Rx4Mac Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 I have run into something on my machine which acts quite different from how an Apple Mac would act. On a true Mac, I could clone a working boot drive with either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner and the clone could then be swapped in and work just like the original. So far, I have NOT been able to get this to work on my Hackintosh. In order to get a cloned drive to work I had to re-run the Halloween installer against it - THEN it would work. Very curious. I would normally think that a clone would work... That doesn't seem to be the case from what I have seen today. The clones I tried do have different names from the original drive - and they are different sizes. There also does not seem to be a reliable way to choose which of 2 bootable Mac OS 10.6.1 drives should be booting. I was only able to get one drive to boot by disconnecting the other drive - and I had chosen the new drive in the BIOS as the first HD AND selected it in the EFI boot selector. Very very curious. ••• Update Neither SuperDuper! or CCC completely duplicate a drive sector by sector - so they don't copy the special non-standard Master Boot Record template that is required for us to boot OS X on this non-apple MB AND my other issued were solved by having any boot drives on the first 2 orange sata ports and not using the purple ports at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoHPhasor Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 I have run into something on my machine which acts quite different from how an Apple Mac would act. On a true Mac, I could clone a working boot drive with either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner and the clone could then be swapped in and work just like the original. So far, I have NOT been able to get this to work on my Hackintosh. In order to get a cloned drive to work I had to re-run the Halloween installer against it - THEN it would work. Very curious. I would normally think that a clone would work... That doesn't seem to be the case from what I have seen today. The clones I tried do have different names from the original drive - and they are different sizes. There also does not seem to be a reliable way to choose which of 2 bootable Mac OS 10.6.1 drives should be booting. I was only able to get one drive to boot by disconnecting the other drive - and I had chosen the new drive in the BIOS as the first HD AND selected it in the EFI boot selector. Very very curious. Are you sure that this backup solution will grab everything off the drive, or only what it expects? As you noted if you run the installer against the drive it works. Can you point it to failes you also want to make sure are in the image? The second part I can't help with. I have now idea how the bootloader works lol! But honestly, I've seen what it looks like, can't you press Esc to select the one you want? I don't know of an interface to it like in the OSX version of "startup" where you can select the default behavior at will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apophis Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 For the minimizing of the windows, did you try enabling that? It's disabled by default in Snow Leopard. Where is it enabled? I saw the preference to minimize to dock icon. I can minimize by using Command M; it's just double clicking the title bar that has no effect. Anyone know if WindowShade works with Snow Leopard and hackintoshes? I don't know why Apple stopped using collapsible windows anyway and opted for minimizing to dock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russell McGuire Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Lright, took my own advice and Googled it.It does sound like an OSX specific installation problem. How are you setup? Are you using the recommended HD? Where is it plugged into? How did you make the USB stick? Did you follow the backup of the retail DVD as described? I have the same set up as Adam did I went and followed his guide from here http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/09/insta...cking-required/ I ended up using a Snow Leopard retail update disk so I am not sure if that is where the issue would be. Does it have to be a OSX disk and then update that to Snow Leopard? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themerk Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 I ended up using a Snow Leopard retail update disk so I am not sure if that is where the issue would be. Does it have to be a OSX disk and then update that to Snow Leopard? No, that's not the issue, the retail update disc works just fine. Did you create the flash drive using a PPC Mac by any chance? I've heard that it only works if done on an Intel Mac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stellarola Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Where is it enabled? I saw the preference to minimize to dock icon. I can minimize by using Command M; it's just double clicking the title bar that has no effect. Anyone know if WindowShade works with Snow Leopard and hackintoshes? I don't know why Apple stopped using collapsible windows anyway and opted for minimizing to dock. Please research before posting that stuff doesn't work, when it really does. If you're able to load the OS, blame the OS not the method. This confuses people. -Stell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russell McGuire Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 No, that's not the issue, the retail update disc works just fine. Did you create the flash drive using a PPC Mac by any chance? I've heard that it only works if done on an Intel Mac. Nope it was an Intel one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrambler_455 Posted October 30, 2009 Author Share Posted October 30, 2009 Stell: Any idea if there is a way to run the aja kona3 card? Something in the bios that I could change? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rx4Mac Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Are you sure that this backup solution will grab everything off the drive,or only what it expects? As you noted if you run the installer against the drive it works. Can you point it to failes you also want to make sure are in the image? The second part I can't help with. I have now idea how the bootloader works lol! But honestly, I've seen what it looks like, can't you press Esc to select the one you want? I don't know of an interface to it like in the OSX version of "startup" where you can select the default behavior at will. You are correct in stating that both clone methods do not copy 'everything'; the don't copy some files that apple says are temp files or unnecessary. They do make complete, fully bootable exact duplicates when used on a Mac. The Esc key then choosing the boot drive from the GUI did not make the selection of boot drive stick. I am not saying either of these issues are show stoppers by any stretch, just factors that may help others when they run into something. I have also tried the 'most recent' ( 10.5 ) ver of the PC EFI bootloader vs the 10.1 version used in our build; I can't get a full boot using it - the boot stalls with a boot 0 fail - and there must be a configuration that would have to change for it to work ( see http://netkas.org/?cat=5 ) I am still early in the process of understanding how this all comes together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ÜberMac Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Guys, The more experienced members may correct me if I am wrong. I believe you are running into the differences between a PC BIOS and EFI. A Mac uses EFI and the ability to choose the startup disk by holding down the option key is this function. Much like hitting F12 on a PC and then choosing the boot drive. As for the cloning process, the GUI partition scheme has a 200MB partition that is not cloned by "typical" clone utilities. The installer puts several files here that are needed to boot the OS on a PC. That is why reinstalling the installer on the cloned drive works. Also keep in mind this thread is for this hardware config or VERY similar configs based on the GA-EP45-UD3P mainboard and not for generic questions of "How things work on a Hackintosh". Also alittle searching of the other threads will help. Google is your friend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apophis Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Please research before posting that stuff doesn't work, when it really does. If you're able to load the OS, blame the OS not the method. This confuses people. -Stell Sorry dude. I didn't know they had turned it off default in SL (never even used that preference before or where it was) and was simply making an inquiry about why it was doing this. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanWroteThis Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 Howdy howdy! I've set up my PC as per the lifehacker post (though I do have slightly different Kingston RAM, my HDs are WD cavair blacks, and I'm using an older Radeon video card), but I'm having a problem: Everything was going as expected, Snow Leopard installed just fine, it asked me to reboot, I did, but when the gray 'mac style' boot screen came up, the only HD option was to boot off the flash drive again. I've rebooted several times, tweaked various BIOS things, re-installed Snow Leopard twice, and still the HD does not show on the gray 'mac style' boot screen. Any thoughts? Would using a retail copy of Snow Leopard cause this issue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HAVEC Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 Quick question. My Hackintosh is performing beautifully with an overclocked E6600 and some old Cosair PC5400 ram. If I decide to drop in a Q9650 and 4 to 8 Gigs of the Patriot PC6400 Ram, will I have to reinstall SL or will the magic Halloween installer just recognize the new hardware and boot right up? I'm waiting for prices to drop some more. Newegg has raised the prices on some cpus and ram lately. I assume because of all the demand caused by people updating their machines to Windows 7 and wanting to beef up their HW. The Patriot ram is down quite a bit from $120 to $85 while the Q9650 went up $10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoHPhasor Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 Howdy howdy! I've set up my PC as per the lifehacker post (though I do have slightly different Kingston RAM, my HDs are WD cavair blacks, and I'm using an older Radeon video card), but I'm having a problem: Everything was going as expected, Snow Leopard installed just fine, it asked me to reboot, I did, but when the gray 'mac style' boot screen came up, the only HD option was to boot off the flash drive again. I've rebooted several times, tweaked various BIOS things, re-installed Snow Leopard twice, and still the HD does not show on the gray 'mac style' boot screen. Any thoughts? Would using a retail copy of Snow Leopard cause this issue? ....Did you run the Halloween installer FROM the Hackintosh ON the Hackintosh after you installed SL? The installer makes the partition it is run on bootable. Without it the HD is NOT bootable, ergo won't show up in the boot list. Quick question. My Hackintosh is performing beautifully with an overclocked E6600 and some old Cosair PC5400 ram. If I decide to drop in a Q9650 and 4 to 8 Gigs of the Patriot PC6400 Ram, will I have to reinstall SL or will the magic Halloween installer just recognize the new hardware and boot right up? I'm waiting for prices to drop some more. Newegg has raised the prices on some cpus and ram lately. I assume because of all the demand caused by people updating their machines to Windows 7 and wanting to beef up their HW. The Patriot ram is down quite a bit from $120 to $85 while the Q9650 went up $10. The Patriot RAM is actually MORE expensive now. The $120 was for 8GB, whereas it's like $80 for 4GB now. I went with the fast DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 instead cause it was only $5 more. BTW, you can use ANY RAM the board handles, so get what you feel comfortable with. The Proc? I got the Q9550. Only 170MHz difference, but a 50% jump in cost! (9550 = $210 9650 = $310) And YES, I would run the Halloween installer again, it doesn't hurt. (Honestly I think when u get it Stella might be at rev3) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ÜberMac Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 ....Did you run the Halloween installer FROM the Hackintosh ON the Hackintosh after you installed SL? The installer makes the partition it is run on bootable. Without it the HD is NOT bootable, ergo won't show up in the boot list. The Patriot RAM is actually MORE expensive now. The $120 was for 8GB, whereas it's like $80 for 4GB now. I went with the fast DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 instead cause it was only $5 more. BTW, you can use ANY RAM the board handles, so get what you feel comfortable with. The Proc? I got the Q9550. Only 170MHz difference, but a 50% jump in cost! (9550 = $210 9650 = $310) And YES, I would run the Halloween installer again, it doesn't hurt. (Honestly I think when u get it Stella might be at rev3) CoHPhasor, You might be able to help me? I have my build up and running great, everything seems to work fine with the great help on this thread. 64 bit...works 32 bit...works firewire...works esata....works Paragon NTFS....as expected works only 32bit My only issue is that my G.Skill RAM doesn't work. It is DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15 2.0-2.1v Gigabyte says it is supported and I have doublecheck my settings. If it is installed, KP. Simply replacing it with Kingston ddr2-800 solves the issue. Ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanWroteThis Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 ....Did you run the Halloween installer FROM the Hackintosh ON the Hackintosh after you installed SL? The installer makes the partition it is run on bootable. Without it the HD is NOT bootable, ergo won't show up in the boot list. If I understand your question, I set up my flash drive on my Mac at work using the Halloween installer, then took the flash drive home to my PC and used it to install SL. I was able to run the install just fine from the flash drive, it came up, I formatted my PC's HD appropriately , installed SL, etc... When I boot now I don't get the option to choose which drive on the initial gray screen. If you look at the Lifehacker video ( ) I should be getting what you see at the 2:00 mark, but instead all I see is what's shown at the 0:05 mark, even after installing SL, only the flash drive shows up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altoidboy Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 HI all -- new to this thread. I built this exact computer, but am having trouble with USB audio devices. If any of you have any ideas, please visit a separate thread I created for this problem: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=195103 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoHPhasor Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 CoHPhasor, You might be able to help me? I have my build up and running great, everything seems to work fine with the great help on this thread. 64 bit...works 32 bit...works firewire...works esata....works Paragon NTFS....as expected works only 32bit My only issue is that my G.Skill RAM doesn't work. It is DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15 2.0-2.1v Gigabyte says it is supported and I have doublecheck my settings. If it is installed, KP. Simply replacing it with Kingston ddr2-800 solves the issue. Ideas? Hardware guru I am not, but I may be able to offer insight as to troubleshooting. I know from one of Stella's earlier posts that you can use any RAM the board takes. But first thing's first. You say all the settings match in BIOS right? So voltage, etc, etc? Now. You have more than 2 sticks of RAM right? (4 total) So try only 2 sticks, in the matching color slots. You may have 1 or more bad ones so keep trading them out til you know for sure they aren't working together. Others in this thread have used 1066 so it should definitely be able to work. If I understand your question, I set up my flash drive on my Mac at work using the Halloween installer, then took the flash drive home to my PC and used it to install SL. I was able to run the install just fine from the flash drive, it came up, I formatted my PC's HD appropriately , installed SL, etc... When I boot now I don't get the option to choose which drive on the initial gray screen. If you look at the Lifehacker video ( ) I should be getting what you see at the 2:00 mark, but instead all I see is what's shown at the 0:05 mark, even after installing SL, only the flash drive shows up. The question I had is, Did you run the Halloween installer ON the Hackintosh ITSELF? It is crucial that you do it, and more so that you tell us so we can troubleshoot it. Beyond answering the above question I can only ask if you partitioned the HD as a GUID partition in Disk Utility. (You can find out by booting the USB, then quitting the installer and choosing "Disk Utility".) If the HD is GUID, you installed SL and you installed the Halloween installer on the HD you are beyond my help. :-\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanWroteThis Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 The question I had is, Did you run the Halloween installer ON the Hackintosh ITSELF?It is crucial that you do it, and more so that you tell us so we can troubleshoot it. Beyond answering the above question I can only ask if you partitioned the HD as a GUID partition in Disk Utility. (You can find out by booting the USB, then quitting the installer and choosing "Disk Utility".) If the HD is GUID, you installed SL and you installed the Halloween installer on the HD you are beyond my help. :-\ No, I haven't run the installer on the Hackintosh drive. Can I do that if OSX doesn't boot up? Maybe I missed a step... ...and yes, I did partition the HD as a GUID. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoHPhasor Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 No, I haven't run the installer on the Hackintosh drive. Can I do that if OSX doesn't boot up? Maybe I missed a step... ...and yes, I did partition the HD as a GUID. Ok. That answers a question. :-) Now, as far as installations go, this is the quote from the LH "no hack" guide: The quick version goes like this: Boot into the Snow Leopard installer, format the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to (go to Utilities -> Disk Utility, then click on the drive, select 1 Partition, Mac OS X Journaled (Case-Sensitive Update: Several readers have suggested that case-sensitive formatting can cause problems with some applications, like Adobe's Creative Suite, so you may be better off sticking with plain old Mac OS X Journaled.), give it a name, and make sure GUID Partition Table is set in the Options. After you Apply the new partition, go back to the installer and install like normal to that drive. When you reboot after the install completes, press the arrow keys at the graphical boot menu and select the drive you just installed Snow Leopard to. There isn't a reason I'm aware of that you shouldn't see a drive you installed SL to if a) You made a single partition on your HD and selected "GUID" from the Options menu. You actually installed SL on the HD you partitioned. A USB stick that can see itself as a boot device should surely see an HD with an installation on it. The only thing that comes to mind is that some ppl report having problems with HDs plugged into certain ports. So to quote my earlier, other question; "What port is your HD plugged into?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanWroteThis Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 Ok. That answers a question. :-) There isn't a reason I'm aware of that you shouldn't see a drive you installed SL to if a) You made a single partition on your HD and selected "GUID" from the Options menu. You actually installed SL on the HD you partitioned. A USB stick that can see itself as a boot device should surely see an HD with an installation on it. The only thing that comes to mind is that some ppl report having problems with HDs plugged into certain ports. So to quote my earlier, other question; "What port is your HD plugged into?" Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! Yeah, I've followed those steps to the letter and I'm not seeing my SL drive. The HD is currently plugged into SATA0 (I'll have to double check when I get home). I may try formatting and installing on a different drive for grins and giggles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoHPhasor Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! Yeah, I've followed those steps to the letter and I'm not seeing my SL drive. The HD is currently plugged into SATA0 (I'll have to double check when I get home). I may try formatting and installing on a different drive for grins and giggles. (orange) ports 0 and 1 reported to be the most reliable. The purple ports are said to be much less reliable. There are cases on here of drives appearing and disappearing at will, not being bootable etc, and they were in other ports. If you reinstall anyway, you could try downlonading the Halloween installer again in case somehow it was imperfect on download. Other than that there hasn't been a problem for installation that I could correlate to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacWannaBe Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 .. The Proc? I got the Q9550. Only 170MHz difference, but a 50% jump in cost! (9550 = $210 9650 = $310) I got the Q9550 and Over Clocked to to 3.4Ghz. It was not that bad, and I've never overclocked before. If you try what I did, make sure you get a decent cooler as the stock fans are not enough and they are loud! -Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanWroteThis Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 (orange) ports 0 and 1 reported to be the most reliable.The purple ports are said to be much less reliable. There are cases on here of drives appearing and disappearing at will, not being bootable etc, and they were in other ports. If you reinstall anyway, you could try downlonading the Halloween installer again in case somehow it was imperfect on download. Other than that there hasn't been a problem for installation that I could correlate to. SUCCESS!!! And this should be noted for future installs. The Halloween boot screen requires you to press any key for boot options (I don't remember the exact wording off the top of my head). Well, I had been pushing keys and nothing was happening, so I assumed that wasn't the problem. Well, in going through my BIOS settings, I noticed that legacy USB keyboard support was disabled. Well. I enabled it and IT WORKS! Yay! It was installing and working correctly this whole time. Thank you so much for taking the time to troubleshoot with me. I really appreciate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rx4Mac Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 I got the Q9550 and Over Clocked to to 3.4Ghz. It was not that bad, and I've never overclocked before. If you try what I did, make sure you get a decent cooler as the stock fans are not enough and they are loud! -Ed Did you use a particular guide for overclocking ? ( this would be my first attempt also ) Which cooler did you select and why? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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