[Guide] Installation of Snow Leopard onto a Dell Vostro 1400

[M0000000000]

Hey everyone, I just want to apologize for the wait...

 

First off you're going to need:

-Snow Leopard .dmg or install disc

-An existing Leopard installation on a partition

-2 open partitions

-One 7GB & the other probably 10+GB (however big you want your SL partition to be)

-A USB/external keyboard and mouse

-Patience

 

Step 1) Restoring the .dmg to a seperate Partition

 

Have the SL.dmg on your desktop (you should currently be on your Leopard Install) and open up Disk Utility and click on the Restore tab

 

You're gonna get something looking like this:

 

Next, mount the Snow Leopard.dmg and you should get something named "Mac OS X Install DVD"

Now go back to Disk Utility, and on the left side you should see something like this:

(ignore the top part, that's just my HDD)

 

Click and Drag the Mac OS X Install DVD from that column into the Source box

 

Next you're going to want to Drag the partition that's about 7GB in to the Destination box

(Make sure that the partition is empty) then click on Restore

 

*This process should probably take about 10-20 minutes because what it is doing is copying the the .dmg contents to the partition

 

Step 2) Modifying the Install

A)

Download this:

OSInstall.pkg

(You're going to need to double click on the file to unzip it and get the OSInstall.pkg)

 

When everything is finished restoring click on the partition that you restored it to and it should look something like the one from the mounted .dmg

 

Push down Alt+Shift+G and a box should appear looking like this

In that box type in:

/NAMEOFPARTITION/System/Installation/Packages/

Where the NAMEOFPARTITION should be well, the name of your partition with the installation contents (the one you restored to)

 

Now with the OSInstall.pkg you downloaded

Copy and paste it into there and REPLACE the old one

*The purpose of this is to allow you to install Mac OS X onto a MBR Partition Map instead of the GUID one

 

When you replaced the OSInstall.pkg double click it and start the installation

Make sure you choose the Partition you want it installed to

Customize it to however you want..I'd recommend unselecting all the printer drivers because they always caused an error for me when installing

 

*This process will take a while, but it installs Snow Leopard to that seperate partition

 

Now once the installation is complete DO NOT RESTART YOUR COMPUTER because we need to edit something in order to make it bootable

 

Download Chameleon RC3 thanks to Dr. Hurt for making it!

 

Now install that to your partition with the Snow Leopard Install

 

Now download this

Extra

Unzip that and you should get a folder called Extra

Open up the Partition that you installed Snow Leopard to and Replace the Extra folder there with the one you just downloaded

 

Now you can restart your computer and boot into the Snow Leopard Install

 

Step 3) Inside Snow Leopard

 

Now once you booted i'd recommend using the -v bootflag to see everything (ie. what causes a kernel panic if you get one)

(Now personally, I got a kernel panic because of the IOATAFAMILY.kext so i had to boot back into my Leopard Install and delete it manually from SL and then try again)

 

If you don't get a kernel panic, then , but you realized that your keyboard and mouse don't work that's why you need a USB/external one

 

Plug those in and fill everything out

*Wifi and the webcam already worked for me "out of the box"

 

Install the VoodooPS2Controller and VoodooHDA kexts and restart to get your mouse, keyboard, and sound working

Also, try installing NVInject to get graphics working and then restart

 

If your mouse goes crazy when touching it, but your keyboard works try following steps here

 

hey i found a fix to the trackpad problem

this is what you need to do

 

go to your LEOPARD install and go to: /System/Library/Extensions/

once there go to the ApplePS2Controller.kext and right click it

Click on "Show Package Contents"

then click go to /Contents/Plugins/

Copy the ApplePS2Trackpad.kext to your desktop

 

Next go to the SNOW LEOPARD installation and go to: /System/Library/Extensions

Go to the "VoodooPS2Controller.kext" and right click and "Show Package Contents"

then go through /Contents/Plugins/

Delete the VoodooPS2Trackpad.kext and then copy the ApplePS2Trackpad.kext into there

Rename the "ApplePS2Trackpad.kext" to "VoodooPS2Trackpad.kext"

After that reinstall the VoodooPS2Controller.kext with kextutility and reboot

 

 

it's a simple replacement that gets it fixed

 

And with that Snow Leopard should be on your Vostro 1400 working

I WILL be updating this guide (it seems i just had to end it..well i kinda did..sorry didn't have much time)

[d00fus]

i was able to load retail snow leopard problem loading x3100 driver with qe , just revert back to leopard 10.5.8

[tintinV]

what sound card do you have? the sigmatel ? i cant get the speaker audio work with voodoohda :/ any suggestion?