After many recommendations, I picked up a Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L board to start my Hackintosh project. After trying several different install methods, I always ended up with the same problem, a complaint that the boot plist couldn't be found that stopped me dead in my tracks right at the start of the install procedure. I tried iDeneb and Kalyway, several different versions of each, but I couldn't get anything to happen.

The problem seems to be that I can't enable AHCI on my board - the option just isn't there. I've seen screenshots showing where it should be, but even in the CTRL-F1 expert mode, the AHCI option never appears. I have BIOS revision F8a currently running.

Is Revision 2 of this board model OS-X unfriendly? Would a different version of the BIOS help? Has anyone got a Revision 2 based Hackintosh up and running, and if so, how?

EDIT: Problem Solved! Used BIOS v9 and iPC 10.5.6 Final PPF. Drive configuration does not seem to have been the problem.

Need more information.

First off, I have a GA-G31M-S2L (rev 1004) version of this board. The board runs Leopard (currently 10.5.5) just fine. I originally set it up with Leo4Allv3. (If I were doing it now, I'd use a newer installer like iAtkos or iDeneb).

The BIOS has no AHCI mode that's labeled as such, just 'On Chip SATA mode' with the choices being Disabled, Auto, Combined, Enhanced, and Non-Combined. Do you have this selector? Something similar? Have you read the manual that came with your board?

Are you using all SATA devices, including the DVD install drive? Or do you have IDE devices?

With my board, it makes a huge difference. Non-Combined mode sets all SATA devices to PATA mode and disables IDE entirely. Enhanced sets all SATA to SATA mode. (What I'm using). Combined allows two SATA and two PATA devices at once. Auto lets the BIOS set the device modes.

If you're using an incorrect SATA or PATA mode, you will get the error you're seeing. I'd recommend using all SATA devices. If you're trying to install to or from a PATA optical or hard drive, I'd virtually guarantee your problem stems from it.

Hi Zaap, I have this mobo and couldnt install mac os yet, I tested Kalyway and IPC and always get "Waiting for boot volume".
A friend told me to set the hd bios to AHCI and I didnt find the option, could you help me please.
My machine is:
-MOBO (Positivo / MIG31AG = Gigablyte / GA-G31M-S2L)
-Chipset (Intel / P35/G33/G31 (North Bridge) & 82801GB (South Bridge))
-Processor (Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8 GHz)
-RAM(3GB)
- Video (Intel G33/G31 Express Chipset Family - onboard)
-Network (Realtek TRL8139/810x – onboard)
-Audio (Realtek High Definition Audio / ALC888 onboard)
-HD (Maxtor 250 GB SataII -7200 rpm)
-DVD-Rw
Thanks,
Higor

Higor- first off, there is no AHCI Sata mode that's labeled as such with this board. It's spelled out even in what you quoted.

Make sure your BIOS is set the same as outlined for SATA mode= Enhanced.

Also, with whatever install method you try, make sure you select the correct drivers. (IE: Intel ICHx chipset, JMicron ATA, etc...)


For best results with this board, use an actual retail copy of OSX 10.5.x, and the Boot-132 method.

Try the instructions from this guide.

This is for the GA-G31M-ES2L, but to my knowledge, the only difference is the 'E' model has newer 'energy saving' features, it has a slightly different BIOS (but still no AHCI setting) and ALC 883 audio rather than ALC 662 (which is what you have if you have a G31M-S2L.)

I own a GA-G31M-ES2L system, and it's one of the best mATX boards for Hackintosh. (Installs flawlessly with Boot-132/Retail). I've built systems with the older non-E version, and it too works great.

I've tried iDeneb 10.5.5 and Kalyway 10.5.2. They both have the same problem and fail to boot the installer.

Yes, I have the 'On Chip SATA Mode' selector, it works just like you say. I've tried using Enhanced mode and connecting the drives in multiple different port combinations, but they don't seem to help.

Yes, I read the manual. I got that desperate

Yes, I am using all SATA devices.

It would appear that this revision of the board has been tweaked in such a way as to break it's legendary OS X compatibility, though I doubt it was deliberate. I chose this board after reading several guides to installing OS X on it, but it seems they were written using the original version, not this 2.0 revision.

I'll also be trying this Boot-132 method as well. It seems to be different enough in it's approach to be worth a shot. I've got several real macs already, including a Powerbook G4 I installed retail 10.5, so I've got a retail disc I can try it with.

Ok, i'll try, Im downloading Retail DVD at 7Kb/s (afffff).
Thanks a lot.

i have this motherboard and have successfully installed all the major distros available ideneb, leo4all, ipc, iaktos v5i being my current one and my favourite. i'm using because i'm able to update the system via apples updater....
it works flawlessly and sleep, shutdown, and restart all work with the correct selection via customise.

my bios is updated to v9 available from gigabytes website (8a and the newone on the website 10d are beta - i think)
with iatkos you have to select a sata controller and the intel ich7/8/ 9 i even selected the Jmicron for it to work otherwise you will get the waiting for root device
also selected the reboot fix and my graphics card option leaving the rest. there is no audio option but seems to work fine

i found its best to use sata dvd drive and sata harddrive - although i do use and ide hard drive aswell.

hope you get it up and running. the board youve got is ideal for osx and a bargain for what it cost.
if you need any more help - dont hesitate to ask.
i've never done install from retail dvd cos never found the need but with a few more attemps i'm certain you get there.





also try the sata dvd as master and hard rive as slave on the diff chanels....

Try the BIOS update that rob suggested- your hardware should definitely be able to install OSX, so hang in there.


Keep in mind, Boot-132 works great, but it only works with an actual standalone retail disc- not the model-specific OSX disks that come with a PowerBook or most model Macs. If you do have the actual retail disk, I highly recommend using it, though yes, many of the better 'distro' installs should work great also.

Looks like a late-night hacking session is in order this weekend. BIOS update, see if iDeneb works, then try Boot-132. Have to see if I can borrow the USB SATA interface from work, Carbon Copy Cloner could make this *sooo* much easier. Shame PCs don't have Target Disc Mode...

I do have several of the bundled versions, what with owning 4 other Macs, but I also have a 10.5 disc that installs on any Mac hardware and doesn't have any of the bundled apps on it, like iLife. It was left over from work when we cleaned up the comms room. I'm fairly sure it'll work.

The BIOS update, Boot-132, reconfiguring my SATA channels...

...made no difference what-so-ever. I still get the same error:

System config file '/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist' not found

I have no idea what's going on. Having never actually managed to successfully install Mac OS X on anything other than Mac hardware, I'm don't know what to do. I built the Boot-132 disc using SlimBuild-132 and dsmos.kext. I updated the BIOS to version 9, as suggested.

I'm using the following drive controller settings:

Primary IDE=Disabled, SATA Mode=Enhanced
SATA DVD drive attached to SATACH0, listed as IDE CH2 Master
SATA HDD drive attached to SATACH2, listed as IDE CH2 Slave

If that sounds wrong, let me know what ports I should plug these into on the motherboard and what BIOS settings to use. I tried a lot of other settings and connections as well, but that's the last one I used.

I'm hoping it's something obvious I'm overlooking in my inexperience, because this is getting really frustrating now.

I've never built a Boot-132 disc- maybe it doesn't have the right drivers. Try this one from here.

Obviously, when you reboot the first time, you'll still have to put the Boot-132 disk back in, and boot from it again, but choose the hard drive (80 or 81) not the OSX DVD.

Each time you do this, or any install, are you reformatting the drive each time? I've found that this makes certain OSX actually really re-installs itself, not just 'clean-reinstalls' over top of the last install, and therefore keeps whatever problem you're seeing. Always reformat and start from scratch.

Also, are you using GUID, or MBR format? Whichever format you've been using, try the other.

Honestly, if none of this works, including the distro methods, and the Boot-132, and there isn't just some step you're leaving out each time, then you must have a defective board or something, because believe me, your board IS compatible. It's even the same board that Psystar started using with the first OpenMac due to the fact that it is so compatible.

I'll give that image a try tonight.

I'm not even getting as far as booting the installer, let alone rebooting into the OS.

Looking at the OSx86 Wiki HCL, I was thinking of getting a GA-EP45-DS3. Still pisses me off though, I bought my current mobo specifically for it's OS X support, I replaced an ECS G33-based board. Don't I feel like a sucker

So you are seeing this: System config file '/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist' not found... immediately? There's never a Darwin prompt?

If you do get to a prompt, are you switching out the boot disk for the OSX disk?

(It would really help to know more actual details about what you're attempting to know what might be going wrong, otherwise all anyone can do is guess- I haven't seen the same problems with the same hardware, because it worked right the first time.)

If it's not even booting the installer, and you are burning the disk images correctly, and switching to the OSX disk at the right time, then something about your hardware itself is f-ed up.

Have you been trying this with the same hardware all this time? (Same DVD drive, same SATA cables, etc. etc.?) Have you ever booted ANY OS on this system? (Windows? Linux?)

First, if you've never booted an OS at all, try installing Windows just to see if that works. Or (easiest) download a Linux LiveCD and see if it boots correctly.

If you can't boot any of those either, then your machine might have some sort of hardware problem.

Try simple things first- change the SATA cables- especially on the DVD drive. I've seen a bad SATA cable render an entire PC useless. Check and recheck that your RAM is seated correctly. If your DVD drive won't boot ANY OS, then try replacing it. Beyond that- it could be a faulty motherboard.

Also, double check whatever method you're using to burn bootable disk-images on another machine. Are you using good media, or some crappy media? Are you sure whatever other machine is functioning correctly? If you're burning at super high speed onto crappy media, then try burning at slow speed onto good media- etc. etc. Try the whole process on another machine.

There's some pattern, introduced at some stage, to you seeing the same error with every distro, and with Boot-132. It could be as simple as whatever burn method you're using is screwing you up every time.

Personally, I'd exhaust experimenting with the simple stuff before I went and invested in more hardware- you'll really kick yourself if something else (especially something simple) is causing your problem, and then causes it on new hardware as well!

Success! I got it working this morning. I downloaded iPC 1.5.6 Final and it worked first time, straight away. I need to get the video, sound and NIC up and running (no time to test before work, but the video isn't using hardware QE/CI, the sound card is not detected and the NIC seems to work but not tested) but they should be fairly easy to find for a motherboard this popular.

I wish I knew why my motherboard didn't work as simply as the majority of it's model did. I'm assuming there's something about iPC that's different to the distros I tried before, in respect to the way it boots the machine, as I didn't make any further hardware changes after the previous session of failed attempts with Boot-132 and iDeneb.

Thanks for all the help, I appreciate everyone's efforts in trying to solve this problem immensely.

Great that you got it working!

What (if any) drivers did you select from iPC at the driver menu? Check the stats of the board, then select the correct drivers. IE: Intel ICHx, Realtec 8xxx LAN, etc. As I recall, that board has ALC662 audio which suuucked to get working. There is a driver floating around somewhere for it- maybe iPC has it by now. If you can't get audio working, I highly suggest getting this $8 USB sound card which works OOB with no driver (and actually sounds much better than crappy onboard audio anyway) and call it a day.

What video card are you using? (Please tell me you're not using the onboard video!)

Use EFI strings for a supported video card- there should either be one as part of the driver selection in iPC, or use a tool like EFI-Studio or Uninstaller. Select your exact model of video card, and have the tool write the custom boot.plist for it. The old NVinject methods are crap by comparison. For supported ATI cards, I'm not sure what the best method is.

The onboard video does not support QE/CI- never has, never will.

I just selected the ICHx patch from drivers, I figured I can always reinstall if I need to select more. I also found an Azalia Audio driver package that seems to work perfectly straight away. It seems the onboard NIC works fine OOB without a driver. If it turns out I do need one, I can reinstall or download.

No, I'm not using the onboard video. I have a GeForce 7600GT 256MB. Still trying to figure out the best way to install that. I'm on my second reinstall now, I managed to screw up the video system beyond repair first time. I'll try it out when I get home from work tonight, thanks for the tip.

My Mac Mini is now hiding under my TV, doing DVD upscaler duties. Amazing quality, but I must remember to borrow the USB screen calibrator from work, the colour is a little washed out...