The wifi menu issues appear to occur most often when coming back from sleep mode, though that's not saying much since I rarely shut the laptop down. Only thing that will restore connectivity is a full restart.

I did a clean internet recovery install last night (without wiping), but found that it merely installed 10.10.3 again. Does the recovery partition have an earlier version (eg if it shipped with 10.10.1 or .2), or does that automatically get modified at the same time as updates are installed?

 

[chrfr]

I did a clean internet recovery install last night (without wiping)

Note that this is not a clean install. Any 3rd party software you have installed will still be there, as would any corrupt preferences. Can you post a log of your panic? If there's a log, it should be in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports.
Yes, 10.10.3 updates the recovery partition but when you do an internet recovery, you'll always get the latest revision of a given major version, so in this case it's 10.10.3, or it would be 10.9.5 or 10.8.5 depending on which version of OS your computer originally had.

 

[lke]

10.10.3 is horrible and the worst is photos.

I can't understand why Apple choose to release that software that has a lot of bugs instead of keeping iphoto and making it better.

 

[sitryd]

Note that this is not a clean install. Any 3rd party software you have installed will still be there, as would any corrupt preferences. Can you post a log of your panic? If there's a log, it should be in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports.
Yes, 10.10.3 updates the recovery partition but when you do an internet recovery, you'll always get the latest revision of a given major version, so in this case it's 10.10.3, or it would be 10.9.5 or 10.8.5 depending on which version of OS your computer originally had.

Had four kernel panics in a row before a flight today, which started when I tried to connect to my phone's hotspot. There were a few mid-boot restarts as well, which didn't generate a log. Also noticed (I'm not off AC power often) that CPU was constantly at full power (with fans at 3500RPM), even though the only thing I had open was MS Word (at ~15% of CPU power, per activity monitor). Battery life clocked in at 1:30. For word processing.

Panic reports attached...

 

[bbfc]

10.10.3 is horrible and the worst is photos.

I can't understand why Apple choose to release that software that has a lot of bugs instead of keeping iphoto and making it better.

What bugs?? Photos is a great replacement for iPhoto.

 

[chrfr]

Had four kernel panics in a row before a flight today, which started when I tried to connect to my phone's hotspot.

Two of the panics directly implicate bluetooth as being involved, which would make sense with your connecting to the hotspot.

There were a few mid-boot restarts as well, which didn't generate a log. Also noticed (I'm not off AC power often) that CPU was constantly at full power (with fans at 3500RPM), even though the only thing I had open was MS Word (at ~15% of CPU power, per activity monitor). Battery life clocked in at 1:30. For word processing.

Did you have "All Processes" selected in Activity Monitor? If you had, and still nothing showed, I'd reset the SMC following directions here;
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
Also, reset the nvram as you start up the computer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
The panics while using bluetooth make me suspect that there may be a hardware issue.
There may be some value in running EtreCheck: http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck
Post the output here and it will show if there's any other system files that could be related.

 

[dhlizard]

Updating to 10.10.3 introduced all sorts of Wifi dropouts that I didn't have on earlier Yosemite OS X. Even updating to the 10.10.3 supplemental didn't fix it.
I took the iMac to the Apple Genius Bar to see if they might know of a "magical fix" after I had tried everything I could think of (resetting PRAM, deleting system folders, etc). After a very thorough hardware test, the "genius ??" agreed it was a software glitch but said she had never seen this before, didn't know any fix I hadn't already tried and recommended restoring the OS X.

I tried a restore but it only reinstalled 10.10.3 and I still had the dropouts. So I then restored to 10.10 (initial version of Yosemite) that I had created as an install file on thumb drive. This got rid of my Wifi dropouts, but I am extremely wary about going back to 10.10.3 again.

 

[maflynn]

I don't think apple keeps older combo updates available any more do they? if they do, then you could get down to the base version and use an older combo update.

They've made it really hard to do this over the years, so I don't expect downgrading is something that is feasible.

 

[chrfr]

I don't think apple keeps older combo updates available any more do they? if they do, then you could get down to the base version and use an older combo update.

The combo updates are still available, but the old base installers aren't, so unless you already have one of the older installers, the combo updates are of no value.

 

[sitryd]

Partly resolved...

I traced the CPU/fan issue to a faulty permission (or something) on a Google Updater process. It was attempting to run about 20 times per second. Since deleting the plist file, I went from using 95% of the battery life in 1:30 to using 30% in 6 hours (and given how far above the rated battery life of the battery that figure is, I suspect there's an issue hiding in there too... but point being it was chugging along happily for a whole flight).

As to the kernel panics - I think the update corrupted something about the bluetooth configuration/link to my iPhone. It panicked again this morning when I accessed the bluetooth menu (to reconnect a bluetooth keyboard). I deleted the iPhone's entry, and it hasn't crashed since.

Thanks for the input, all - Fingers crossed!