2365 replies to this topic

[dustonio]

dustonio, on Sep 19 2009, 06:22 PM, said:

Here's my configuration. I changed the CPU and hard drive to save a bit of money, and also had to use G.Skill RAM because the other one that was mentioned in the Lifehacker article was out of stock.

Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model DVR-218LBK LabelFlash Support - OEM
Item #: N82E16827129045

TRENDnet TEG-PCITXR 10/ 100/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Copper Gigabit Network Adapter - Retail
Item #: N82E16833156139

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM
Item #: N82E16822136074

EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16814130339

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK - Retail
Item #: N82E16820231166

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 Yorkfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q8400 - Retail
Item #: N82E16819115057

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Item #: N82E16813128358

I initially had problems booting with the USB Stick and kept getting "Verifying DMI Pool Data", and then I realized I missed the important step of applying the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard patch to it. Once I did that, I was thankfully able to get to the next step of installing Snow Leopard.

I had several kernel panics while attempting to install snow leopard. It would get stuck at 28 minutes left, but finally, after my third or fourth attempt, the Snow Leopard install to the hard drive worked.

If I keep the USB drive plugged in, it automatically loads up the Snow Leopard Install screen. If I disconnect the USB drive and attempt to boot only to the hard drive (which it sees and recognizes), I get stuck at the nasty "Verifying DMI Pool Data". I have re-installed Snow Leopard to the hard drive twice and keep getting this message.  

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ok, I got it to work. This is what I did:

I went back to the No-Hack install. Even though I would get a Kernel Panic while installing to my hard drive, it will eventually complete the install. (sometimes it takes a bit of time).

I then realized you're supposed to keep the USB boot drive in the computer to get the hard drive to boot. It always defaulted to the Snow Leopard installers...but here is why it defaulted to the Snow Leopard Installer:

I was using an OLD monitor -- a CRT that couldn't handle the higher resolution required. It was giving me an "Out of Range" signal. Since I didn't respond to with any arrow keys to select the hard drive monitor, by default it selected the Snow Leopard installer (from the USB key for me) after several seconds. Once I used an up-to-date monitor that could handle a higher resolution, I was successfully able to see the Boot Screen and select the hard drive on my own.

And now, happily, Snow Leopard boots for me.
Hopefully this gives some of you some help, as it had me stuck for about a day as I was trying to troubleshoot it.

So keep the USB key plugged in
And use an up-to-date monitor.

[kaharchia]

dustonio, on Sep 20 2009, 05:28 AM, said:

Ok, I got it to work. This is what I did:

I went back to the No-Hack install. Even though I would get a Kernel Panic while installing to my hard drive, it will eventually complete the install. (sometimes it takes a bit of time).

I then realized you're supposed to keep the USB boot drive in the computer to get the hard drive to boot. It always defaulted to the Snow Leopard installers...but here is why it defaulted to the Snow Leopard Installer:

I was using an OLD monitor -- a CRT that couldn't handle the higher resolution required. It was giving me an "Out of Range" signal. Since I didn't respond to with any arrow keys to select the hard drive monitor, by default it selected the Snow Leopard installer (from the USB key for me) after several seconds. Once I used an up-to-date monitor that could handle a higher resolution, I was successfully able to see the Boot Screen and select the hard drive on my own.

And now, happily, Snow Leopard boots for me.
Hopefully this gives some of you some help, as it had me stuck for about a day as I was trying to troubleshoot it.

So keep the USB key plugged in
And use an up-to-date monitor.

Thank , i think i have the same problem with my old monitor , will try with new monitor

[clipper99]

FOR THE LOVE OF US NON-TECHNICAL (well, non-MAC technical ) USERS, won't someone, pretty pretty PRETTY please make a Lifehacker install method for us ATI users?

With an Nvidia card (8800GT 512MB) the Lifehacker method is as easy as it gets! But that card is in my media PC upstairs and I only used it to experiment. It also runs my 10.5.8 Hackintosh  

I just know that somebody reading this could make a Lifehacker method for us ATI users. I have a XFX HD4870 1GB. I'll wash your car, I'll do your dishes, heck, I'd even mow your lawn for this!

I've learned a lot trying to get it to work so it wasn't a total loss for me!

[scrambler_455]

rickyp123, on Sep 19 2009, 05:40 AM, said:

Never overclocked before. Just using defaults. Except for the CPU. For some reason it defaults to a x8 multiplier instead of x9. My CPU voltage is slightly different than adam's as well.




Okay, sounds reasonable. I have no idea what I would change my voltage settings to. Do I decrease them?

Change to 9x, that is very likely the problem. Kernel Panics are typically the processor just giving up. If they are not clocked right, kernel panics left and right.

good luck.

[iWire]

scrambler_455, on Sep 18 2009, 10:09 AM, said:

This thread is for us to share our experience with the hardware configuration:

• GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
  
• Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor
  
• GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
  
• 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Memory x 2 (for a total of 8GB)
  
• Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model
  
• 10/ 100/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Copper Gigabit Network Adapter  (The motherboard has onboard Ethernet, naturally, but this particular  board has some problems with onboard in the Hackintosh world.)

Obviously, the case, the hard disk, and the memory don't have to be the same, but here they are for the sake of posterity:

• Antec Sonata III 500 Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply
  
• Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory x 2 (for a total of 8GB)
  
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

The lifehacker guide including hardware config can be found here, and simplified even further through the addition of an automated script here.

Kudos to Adam Pash of lifehacker for putting this together, it's quite amazing to be able to do this so cheaply and simply!

If you've spent the money to get this exact configuration, it's probably a good idea to have a single place to discuss any problems that come up in the future. So share your experience here and hopefully this awesome hack pro setup will work flawlessy untill it's time for an upgrade!

Thank God Stellarola taught Adam Pash how to do it....Stell's fine work can be found many a places.

[scrambler_455]

I had TONS of problems installing windows XP / windows 7 in order to dual boot. Should be painless, but it wasn't for me.

I got 2 1tb drives, one for windows, one for os x.

When I tried to install windows xp from a cd, the windows installer would just BSOD at the stage where you have to specify the destination for the install.

I tried creating a bootable windows xp install usb disk.  Now no bluescreen, but the installer couldn't see any disks, due to not having the AHCI drivers. I didn't have a floppy disk drive. So I tried to slipstream the drivers. I was never able to get the slipstream installer to access the $OEM$ folder to actually load the drivers.
  

  I got a usb floppy drive from work the next day and created the $OEM$ Disk. This made my drives able to be seen, finally, some progress. When I hit f6 to load the drivers form disk, it would detect the intel ICH10R driver on the disk and load it. It then told me that windows already had the driver and to confirm using the newer driver on disk. This was disconcerting. The drivers would load just fine, and I would allow me to select a volume to create the windows install on, even create and format that drive. As soon as the windows installation came up, it would error on all my AHCI drivers saying could not write to disk, retry, skip, abort.

At this point it becomes a blur what exactly transpired, but I managed to accidentally delete my perfect OS X install in one of my million attempts at installing windows xp. Fast forward to restoring my OS X install on the OPPOSITE had drive and getting back to square one. I managed to finish the WinXP installation process, and even get to the reboot and configuring the install (time zone etc...). As soon as the installation was done, and I was booting into the fresh install, I get consistant BSOD.

I eventually gave up on windows XP and decided to shoot for windows 7, because this is my home computer and what the hell why not. At least the installer will support AHCI.

So, I created a a bootable USB win7 64 install disk and tried to launch the installer through the darwin bootloader. I liked the idea of being able to switch between os x and win7 there instead of f12 in the bios. I got to the same stage as the XP, specifying the disk, and got some strange errors:

something to the effect of:
1. Cant use this disk as a startup. Your motherboard may not support.. 0x0800......
2. Cannot find sys partition. system cannot create sys partition.
3. Cannot install on this partition.

I had mult problems:
1. The disk had prior been a GUID os x partition.
2. The other disk on the SATA bus was somehow making win7 retarded.
3. The darwin boot win7 install simply couldn't write to this disk. (tried switching to GUID).

I tried reformatting the disk in winxp and win7 and ipartition and os x to no avail. I tried just about everything.

The only configuration I was able to get working was this:
1. Don't boot into darwin, boot directly from dvd.
2. Formatted the disk using win7 NOT quick format if previously formated as hfs+.
3. Disconnect all usb and sata drives except the win7 dest drive.

I finally got it working after a TON of really stupid messing around. The problem was that there were 3 seperate issues, and I didn't quite recognize the solution to any of the 3 until about the 200th time.

Also, if I try to select this disk in Darwin, i get an MBR error. This might be fixable, but for now, I'm so tired of messing with windows, I just want to get back into setting up my os x partition.

[scrambler_455]

dustonio, on Sep 19 2009, 11:22 AM, said:

If I keep the USB drive plugged in, it automatically loads up the Snow Leopard Install screen. If I disconnect the USB drive and attempt to boot only to the hard drive (which it sees and recognizes), I get stuck at the nasty "Verifying DMI Pool Data". I have re-installed Snow Leopard to the hard drive twice and keep getting this message.  

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You need to run the package on your boot drive after you install os x. That boot drive needs chameleon too!

[dusts]

SkipG, on Sep 19 2009, 10:22 PM, said:

Networking.

I have this board, an E6750 Core 2 Duo overclocked to 3.2 GHz, an 8600 GT 256 MB, and was running 10.5.8 prior to installing SL. Under 10.5.8 the onboard NIC was running at 100 mips. Using Stell's package, things went pretty well, and I only needed to modify the DSDT to change the amount of NVRAM. However, although the Apple 8169 driver loaded,  I could not get an IP address. Finally got things working by manually setting the Link Speed down from 100BaseTX to 10BaseT. That's when I bought the add-on NIC. Having two PCI slots, I used the top one and adjusted the DSDT file to reflect the address at which the card loaded. Both the Apple driver and the Psystar R1000 driver failed to load citing a bad Interrupt source. FYI, Ubuntu 8.04 has no issues using either the onboard chip, or the add-on card in either slot, at 100BaseTX.

The add-on NIC needs to be installed in the lower slot. That's the way the DSDT was originally coded, and installing the card there works peachy keen. Sometimes it's the simple things that cause the biggest problems.

Stell released three versions of his package. With PME events enabled, and using the first version, the machine will actually go to sleep by itself. Not only that, but the SleepX program in the Developer tools works, too. I can cycle between awake and asleep multiple times. I can even schedule the machine to wake up for backup and then go back to sleep again. I'm psyched . With the third version of the package, my system doesn't go to sleep unless I induce it via the Apple menu.

--skip

I followed the hardware list as close as I could.  I have the EP45-UD3P, 9800 GTX+, TrendNet PCITXR, but an E8400 with 4GB of GSkill 1200 MHz.

So far I've gotten everything to work but the the QE/CI.

I am a noob at this and I don't really understand what the Lifehacker package did to the usb drive.  Did it put in a custom DSDT not allowing me to add EFI strings?  Because I've tried UInstaller and OSX86 Tools to try and add the 9800 GTX+ strings and enabling QE/CI.

I haven't made the install drive bootable yet (booting off the usb) should I install Chameleon via terminal instead for the EFI stuff?

Any help or kick & shove towards the right direction is much appreciated.

[smiles4life]

Have been getting kernel panics.  Install went exactly as described, booted up and shut down/slept perfectly, had sound, ethernet (no adapter used), everything great (except Silverlite - not on PPC error).  Went to remove old drive that data transferred from and began gettin kernel panics:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff800053e932):  Unable to find driver for this platform: \"AHCPI\".\n"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1456.1.25/iokitt/kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1389

I reinstalled SL from thumbdrive and it booted fine, brough data over from old drive and got kernel panic after choosing the drive in the bootloader.

My setup is slightly different:  same mother board, same graphics card, CPU is 8500 dual core 3.1.

Any suggestions?


Thanks

[SkipG]

dusts, on Sep 20 2009, 02:25 AM, said:

I followed the hardware list as close as I could.  I have the EP45-UD3P, 9800 GTX+, TrendNet PCITXR, but an E8400 with 4GB of GSkill 1200 MHz.

So far I've gotten everything to work but the the QE/CI.

I am a noob at this and I don't really understand what the Lifehacker package did to the usb drive.  Did it put in a custom DSDT not allowing me to add EFI strings?  Because I've tried UInstaller and OSX86 Tools to try and add the 9800 GTX+ strings and enabling QE/CI.

I haven't made the install drive bootable yet (booting off the usb) should I install Chameleon via terminal instead for the EFI stuff?

Any help or kick & shove towards the right direction is much appreciated.

I can only help you a little bit. Doing searches, both within IMac and in the larger community will certainly help. QE/CI status aren't displayed in SL, as it's supposed to work for all supported graphics. There are three ways to test if it is working: one way is to open the Chess game and move one of the white pawns. If it works, QE/CI is working.

The patch for USB was on Netkas site, I think. What it does is fix USB2 ports so they can be handled by the Apple driver. No, the DSDT didn't eliminate your ability to put in strings. However, both vehicles are injecting EFI data, and if the DSDT patches a key to say that footballs are blue, you will not be able to patch the same key via device-properties to say footballs are red. You'll need to do a lot of reading to understand what DSDT patching is all about.

Yes you should install the package on your SL partition. No need to use terminal, just double click on the package and select the SL partition (drive).

[rickyp123]

scrambler_455, on Sep 19 2009, 09:25 PM, said:

Change to 9x, that is very likely the problem. Kernel Panics are typically the processor just giving up. If they are not clocked right, kernel panics left and right.

good luck.

Well I got everything to work. Posting to this board with it as I type. Turned out the mobo really doesn't like DDR2 1066 RAM. Bumped it down to 800 and I haven't had a problem since. I did have an initial problem with the NIC running REALLY slow, but after a reboot it is screaming like it should. Thanks for the help guys. Anyway to change my vote at the top to read Working great?

[martygearbox]

Bought the same hardware and used the no hack method. Everything is working great with no major issues. My minor issue is the inability to wake from sleep using the keyboard. I can only get it to wake by hitting the power switch. Anyone having this issue or know a solution?



Another note: when I started the project I already had a portable drive with a Snow Leopard install partition (created using the disk utility restore function). I could not find my SL disk image, so I used the portable drive and Carbon Copy Cloner to put it on my USB stick. I then ran the installer to patch it. Upon booting, the USB stick would kernel panic about 10 seconds after the grey apple. When I actually used the disk image restore method and disk utility as described in the post, it worked like a charm.

[Raiten]

Hey All,

So glad I found this thread. I have the exact same setup that Adam used and I am having two problems:

1. ethernet card not recognized. System Profiler doesn't say its there.
2. video driver - do I need to install a kext? which one? The resolution is stretched and huge.

I also used the no hack method.

Thanks!
Matt

[rickyp123]

martygearbox, on Sep 20 2009, 09:29 AM, said:

Bought the same hardware and used the no hack method. Everything is working great with no major issues. My minor issue is the inability to wake from sleep using the keyboard. I can only get it to wake by hitting the power switch. Anyone having this issue or know a solution?



Another note: when I started the project I already had a portable drive with a Snow Leopard install partition (created using the disk utility restore function). I could not find my SL disk image, so I used the portable drive and Carbon Copy Cloner to put it on my USB stick. I then ran the installer to patch it. Upon booting, the USB stick would kernel panic about 10 seconds after the grey apple. When I actually used the disk image restore method and disk utility as described in the post, it worked like a charm.

I can't restore from keyboard either. Minor inconvenience.

[projectorhead]

Used this guide for my UD3P board and have everything working except Time Machine.  When I select "backup now" it acts like it is starting, but then just starts counting down to the next backup.   So many people have reported the same problem after following many different guides, but I've yet to find a common solution.

I was hoping to avoid the wild goose chase of these potential fixes (which don't come from users of the Lifehacker guide that I followed) and find someone who followed this guide who got Time Machine working after initially having it not work.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  The more detailed the better, as I'm quite new at this!!

[SkipG]

smiles4life, on Sep 20 2009, 02:27 AM, said:

Any suggestions?

Yes. I was unable to transfer my stuff automagically, too, but I found how to transfer my mail manually, and was able to create backup of my address book and calendars from within the apps. The other apps I reinstalled under SL. I copied my Downloads, Documents, Music, Photos folder contents over, too.

It worked well, and was not too much of a hassle.

--skip

rickyp123, on Sep 20 2009, 05:00 PM, said:

I can't restore from keyboard either. Minor inconvenience.

I can. In the Power-related BIOS setup, enable PME events.

rickyp123, on Sep 20 2009, 05:00 PM, said:

I can't restore from keyboard either. Minor inconvenience.

I can. Enable PME events in BIOS under Power. Keyboard and/or mouse click will bring it back to life. Stell released three versions of his installer. I know it works well with version #1. I used #3 and then went back to #1 after the fact.

--skip

Raiten, on Sep 20 2009, 04:59 PM, said:

Hey All,

So glad I found this thread. I have the exact same setup that Adam used and I am having two problems:

1. ethernet card not recognized. System Profiler doesn't say its there.
2. video driver - do I need to install a kext? which one? The resolution is stretched and huge.

I also used the no hack method.

Thanks!
Matt

Matt, If you installed the ethernet card in slot 1 (the top one), move it to slot 2 (the bottom). Make sure your video card is in the top PCI Express slot. Your card should be detected and work with the vanilla Apple drivers.

[stellarola]

Raiten, on Sep 20 2009, 04:59 PM, said:

Hey All,

So glad I found this thread. I have the exact same setup that Adam used and I am having two problems:

1. ethernet card not recognized. System Profiler doesn't say its there.
2. video driver - do I need to install a kext? which one? The resolution is stretched and huge.

I also used the no hack method.

Thanks!
Matt

Plug your ethernet card into another PCI Slot

Plug your graphics card into the first PCI-E slot, not the second.

-Stell

[Raiten]

stellarola, on Sep 20 2009, 05:00 PM, said:

Plug your ethernet card into another PCI Slot

Plug your graphics card into the first PCI-E slot, not the second.

-Stell

Thanks Stell, you're awesome.

Everything is working, this is so dope. Thanks for making it so easy for us. I want to give you some money.

[nhc]

nhc, on Sep 19 2009, 07:45 AM, said:

did you reformat the stick again, or did you just erase it and run through the steps starting with the restore?

I'm all set now.  went back and did the terminal based approach and everything worked like a charm.  Hardest part was running the cat 5e cable through my attic (the crawlspace is tiny and i live in florida and it was...hot) so i could get connected to the internet.  But all is well now.  Don't know what was wrong with the package file but like i said the terminal approach worked like charm.

BTW - There are several folks i noticed who get stuck with at the "Verifying DMI pool data" part.  Check your CMOS settings - i've noticed any time you boot up without the bootloader flash drive in CMOS gets reset and for some reason automatically moves your HDD to the top of the list and you have to go back in and change it back to flash drive as the top boot priority....

[martygearbox]

rickyp123, on Sep 20 2009, 05:00 PM, said:

I can't restore from keyboard either. Minor inconvenience.

I am using an Apple thin aluminum keyboard. Plugged in directly, it would not wake. However, when I hook up the box to my KVM switch, I could wake the machine (same keyboard). If you have PME events on and still get no keyboard wake, try different keyboards and usb config.


Quartz Extreme not working

I want to use iMovie, but Quartz Extreme is not available. I have the same hardware as the lifehacker post. How can I enable Quartz Extreme? Are there other cards that support it? What would I need to do if I selected another vid card?