[Guide & Boot CD] D-Series Latitude/w NVIDIA or GMA950 and Intel Dual Core Retail Installs

[jh49]

If you could provide the steps it would be greatly appreciated.

 

BTW, looks like the Dell DW1490 was no good, bought another from EBay, guess I'll try again

 

Hey Guys, i have a perfectly dual boot SL 10.6.1 & Win 7 on my D630, by following these steps EXACTLY:

(BTW, its a direct copy and paste from an early post in this thread, I just added a copule of notes i thought would be useful)

Hi, is the dual-boot stable? For my D620, the boot to SL doesn't have any problem, but W7 crashes often. I had to repair the boot sector using W7 DVD. I followed your instructions. Any information or advice will be appreciated.

[leppy700m]

Hi, is the dual-boot stable? For my D620, the boot to SL doesn't have any problem, but W7 crashes often. I had to repair the boot sector using W7 DVD. I followed your instructions. Any information or advice will be appreciated.

 

It is here.

[zeldo]

Hi, is the dual-boot stable? For my D620, the boot to SL doesn't have any problem, but W7 crashes often. I had to repair the boot sector using W7 DVD. I followed your instructions. Any information or advice will be appreciated.

 

Dual boot works without any issues, Win 7 works without issues and 10.6.1 works without any issues , and I sometimes have the system on for hours (4-5 hrs_ in either SL or W7

When I just started with W7, I was getting IE crashing very often, some googling revealed that Skype as well as my anti virus were the culprits, so some tweaks later, no issues, some things I have noticed, is that when I run some video files, usually big (1gb - 3 gb) like mp4 or avi under W7, I get a crash, I suspect the video( nvidia), also, sometimes when I have maybe 7-12 web pages open in tabs, safari (SL) will stop responding, I would attribute that to memory related, as I have only 1gb ram, and I know better than to put so much demand on the system, hey - research has a price

 

Lastly, just to confirm, I did do fresh installs of both SL and W7, no upgrades, like I mentioned before, All I did was to follow Leppys guide and read and reread this thread, D620 runs very stable in either SL or W7, so I have the best of both worlds

[jh49]

Dual boot works without any issues, Win 7 works without issues and 10.6.1 works without any issues , and I sometimes have the system on for hours (4-5 hrs_ in either SL or W7

When I just started with W7, I was getting IE crashing very often, some googling revealed that Skype as well as my anti virus were the culprits, so some tweaks later, no issues, some things I have noticed, is that when I run some video files, usually big (1gb - 3 gb) like mp4 or avi under W7, I get a crash, I suspect the video( nvidia), also, sometimes when I have maybe 7-12 web pages open in tabs, safari (SL) will stop responding, I would attribute that to memory related, as I have only 1gb ram, and I know better than to put so much demand on the system, hey - research has a price

 

Lastly, just to confirm, I did do fresh installs of both SL and W7, no upgrades, like I mentioned before, All I did was to follow Leppys guide and read and reread this thread, D620 runs very stable in either SL or W7, so I have the best of both worlds

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I will try the clean install of W7 to see if it fixes the frequent boot problem of W7. I have been using Windows XP and SL without any problem using Leppy's CD, but, after the upgrade to W7, I started having the problem. Can I ask how you made the partitions at the beginning? Thanks.

[zeldo]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I will try the clean install of W7 to see if it fixes the frequent boot problem of W7. I have been using Windows XP and SL without any problem using Leppy's CD, but, after the upgrade to W7, I started having the problem. Can I ask how you made the partitions at the beginning? Thanks.

 

When booting with the SL DVD, before beginning the actual install, go to DISK UTILITIES and do the partitioning from there, I have 3 partitions, each same size (40 + 40 +40 =120gb) I did the SL partition at the beginning of the drive as leppy instructed, the 2 other partitions I did in FAT, when doing the W7 install, just format the FAT to NTFS at that time, Like others, I use a 'common' folder for my access between the 2 OS's and for file storage, for easy ID, I named each SNOW, COMMON, W7, so I know which one to load W& to when I start to do the instal, actually, there will be some smaller partitions each about 200mb, but that seem to be a part of the SL (MAC OS Extended partition table), these are invisible to Windows as well as OSX

The last thing that I have never seen anyone mention but I have noticed on my Company's D630 (Intel graphics) w/ iAtkos and now this D620, is when you boot to W7 (or XP) the time in the clock is about 4-6 hours out , i guess that since the Chameleon bootloader acts for the EFI and over-rides the bios, must have something to do with that, I just reset the time and am fine, I did note on the D630 that after extended use (and I had OSX on a USB HDD since it was not my computer but my company's and IT would have been all over me for modifying their system), when I returned to Windows, sometimes the USB ports took about 1 hour to return to 'normal' function, meaning, they refused to acknowledge any inputs, the thing about the D630, was that it had a completely dead main battery (not the cmos, but the system battery) so am not sure that had anything to do with it, when I would return it to the dock in the morning, usb keyboard and mouse refused to work, also, just to make a further point, on my D620, the mute, works perfecto, while on the D630 iAkos, it shows on screen to work but in reality doesn't, I have since abandoned Leopard as SL is much kinder to me since I have a 99.5% functional install, only missing 'sleep', but thats no deal breaker at all (don't miss the crazy track pad mouse from Leopard installs either, and this is a guy that has a copy of Every Distro and Every version, since getting those to boot was a 1 shot in 20 in my experience

[jh49]

Hi Zeldo, thank you very much again for sharing your dual-boot experience in detail. I think the time difference between SL and W7 can be solved by installing the package called Zephyroth_Dual_Boot_Time_Fix.pkg in SL. In my case, as long as SL shuts down normally, the time was synchronized between W7 or XP. I tried to upload the package, but I couldn't.

[Mikkp]

Did you change the source in system prefs after unplugging?

 

Any news on getting sleep working?

 

Mikk.

[rosennm]

Hey Leppy,

Thanks for the guide. Install went smoothly but I can't restart and boot without the boot cd in. Any ideas on how to resolve this.

THanks,

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

OS X 10.6.0 (Snow Leopard) Retail Installation Procedure

 

Tested:

• Latitude D620/D820/D420 with GMA950 Graphics and Broadcom Wifi
  
• Latitude D620/D630 with NVIDIA Graphics and Broadcom Wifi
  

Will probably work on ANY D series Latitude with Intel GMA950 or Nvidia graphics and Intel dual core processor

 

Working Hardware Accelerated Vid (32-bit only for Intel Graphics)

Working Ethernet (32-bit only)

Working Wifi

Working Sound

Working Shutdown/Restart (D620 Only)

Working Dual Core Support (All) without patched kernels

 

rebuild_mkext - Easy to customize - add/remove kexts to /Extra/Extensions and then double click rebuild_mkext.command in /Extra to rebuild custom boot cache without impact to /s/l/e. (Do this carefully at your own risk!)

Allows rebuilding of /Extra/Extensions.mkext in 64 bit mode. (Experimental - Nvidia ONLY)

 

 

10.6.1 Update works with no issues

 

 

Table of Contents:

 

1. Requirements

2. Installation of OS X 10.6.1 Retail DVD

3. Notes

4. Bugs/Issues

5. Change log

6. Grandiose Plans

7. Begging for feedback (not money)

 

 

Requirements

 

Hardware:

* Dell D420/D620/D820 with Intel GMA950 or Nvidia Graphics with DVD read capability.

* Dell D630 (Nvidia Graphics ONLY) with DVD read capability.

* Similar hardware configurations may work, but are untested.

 

 

Software:

* OS X 10.6.0 Snow Leopard RETAIL install DVD. (Buy one - don't steal it)

* CD made from D620SLV1.iso

 

 

Installation of OS X 10.6.0 Retail DVD

 

1. Start computer with bootable CD made from D620SLV1.iso cd image. No flags required.

- When Chameleon boot menu appears, eject the boot CD

- Insert OS X 10.6.0 RETAIL DVD ONLY. Wait for DVD Machine to read DVD and hit F5. You may have to retry F5 a few times until the OS X Installation DVD spools up and gets read.

- Select OSX Install from the Chameleon menu once it appears.

2. Follow installation prompt:.

- Before installing, make sure to start the DISK UTILITY (from go>utilities) to create a GUID HD partition and install OS X on the new partition. IMPORTANT: In order for the automated Chameleon install to work during the post install, you must install on the FIRST partition of the FIRST drive. If you have a bunch of drives installed and don't know how to get this done, then I suggest you remove other drives during the installation and post install procedure.

- Suggestion: After partitioning, and at customize stage, de-select other language translations (other than default). This will save about 2GB disk space and make installation and every backup thereafter 2 GB faster.

Note: At installation completion, OS X may say that installation failed because it was unable to mount the disk and prompt to reboot. This is normal and OS X is installed. I suspect that this is because I never selected a boot partition, but I never bothered to prove it out.

3. To run OS X for the first time, Reinsert D620SLV1 boot CD and Reboot. Select your new installation partition from the Chameleon menu and boot.

 

10.6.0 Post Installation

 

You will want to boot from the hard drive and enable both cores. To do this, with the boot CD still in the drive after your first boot up, do the following:

 

1. Open the boot CD.

2. Double click on post_install.cmd.

3. Follow the simple prompts.

4. When the job completes, reboot.

 

If desired, download and install the 10.6.1 updates from software updates in OS X.

 

Notes

 

1. Dell D620 with GMA950 and Broadcom wireless should have hardware accelerated video, wifi, ethernet, sound, shutdown and reboot, and dual core support working after post install without modification to retail installation. However, the drivers used are only 32 bit compatible. Intel

2. 10.6.1 update presented no issues that needed to be address in my experience.

3. I haven't addressed the PCI card slot. I have it disabled (I never use it). I can add it if there's a demand and a fix I can implement in Chameleon.

4. Intel wifi cards are not supported by OS X. It's all dandy & stuff if you've got yours working, but it's still not supported and I'm not smarter than the guys trying to fix that issue. In fact, I'm barely smart enough to keep myself from drooling on my foot.

 

 

Bugs/Issues

 

1. If you set a system password in BIOS, your sleep may or may not work correctly. It is inconsistent at best here. There are various fixes available with all kinds of varying degrees of reported success, but I have opted not to apply any patches to the 'vanilla' installation itself for this project.

2. The kexts used for this installation are the same ones that resulted in minor video artifacts on my GMA950 machine on 10.5.x. However, I haven't seen any artifacts yet with Snow Leopard.

4. The display is never properly detected and reported, but it works @ 1440 x 900 with full hardware acceleration on my 1440x900 machines Please don't ask why you aren't getting resolutions your particular machine does not support.

5. If I plug the machine into a d/port with two monitors connected, it posts on one monitor and the OS X desktop loads on the other. Now that's almost as messed up as Barack Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Change log

 

Initial Snow Leopard Release

 

Plans

 

- Scripted builds for a wider selection of hardware supporting both Nvidia and Intel graphics versions of D series Latitudes. (And possibly other compatible hardware)

- Better video solutions for this craptastic GMA950 video chip.

- Scripted EFI partition support.

 

 

Feedback, please and Thanks

 

Thanks to the people at Voodoo Labs. Love your work, you are making things easier.

 

Voodoo Labs provides kexts that load without modification of the /s/l/e path, including kexts for running the vanilla SL kernel un-patched without skipping or jumping, sound, ps2 device and trackpad support and even a kext to get the battery meter working. They provide Chameleon, the boot loader, which not only allows us to boot Snow Leopard, but also auto-detects and sets up Nvidia graphics well enough to support hardware accelerated video with no additional kexts. I don't want to think of how difficult a project like this would be without their talented hard work.

 

And AlexD, thanks for the direction to the ethernet kext I was looking so hard for.

 

And thanks to everyone who has posted any attempt to provide useful information at www.insanelymac.com or even farted in my direction. You've all contributed to the chaos which is part of the cosmic soup that nurtures and feeds inspiration. And if that's not a sign that I have rambled on too long now, nothing ever will be.

 

- leppy

 

 

10.6.0 Boot CD for Snow Leopard Retail Install here: D620SLV1.iso

[jh49]

Hi Zeldo, the upgrade to W7 seems to mess up the boot sector. Coexisting NT and W7 boot managers caused the problem. After the clean install, I think I don't have the booting problem anymore. Thank you very much.

 

Edit: Yesterday I didn't have any problem with booting into W7, but, unfortunately, I am having a blue screen again today. I don't understand what is going on at all.

[Mikkp]

Rosenm please don't quote the first post all the way. Its just annoying to scroll down...

 

Anyway, have you run the post install?

After youve booted into OSX using the CD, keep the CD in and klick on it. There should be a postinstall.command there, enter your password and restart.

 

Mikk.

[jh49]

Hi, is it possible to start Leppy's SL CD from USB flash? If it is, can someone tell me how to make the bootable USB flash drive? Thanks.

[dustpuppy]

10.6.0 Boot CD for Snow Leopard Retail Install here: D620SLV1.iso

 

 

Works like a charm! I can't thank you enough for this.

 

Very good work!

 

I was wondering, if I replaced my current core duo for a T7200 core 2 duo, would that mess things up?

[leppy700m]

10.6.0 Boot CD for Snow Leopard Retail Install here: D620SLV1.iso

 

 

Works like a charm! I can't thank you enough for this.

 

Very good work!

 

I was wondering, if I replaced my current core duo for a T7200 core 2 duo, would that mess things up?

 

Changing CPUS should not impact the install provided you are using a CPU designed for your system.

 

A T7200 should be fine in a D620.

[nub4life]

You can get Dell DW 1490s and 1500/1510s on Ebay on the cheap. They work well.

 

Just wanted to give you an update. Got my DW 1490 today and installed it. Now replying to this thread via my wireless connection on my hackintosh! Thanks a lot Leppy!!

[Mark Rose]

Hi:

 

Did anyone get the DVD player application to work? I keep on receiving an initialization error [-70013]. As a workaround, I have been using VLC. If this has been previously covered, I apologize. Thanks in advance!

 

Mark

- Dell D620 (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo / NVidia graphics / 4G RAM / Dell Wireless)

- Mac OS X 10.6.2

[Mikkp]

Hi:

 

Did anyone get the DVD player application to work? I keep on receiving an initialization error [-70013]. As a workaround, I have been using VLC. If this has been previously covered, I apologize. Thanks in advance!

 

Mark

- Dell D620 (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo / NVidia graphics / 4G RAM / Dell Wireless)

- Mac OS X 10.6.2

 

VLC is the best bet. Noone has yet to discover a fix.

Hope the 10.6.3 update fixes it.

 

Mikk.

[Antonius138]

Hello all,

 

I am finally getting around to doing the Windows 7 Snowy Dual Boot. I followed the instructions in the previous posts, and I was able to get Windows 7 installed on its own partition and then I rebooted in and made different partitions active, the thing I do not see if where it lists the different operating systems. In the Dell Chameleon boot screen I only see my Snow Leopard choice and nothing for Windows 7. I hit the down arrow and the enter key and it just selects the only option which is Snow Leopard. Do I need to edit something to see the Windows 7 option listed to boot into it?

 

Thanks for any help!

 

Anthony

[StevoDevo]

Hey Leppy,

 

It's been a while and I wanted to check in quickly to see if you'd worked out how to get standby working on the Dell D820's running SL? I've been loving my SL on my D820 but the only thing that would make it better is to have standby working!!

 

Let me know if you've worked out any magic here!!

 

Steve

[Mikkp]

Hey Leppy,

 

It's been a while and I wanted to check in quickly to see if you'd worked out how to get standby working on the Dell D820's running SL? I've been loving my SL on my D820 but the only thing that would make it better is to have standby working!!

 

Let me know if you've worked out any magic here!!

 

Steve

 

This topic is mainly focused on D620's. And it seemes that since the D620 has not been hacked to get sleep working than probably the D820 is far from it.

 

Mikk.

[leppy700m]

Hey Leppy,

 

It's been a while and I wanted to check in quickly to see if you'd worked out how to get standby working on the Dell D820's running SL? I've been loving my SL on my D820 but the only thing that would make it better is to have standby working!!

 

Let me know if you've worked out any magic here!!

 

Steve

 

Sadly, no. A lot of people have worked on this. Some report some success when the bios is set to use a password on resume. It never worked reliably for me.

[Masterz1337]

Great tutorial, unfortunately, I can't get past the welcome video when installing OSX. Soon as the video is that the screen gets all garbled, and then the video starts to play again but the screen is all white. Anyone else have this problem? I'm using a Dell Latitude D620.

 

Edit: Turns out that having a slipstreamed hacked version of OSX on the hard drive and this tutorial don't work so well, after formatting the drive everything worked perfect. I just can't get it to wake up from sleep, which seems to be normal.

[Mikkp]

Great tutorial, unfortunately, I can't get past the welcome video when installing OSX. Soon as the video is that the screen gets all garbled, and then the video starts to play again but the screen is all white. Anyone else have this problem? I'm using a Dell Latitude D620.

 

What graphics card are you using?

 

M.

[l3osx]

Thanks to leppy and everyone else who contributed to this thread. I've spent several hours tinkering with my D620 mostly because I want to triple boot Windows 7, Snow Leopard (SL) and Linux. I'd like to share my experience below.

 

My D620 came originally with a 60 GB hard drive. I've since replaced this with a 500 GB hard drive. My original hard drive partititon configuration (500 GB) before Snow Leopard:

 

MBR partition table:

1. Primary partition (hidden): about 100 MB, DellUtitlity (factory fresh install)

2. Primary partition: 40 GB, Windows XP

3. Primary partition: 50 GB, Windows Vista

4. Extended partition (logical): 50 GB, Windows 7

5. Logical partition: 325 GB, Data

 

In the end, this is what I did to get SL and Linux Mint onto this drive WITHOUT having to reformat, since SL will only install on a GUID partition scheme.

 

1. I take out the 500 GB HD and put back the old 60 GB HD and install SL using Leppy's guide (SL is installed on the first partition of 3 partitions on this 60 GB HD). Of course I had to use Disk Utility to reformat this drive using a GUID partition scheme before installing SL. (An alternative way: enclose the 60 GB HD in a USB HD case and do the same; I think this should work but I didn't think to do it this way at the time).

 

2. I put the 500 GB HD in a USB enclosure and connect it to the computer, then boot into the SL DVD to use Disk Utility to format the 40 GB WinXP partition with Mac OS X extended journaled file system (aka HFS+), then use Disk Utility to copy the SL partition from the 60 GB HD to the 40 GB WinXP partition on the 500 GB HD.

 

3. Now I switched out the 60 GB HD and put back the 500 GB HD, and boot the computer with my Windows 7 DVD and reinstall Win 7 on the 50 GB Vista partition.

 

4. Then I boot into Windows 7, download and install EasyBCD 1.7.2, which is a graphical boot loader manager for Windows Vista/7 boot loader. Then using EasyBCD (very easy), I add a Mac entry (Generic x86 PC) into Windows 7 boot loader and upon rebooting, I was able to select the Mac entry and boot into Chameleon, which boots SL. The interesting thing is: if I interrupt Chameleon (hit any key before it loads SL), then I also see my other partitions and if I pick the Windows 7 partition, it goes back to the Win 7 boot screen, which let me choose either Win 7 or SL.

 

5. I also made a GParted Live CD (freeware partition tool), then boot this and use it to delete my old 50 GB Win 7 and repartition it into a 40 GB ext3 partition and a 10 GB linux swap partition. Then I boot a Linux Mint 8 Helena DVD and choose to install in my 40 GB ext partition and this is important: click the Advanced option during the install and choose to install boot loader into the Linux partition, which is /dev/sda6 in my case (this Linux distro comes with GRUB 2 (v 1.97beta4)). The reason is that I want my computer to boot up with Win 7 boot loader instead of GRUB 2. If you let GRUB 2 install by default to (hd0), it will install to the MBR and take over.

 

6. Then I boot into Win 7 again, fire up EasyBCD, add a Linux entry. For Type, choose Grub. For Drive, choose the the partition labeled "Linux native," modify the name to anything you like (it doesn't have to say NeoSmart Linux), then click Add entry.

 

7. So now when I boot up my computer, there are 3 entries on the Windows 7 bootloader, one each for the 3 OSes (I've set it to load Win 7 by default). If I choose the Mac entry, then I get Chameleon, which loads SL by default (but I interrupts it by hitting any key before it loads SL, I can choose to load Windows 7, Linux Mint or continue on with SL. If I choose the Linux entry, then I get GRUB 2, which loads Linux Mint by default but I can interrupt and choose to load Windows 7 (it calls it Windows Vista bootloader) or SL (the default entry for Mac OS X does not work, so I have to google and add a custom entry to load Chameleon). I have since customized my GRUB 2 entries to remove all the non-working or unwanted entries and now it only has 4 entries: Linux Mint, Linux Mint (recovery mode), Win 7, and Mac OS X.

 

In short, no matter which bootloader I'm at, I can load any of my 3 OSes.

 

My Dell D620 specs: Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.67 GHz), 4 GB SDRAM DDR2 5300 667 MHz (two 2 GB sticks), 500 GB HD, GMA 950 graphics 1440x900 res, Dell 1490 (Broadcom 4312) wireless.

 

My current MBR partition configuration:

1. Primary partition (hidden): about 100 MB, DellUtitlity (factory fresh install)

2. Primary partition: 40 GB, Snow Leopard

3. Primary partition: 50 GB, Windows 7

4. Extended partition (logical partition): 40 GB, Linux Mint

5. Logical partition: 10 GB, linux swap

6. Logical partition: about 320 GB, Data

 

 

Below is a screenshot of my EasyBCD entries.

[leppy700m]

Thanks to leppy and everyone else who contributed to this thread. I've spent several hours tinkering with my D620 mostly because I want to triple boot Windows 7, Snow Leopard (SL) and Linux. I'd like to share my experience below.

 

Very good work - thanks for sharing.

[Mark Rose]

Hi:

 

Question - is there a way to disable Tap-To-Click on the D620 trackpad? Thanks again to all for all your hard work!

 

Mark

 

Dell D620 / nVidia / Dell Wireless

OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)