Lifehacker Guide with GA-EP45-UD3P Motherboard

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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]

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]

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]

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]

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?

[SkipG]

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....

 

Another way of picking the boot device is to hit F12 before the BIOS goes to detect your AHCI devices.

 

--Skip

[nhc]

I'm all set now.

 

not so fast...for some reason each time i log in, at the log in screen my keyboard and mouse don't work. I have to unplug the usb cable and then plug it back in, then it works. I'm using a macally "apple style" keyboard and an apple (wired) mighty mouse. This just started happening after I ran the kext to get the sound working, per the last part of the lifehacker install guide. Any reason that would have messed up the keyboard?

[stellarola]

not so fast...for some reason each time i log in, at the log in screen my keyboard and mouse don't work. I have to unplug the usb cable and then plug it back in, then it works. I'm using a macally "apple style" keyboard and an apple (wired) mighty mouse. This just started happening after I ran the kext to get the sound working, per the last part of the lifehacker install guide. Any reason that would have messed up the keyboard?

 

Yes, because you're not using the correct board. I can't stress this enough.

 

-Stell

[martygearbox]

Quartz Extreme not working with 32 bit kernel

 

I set a 32 bit flag in the com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder to get 32 bit kernel so that Parallels will work. Everything works, but no Quartz Extreme. How can I get QE working with 32 bit Kernel?

[SkipG]

Quartz Extreme not working with 32 bit kernel

 

I set a 32 bit flag in the com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder to get 32 bit kernel so that Parallels will work. Everything works, but no Quartz Extreme. How can I get QE working with 32 bit Kernel?

 

QE Status not displayed in SL. Try launching Chess. If you can move a pawn, it's working.

[Raiten]

Stell, everything is running great but I just noticed my System Profiler is saying my cpu is only running at 2.07 when it is the same 3.0 that was listed in the article. This is the first time it has ever been like that in this build. It's not set like that in the bios. What might it be?

 

Edit: I went back into the bios and the 9X had dropped down to 6X automatically. Is this because my cpu was getting too hot? I check temp and system temp was 39 degrees C while the cpu was bouncing between 61 and 64.

 

Edit 2: the heatsink wasn't fully seated. Now it's idling at 51 to 53 while in the bios, system temp still 39. Is this normal? Fan speed was about 1500 I think.

 

One thing I noticed was in the bios settings on the first screen, on the screenshots it says:

 

CPU Vcore 1.2375V [Auto]

 

Mine says:

 

CPU Vcore 1.2500V [Auto]

 

I can change it to 1.2375V but then it is no longer auto. I have a feeling this is where the issue is. BTW these readings are from the bios so it was idle. I don't want to think about what it was at when I was installing apps.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Matt

[dna930]

Just finished my SL install following the instructions. My system is up and running except I am having a problem booting directly from the internal HD.

 

I can boot up no problem with the USB drive plugged into one of the USB ports in back and then selecting the internal SL drive. When booting directly from the internal SL HD, I select the system drive from the Chameleon menu and the system starts to boot. But the grey Apple menu shows a weird apple logo and then I get the grey screen of death that comes down from the top of the screen - says I have to restart the computer. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

 

Everything worked the first time booting from the USB drive:

Q9400

Kingston HyperX 8GB (4x2GB)

EVGA 9800GTX+ (no configuring to drive two Dell 2209WAs)

Linksys WMP54GS (instantly recognized during SL install)

Samsung DVD

300GB Veloceraptor

1TB Carviar Black x2 (set-up as RAID 1)

Logitech Novi USB wireless keyboard (works waking system from Sleep Mode)

Intuos4 tablet pen and mouse

[delite]

Has anyone tried lifehackers guide with ep45-ds3? I was googling for diferences between the ep45-ud3p and ep45-ds3 but apart from gigabyte's official site not much comes up.

 

Is this guide strictly for the UD3P board?

Apart from raid, firewire and 3 sATA slots the boards appear to be similar (chipset, audio, ethernet ...).

[projectorhead]

Could somebody please point me towards a solution to a non-working Time Machine? I'm running 10.6.1, and when Time Machine is told to "Back Up Now" it immediately just starts counting down again to the next backup.

 

I've followed the Lifehacker guide for the EP45-UD3P and have the hardware listed for that guide, and the rest of my system is apparently working just fine (as far as I can tell after a couple days). However, Time Machine simply will not make a back-up.

 

Any ideas? Please please please???

[nhc]

Yes, because you're not using the correct board. I can't stress this enough.

 

-Stell

 

where do you get that from? I bought the exact board from the lifehacker guide. Went straight to his saved wishlist, added it to my cart, and bought it from newegg. Where did you get the idea i was using a different board?