The Hackintosh Thread

[mosslack]

Basically it goes like this:

1. Format the USB stick with Chameleon/Chimera
2. Drop your Extra folder on it
3. Set the BIOS to boot to USB first

Some BIOS versions also allow you to select specific USB sticks, so put that in the boot priority list if you have that option available. When it boots to the USB stick, you will be presented with a GUI of all attached drives. You can use this to select either Mac or Windows. You can also set the Boot.plist file to have a countdown timer to boot a default drive (mine boots to OSX, unless I hit a key and select Windows). I use a USB stick for 3 reasons:

1. To keep a clean Mac drive: My boot drive is 100% OSX and can be swapped into a real Mac if needed. No funny business on the drive, just a nice, clean Mac install.

2. For backup purposes: Chameleon/Chimera puts a small, hidden partition on the drive, which isn't copied over when you clone the drive with SuperDuper. It's not hard to re-install, but if you want a bootable backup, it's handy having all the bootloader stuff on a USB stick.

3. For convenience: I keep a spare USB stick with the original, working config on it - that way I can tinker with different settings on another USB stick, and if it breaks, boot right back up on the other one...instead of having to figure out a way to get the drive booting otherwise. So that's pretty convenient.

It's not for everyone, and it's not any harder to install it to the hard drive or anything, I just find it a bit easier, plus I like having a bone-stock Mac drive with no Hackintosh stuff on it. Makes me feel happy

I've been playing around with this on my HP DC7800 and found that it does in fact allow my system to boot the MyHack prepared hard drive. I did some earlier experiments using a 2 Gb micro SD card as I have an HP card reader installed on the system, but that does not work. However the 2 Gb USB flash drive boots it just fine. I have my necessary IONetworkingFamily and IOATAFamily kexts in the /E/E folder on the flash drive and the update to 10.8.3 went just fine.

This system also has a UniBeast prepared partition which has been updated to 10.8.3 and that has always been able to boot directly from the hard drive. At least this new (to me) method does provide the option of using something other than UniBeast should a person prefer that.

 

[destrekor]

I, nor anyone I know, owns a Mac.

How the hell do I go about getting the OS to even make a hackintosh?
Is there some slightly not quite legit method where I can temporarily make use of a virtual machine, and then in there utilize the app store to officially purchase what it is I am after?

 

[mosslack]

There are several ways around this problem via a VM, here is a LifeHacker article about it:

http://lifehacker.com/5583650/run-mac-os-x-in-virtualbox-on-windows

Hope this helps.

 

[destrekor]

There are several ways around this problem via a VM, here is a LifeHacker article about it:

http://lifehacker.com/5583650/run-mac-os-x-in-virtualbox-on-windows

Hope this helps.

That has led me on a path that demands further investigation... which I am starting right now.

It appears iATKOS might work great as a VM, opening up access to the App Store from there.

 

[mosslack]

Glad it helped, FYI iAtKos is one of the best distros out there IMO. It helped a great deal to get both Lion and Mountain Lion running on my HP DC 7800, which has no AHCI and therefore no SATA drives show up during the install. Now I can run retail Lion and ML on that system using the IOATAFamily.kext from the iAtKos distro.

 

[Kaido]

Glad it helped, FYI iAtKos is one of the best distros out there IMO. It helped a great deal to get both Lion and Mountain Lion running on my HP DC 7800, which has no AHCI and therefore no SATA drives show up during the install. Now I can run retail Lion and ML on that system using the IOATAFamily.kext from the iAtKos distro.

I really wish that VMware (or anyone) would release a native GPU driver for virtual machine use. Would be really handy for testing new software without contaminating my main install or having to reboot to a different partition/drive!

 

[destrekor]

Glad it helped, FYI iAtKos is one of the best distros out there IMO. It helped a great deal to get both Lion and Mountain Lion running on my HP DC 7800, which has no AHCI and therefore no SATA drives show up during the install. Now I can run retail Lion and ML on that system using the IOATAFamily.kext from the iAtKos distro.

With the hardware I listed (a few posts back), does it seem likely I should have a fairly trouble-free "vanilla" installation?

I'm trying to make sense of a variety of sources right now.

On the VM, I already grabbed Mountain Lion from the store, I have unibeast preparing my usb disk right now, and after that I will be formatting some space on that secondary SSD for OS X.

With two 560 Ti 2GB cards in SLI, it sounds like it should be natively supported? It seems recent iterations of OS X have been friendly to Nvidia and multimonitor setups on said GPU family, so should I expect much hassle here?

I expect some difficulty with sound (Creative X-Fi, old-school PCI) - but hell, it might just be about time to upgrade that. I'd like to avoid required expenses, however - I could utilize the Realtec onboard if necessary, though it sounds like there *might* be some salvation out there for the X-Fi and Hackintoshing?

I think I need to put the focus back on Unibeast - the "running package scripts" time remaining keeps increasing. I was told to expect 10-15 minutes regardless of what that time count says, but it doesn't seem to be making progress - damned virtual machines.

 

[destrekor]

Glad it helped, FYI iAtKos is one of the best distros out there IMO. It helped a great deal to get both Lion and Mountain Lion running on my HP DC 7800, which has no AHCI and therefore no SATA drives show up during the install. Now I can run retail Lion and ML on that system using the IOATAFamily.kext from the iAtKos distro.

So it appears I should have taken that as a warning of sorts.

I don't have AHCI because I have my mobo set to RAID. I don't want to break my RAID and frankly don't know what disabling that will mean, even if I don't care to access the drives that are actually put into a RAID volume.

After I booted using the Unibeast USB drive, I discovered a strong lack of any drives visible in the Disk Utility.

If I want to ultimately have a clean install of this Mountain Lion download, what steps should I honestly take right now? Is this just a temporary thing, and once I have Mountain Lion installed I can see the rest of my drives? (can OS X even read/write to NTFS drives? never had to try that before)

If anyone isn't familiar with what I just mentioned: I am using Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology, iirc), which is basically a fancy version of Virtual RAID.
In the BIOS, SATA has to be set to "RAID" - so all my onboard SATA connections are thus behind that. In Windows (not sure if Intel has it elsewhere), you use Intel's software to group physical drives into RAID Volumes, which can then be partitioned and setup in a variety of ways. My two 2TB HDDs are in a RAID volume, or are partitioned and set into two Volumes, can't recall right now. Regardless, I have a RAID 0 volume that spans a portion of both HDDs, and I have a RAID 1 volume that spans both as well. It's handy because there is a definitive speed bump for the RAID 0 volume (so installs that don't belong on SSD are there, so it's still faster), and documents and downloads are on the RAID 1 volume without much if any performance degradation.


I just don't want to screw anything up in the process of getting OS X installed. That's the problem with my setup - I seem to go out of my way to find the least common approaches to computing. Finding applicable tutorials and step-by-step lists, and of course strong support, is really a mixed bag.

 

[destrekor]

Another question:

if I move the one SSD (Win Server is installed on it, OS X will be installed on it) to the Marvell controller - will that work? I think I can set that controller to AHCI while the rest of the system remains on RAID.

Post-install, can OS X be made to play nice with the RAID-mode drives? Even if it's not possible for it to see the actual RAID volumes, can it see the disks that comprise the RAID volumes and/or access disks on that SATA controller that aren't even attached to the RAID volumes?

 

[vailr]

@ destrekor: Sorry, but I'd recommend cloning your Raid configuration onto a spare single hard drive, so that each O.S. (that you're interested in running) can then be run with the bios always set to AHCI mode. And: each O.S. assigned it's own physical HD.
That way: use the bios setup to select which O.S. is the boot drive. When installing OSX, keep any alternate drives unplugged, so that each HD is kept independently bootable.

 

[destrekor]

@ destrekor: Sorry, but I'd recommend cloning your Raid configuration onto a spare single hard drive, so that each O.S. (that you're interested in running) can then be run with the bios always set to AHCI mode. And: each O.S. assigned it's own physical HD.
That way: use the bios setup to select which O.S. is the boot drive. When installing OSX, keep any alternate drives unplugged, so that each HD is kept independently bootable.

So... throw away the RAID configuration.

I can't help but see that as a worthless suggestion in the end. I don't mean that to be childish or otherwise meant to be construed in an offensive manner -- it just seems to do nothing except take my system backwards.

 

[basslover1]

Ok, I've been tossing around the idea of hackintoshing my netbook, it seems there have been a few users who have successfully gotten OSX running on it but I'm running into issues. Netbook is an Acer Aspire One AO756, running an Intel Celeron 877, I know it isn't super high end but I've seen posts of users running 10.6.8 and 10.7.4 but I'm having problems.

Following the TonyMac guides for 10.6, I need access to an Intel based PC, which I have but it's the netbook I want to install it on, which doesn't have a CD drive and I don't have an external either. I also don't have a CD burner to even burn iBoot.

Or, if I want to run 10.7 using the TonyMac guide, I need access to a real macbook, which I have. However, I can't find a legitimate copy of 10.7, and Unibeast wont work with .dmg files if I were to obtain a copy of 10.7 through torrents.

What are my options here? I'm thinking 10.6.8 would run better on my lower spec'd machine but I like everything I have to be up to date so ideally I'd like to run 10.8 at some point but I don't know if my system can handle that.

I'm wanting to use a method that lets me boot off a thumb drive and start fresh on my Acer, so I'm asking what the best way to go about this would be?

Thanks.

 

[vailr]

@ basslover1: what OS is installed on your MacBook? If it's 10.6.8 or later, should be possible to use the MacBook to purchase and download the 10.8 installer from Apple for $19. Then follow the TonyMac guide to create a bootable USB thumb drive installer (again using the MacBook) for installing OSX on the Acer Aspire.

 

[basslover1]

@ basslover1: what OS is installed on your MacBook? If it's 10.6.8 or later, should be possible to use the MacBook to purchase and download the 10.8 installer from Apple for $19. Then follow the TonyMac guide to create a bootable USB thumb drive installer (again using the MacBook) for installing OSX on the Acer Aspire.

It's 10.6.8 and I've thought about doing that, but I'm just worried that it won't run very well on my PC. How resource intensive is 10.8?

 

[mosslack]

You can use UniBeast to make a Lion or Mountain Lion installer flash drive, or you can use myHack to make a Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion installer flash drive. You should be able to do a test install on a USB connected hard drive as a trial run before you decide to put it on your internal hard drive. You can find more info on myHack here:

http://myhack.sojugarden.com/guide/

BTW, I think the Snow Leopard retail DVD's are still available from Apple and at only $19.99 also.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC...6-snow-leopard

 

[vailr]

It's 10.6.8 and I've thought about doing that, but I'm just worried that it won't run very well on my PC. How resource intensive is 10.8?

10.8 seems very similar to 10.7 or 10.6, resource-wise. But: any system memory capacity increase would be beneficial, if the Acer Aspire allows for that.

 

[basslover1]

You can use UniBeast to make a Lion or Mountain Lion installer flash drive, or you can use myHack to make a Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain installer flash drive. You should be able to do a test install on a USB connected hard drive as a trial run before you decide to put it on your internal hard drive. You can find more info on myHack here:

http://myhack.sojugarden.com/guide/

BTW, I think the Snow Leopard retail DVD's are still available from Apple and at only $19.99 also.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC...6-snow-leopard

I wasn't aware of myHack, my searching for OSX86 related to my netbook only turned up tonymac, but it looks like myHack will get the job done. I'll probably just try Mountain Lion out first, since that'll be the easiest/quickest way to try it out.

10.8 seems very similar to 10.7 or 10.6, resource-wise. But: any system memory capacity increase would be beneficial, if the Acer Aspire allows for that.

My concern is the 877 is dual-core but lacks multi-threading, though I'm unfamiliar enough with OSX to not know whether or not OSX even supports multi-threading so it isn't a very powerful CPU and IIRC runs the Intel HD2000 graphics. However, Acer was nice enough to include two SODIMM slots, so I'm currently running 6GB of DDR3, and I'll eventually upgrade the HDD to a SSD but I'm just holding out for the prices to drop a little bit more on the 256GB drives.

 

[mosslack]

My concern is the 877 is dual-core but lacks multi-threading, though I'm unfamiliar enough with OSX to not know whether or not OSX even supports multi-threading so it isn't a very powerful CPU and IIRC runs the Intel HD2000 graphics. However, Acer was nice enough to include two SODIMM slots, so I'm currently running 6GB of DDR3, and I'll eventually upgrade the HDD to a SSD but I'm just holding out for the prices to drop a little bit more on the 256GB drives.

I have both Lion and Mountain Lion running on my HP DC7800 with an Intel E2180 2.0 Ghz CPU and only 2 Gb of RAM. I can tell a little bit of difference running ML, things don't happen as quickly as they do under Lion. A good example is when the system boots. Under Lion the desktop comes up right away after the boot processes are finished, but ML takes awhile with a grey screen first appearing and a beach ball spinning before the desktop finally appears. I'm pretty sure it's not the video card as it is an 8400GS with 1Gb of RAM.

 

[basslover1]

Thanks for the help everyone. I'm going to give it a go with Lion 10.7.4 and I'll report back. Here's to hoping my mom's work computer (the Mac I'll be using) has superuser access :/

 

[destrekor]

Okie dokie - I have absolutely zero idea WHAT I should and should not be selecting to install in Multibeast.

Safari has GOT to go, that's an absolute must (though I just discovered the inline spellcheck presentation - looks nice) - but getting everything stable using Multibeast is priority number one.

Suggestions?
Recall my hardware, since it appears quite a bit is specific.


I'll update later (maybe tonight, maybe a few days from now), but the likely solution to my previous problem may not have been posted anywhere. But I did try a few things at once - it wasn't the best "troubleshooting" methodology, but it was the quickest route.
I did discover was a kernel panic looks like on the first try, however.

 

[destrekor]

When you make a USB boot disk (to boot an already-installed copy of Mountain Lion), are all your kexts going on the USB disk to ensure the installation remains "vanilla" ?
Does that include any/all that go into S/L/E ?

 

[mosslack]

Right, no alterations to the hard disk at all. I'm currently booting my DC7800 this way. Both the Lion and Mountain Lion partitions (as well as Windows 7) partitions boot just fine.

As I have a multi-card reader installed on my system, I use a 4 Gb CF card with 2 partitions. The 1st (boot) partition is 1 Gb and has the boot files on it, with a 2nd (STORAGE) Fat 32 partition for install or other files I need.

I've tried this using SD cards, but they don't work the same way, anyone know why?

 

[destrekor]

Right, no alterations to the hard disk at all. I'm currently booting my DC7800 this way. Both the Lion and Mountain Lion partitions (as well as Windows 7) partitions boot just fine.

As I have a multi-card reader installed on my system, I use a 4 Gb CF card with 2 partitions. The 1st (boot) partition is 1 Gb and has the boot files on it, with a 2nd (STORAGE) Fat 32 partition for install or other files I need.

I've tried this using SD cards, but they don't work the same way, anyone know why?

No idea about why the difference between SD and CF for that purpose.

So - clean harddrive. All modified kexts go into either the /e/e or /s/l/e folder on the USB drive itself? I'm assuming any boot disk creator automatically creates those folders?

What if a certain kext is in the USB s/l/e yet a kext of the very same name is in the "official" /s/l/e folder? I guess the USB disk's software properly overrides as necessary?

The issue with figuring out which kexts I need and what I need to do has been holding me up. I've booted a few times using the USB installer, which has a few modified kexts I put there to even get the install to go. But even that level of modification isn't enough - the system definitely doesn't Sleep or more importantly wake up once the monitors go dark. There was a hint of instability for whatever reason, and without benching it's tough to confirm, but I got the impression the CPU wasn't doing it's thing at full speed.

From looking through what kexts are in Multibeast, I get the impression overclocks cause some issues? I have my 2600k at around 4.5GHz iirc.

I have a feeling the USB Installer's kexts are to thank, but I know so far dual-GPU and triple monitor is working. How effectively, I don't know. Is there a such thing as true SLI in OS X? And like any possible speedstepping issue with the CPU, I imagine there may be some similar clockrate issues for the GPUs if something isn't configured correctly.

And I'm still trying to do research to figure our which kext to get the X-Fi (PCI) working.

 

[basslover1]

Ughhh, this is turning out to be a bigger hassle than it's worth.

Initial install went fine, but the wifi card now isn't recognized by OSX (I knew this going in), figured I'd install, use the USB drive to move multibeast over to install the correct kexts. Turns out the bootloader didn't install correctly and can't boot off the HDD without the USB installed (boot0: error), ok fine whatever. I realize that I messed up the partitioning and had about 25GBs spread across two partitions (factory Acer partitions) and being the OCD type that I am did a full wipe and re-partition to make it one big drive and hope the bootloader would get installed correctly and that's where I ran into problems.

The system hangs/freezes when the installer gets to "about a minute remaining." Ok...reboot after waiting like 30 mins to see if it would figure out WTF it wants to do. Boots normally, though the trackpad doesn't work now, even though it did the first successful install. Run through initial setup, plug in USB keyboard/mouse because they aren't working. Reboot to remove kexts that I need to remove, and everything goes fine.

Reboot now, boom Kernel Panic. I think it's related to AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement, but I'm not sure how to read a kernel panic properly. I don't get why now I get this, but the first time I installed it worked fine except for the boot loader.

Oh, and it wont boot off the USB unless I use the HDMI out, internal screen doesn't work for the first install go figure.

 

[basslover1]

Ok, progress of some sort.

Reformatted the HDD to GUID with three partitions (I don't know why but it worked the first time with three partitions), and everything installed fine, installer finished like it should and I rebooted, removed kexts that I need to remove and it launches to the welcome screen.

Now I have another problem. The welcome/setup screen is stuck in an infinite loop that starts over after it asks if I want to migrate data. A bit of snooping and I was able to create the .applesetupdone file through -s, great. But now by doing that I never created an admin acount, though OSX thinks there is one, which I don't know the user name or password to so I can't edit the boot.plist to force the correct resolution for my screen, awesome.