Help I broke Mums' Hackintosh

[asc3nti0n]

Ok, so my brother put together a Hackintosh for my parents. They're Mac people and didn't want to learn PC, so a hackintosh was the best upgrade option available.

I've come home and iTunes wants to update, it opens Software Updater, which has been set to Never automatically update, so I think to myself, that's cool, brother has turned it off to save the bandwidth on the 500MB/month 2-way Satellite connection.

So I head home, download all the manual dmg updates from apple.com (well akamai I suppose) on my 55GB/month ADSL and come home and away installing that 400MB of updates the OS had asked for... 10.5.4... freeze, kernal panic, it's there explaining to me how to hold down the power buttong for 10 seconds or to locate teh restart button... ok, this is an odd way for an update to complete... reboot, same thing, reboot, same thing....

Call brother "Me: I ran the 10.5.4 update; Him: You Idiot."

 

Ok, so can I recover the OS that is on there? I'm stuck up here on limited to no internet download ability, I have a spare SATA hard drive, a second Hackintosh (different hardware), my PC that can't burn dmg files to disk, a PC XPSP2 install disk, and no kalyway or OS X install disks of any kind, and three hour drive home to get anything from online.

 

I'm sure some of you like puzzles out there, what's the solution to this one? I'll post updates as I work on it. I must be off right now, gotta help Dad draft some stock. I'll answer questions asap, as I only have five days to remedy this little problem before I head home to go back to work.

[Hagar]

fixing is a simple procedure, but can be time-consuming

boot -v find where it stops (usually a kernel panic) and fix that error (usually by booting the install DVD & deleting the offending kext from terminal) rinse, repeat until you have it back to booting sensibly, then check for qe/ci, sound & network, and fix accordingly (I'm sure your brother can tell you how) if you need a different kernel that will have to be replaced first.

 

however... with the resources you have you can still get it together.. the thing that comes to mind is to attach the harddrdive to your other hackintosh and fix things that way. for details you'll need to come up with details of the hardware etc, but my suggestion would be to get your brother on the phone & do a load of reading, shuffle the drive back & forth a few times fixing issues as they arise...

 

honestly, fixing what you have is the best option, beause the end result is a fully updated machine with everything intact, which will make mum happy...

 

there are oodles of ways to go about it, but they all follow the same pattern: replace kernel (if necessary) first, then boot, crash, fix, rinse, repeat.

[asc3nti0n]

Thanks Hagar,

YEah, hardware spec; I'll have to open the box and have a looksee,

Booting -v; or booting with -s: The panic backtraces to com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement(9.39.0)

I've seen the "safe" 10.5.4 update procedure that this is the driver that is recurrently deleted during the running of the 10.5.4 update so that it will safe complete, cool

So I'll be pulling the HDD out and doing the alterations on the second Mac, and putting back into Mums to see if I safe boot then.

What I need to know is; will the 10.5.4 update have completely installed? I didn't get a chance to reboot "after" the update, it seemed to crash partway through. So will I just repeat the safe update procedure once I recover it does anyone think?

 

by "safe update procedure" I refer to this topic: 10.5.2 to 10.5.3 or 5.4, How do I do it?; where he's quoted some other topic from who knows where.

[Hagar]

if you're stalling on appleintelcpupowermanagement, then the kernel is OK.. delete /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowermanagement.kext & try again..

 

if you're lucky, that's all you'll need to do

 

if it didn't complete the update, however, it may have more problems.. in that case, plug the drive into the other hackintosh.. run the 10.5.4 combo update *specifying that drive* and start the process by deleting whatever you need to...

[Corona]

hiyall,

I'm the brother who set it up originally. Unfortunately I can't remember what drivers were needed for it, so I told him not to do a full reinstall. I think he's off to do a one by one file replacement as needed. I did set up the machine with pc-efi 8 so the vanilla kernel should run (cheap intel board, gigabyte brand by memory), although I think I left it running a patched kernel for shutdown/reboot reasons. It's probably 6 months since I set it up, so memory is hazy, and I set up another different computer a couple of months before that, so the two are getting confused in my mind as to which was which. But hey, I'll let my brother do the hard yards to fix it, and hope he doesn't delete mums files in the process (home is on a separate partition, so should be safe). He doesn't actually have an install dvd to boot from, which makes things that much harder.

I know I should have done a backup of the install when it's was running, but I ran out of time to finish off the computer properly when I first set it up (mum had a once in a month chance to pick it up, so she did).

 

When you read this asc3ntion, once the install is working, use disk utility to make a backup of the main partition onto your big hard drive, then it'll be safe for next time you break it.

 

Andrew

[asc3nti0n]

Alrighty then,

Intermediate Update, I've put the broken OS drive into the second Mac; accessed the drive through Terminal (/Volume/Macintosh\ 1/System/Library/Extensions) and renamed the offending AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext with the mv utility so that it cannot load it.

I put computer back into it's own hardware, and I get a stalled boot as seen in attached photo...

 

-------------------------------------

So I've taken the Broken OS Drive back into my good Mac. Incidently it's a Tiger Install, and 10.5.4 Update doesn't load in Installer. So a trial of "Pacifist happens to appear on that machine and it allows my to open a .pkg and direct the installation at my "broken" OS drive.

So having reinstalled the whole of the 10.5.4 update to the drive again, I'll rename the AppleIntelCPUManagement.kext again, and according to many walkthroughs there is a startupscript that needs a string altered:

 

# Go to /System/InstallAtStartup/scripts/ and open the file 1 with a texteditor

if you can't access the folder

 

* rightclick > Get Info

* at the bottom of the window it says Sharing & Permission, unlock it and click the plusbutton

* Select your Username, press Select and change your permissions to read & write

 

# Find the string /System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext and replace it with /System/Library/Extensions/dsmos.kext

 

NOTE WELL: With Pacifist, when it gets to the Installing of the Applications it asks whether you would like Replace or Update them... Read the full warning, you must "Update" the .apps' not "Replace"... I may get the full OS back, except the first five OS-based applications... We'll see.

[asc3nti0n]

So with the Pacifist "Install to Disk" from a remote/secondary system/OS I have completed the fried/accidental installation of the Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update on a 10.5.2 Kalyway.

So as an update from last post, I have basically assumed I had a "new" install of 10.5.2 as per 'LTL' 's http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=86167 , and have followed the "v4.2" procedure. I don't have his motherboard, but going by the HCL at http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.2 I have managed to decide whether I needed LAN and Audio 3rd or 4th party drivers.

 

So having followed the walkthrough, editted the ./post-script.sh to point to the correct mounted Volume on the remote Mac ((I renamed the drive to make sure it was one-word, no space character in the name)) and completed that, and then installed Chameleon (I'm still not real sure what it's for) and have dumped the advised driver for my motherbaord (a .dmg file) onto a folder on the formerly broken OS drive for later installation, I put it back in its own hardware.

Booted into verbose mode, It went through a bunch of stuff, but it was then definitely running dsmos.kext... and then rebooted again. (hmm I wonder if that's normal) Yes will it seems to be, as next install it's all hunky dory.

Well except for the applications that I "replaced" instead of read the error message and should have "Updated" so I'll be using Pacifist to get into an OS disk when I get my hands on one and reinstalling *just* the five applications that I fried... This according to the Pacifist helpfile is what the application was designed for.

 

Thanks Hagar for the guiding, it was immensively helpful and I hope that I have included enough search keywords to aid others in the future.