NEED HELP: Dual boot install OSX86 on Core 2 quad Desktop

[TheBMan]

I decided to get a Gateway LX Series Desktop Computer:

(Read description at bottom for main question)

 

Processor Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q8200¹ (2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2 cache)⁹ Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit) with SP1¹⁰

Memory 8192MB 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory (4 x 2048MB Modules)¹¹

Hard Drive 640GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive with 16MB Cache⁵

Video NVIDIA® GeForce® GT120 Graphics with 1GB DDR2 Total Video Memory¹¹

Application Software Microsoft® Works 9.0, Microsoft® Money Essentials & Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day complimentary trial period)⁴

Audio 8-Channel (7.1) High Definition Audio with Dolby Home Theater® Sound¹²

Available Expansion Slots Available: 0 - PCI-E x16, 0 - PCI-E x1, 1 - PCI

External Ports (6) USB 2.0 ports (2 Front, 4 Rear), (2) IEEE 1394a Ports (1 Front, 1 Rear), VGA (Rear), (3) Front RCA Ports (Video, Left/Right Audio), (2) PS/2 Ports, HDMI (Rear), DVI (Rear)

Media Card Reader 15-in-1 High Speed Digital Media Card Reader with Smart Copy Button⁶

Memory Capacity Maximum 8GB

Modem 56K ITU V.92 ready Fax/Modem (RJ-11 port)

Motherboard Systemboard with NVIDIA® nForce® 720i Chipset (MCP7A-D)

Network 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port)

Optical Drive 18X DVD +/- RW Super Multi-Format Dual Layer Drive featuring Labelfash™ Technology⁸ Power Supply 400W Power Supply

 

 

I've been trying to dual boot Vista 64-bit and mac osx86 snow leopard on together, the mac for video editing and win just for compatibilty reasons. I have a legit copy of Final Cut Studio 2 thats waiting to be used for tons of vid editing. My problem is this: I've tried almost every osx disc I could find; Kalaway 10.5.2, iDeneb, 10.5.5 & 10.5.6, Jas Mac 10.4.8, iAtkos v1.0 & v5.0, and Snow Leopard 10.6. NONE OF THEM WILL LET ME INSTALL AT ALL. I tried testing all of them in vmware and then tried by burning them to a disc and testing trying it that way. For each different osx disc i tried booting from, i got a different result:

 

Kalaway, Jas Mac, the snow leopard disc, and iAtkos didn't load when I tried to install them on the partition I made. When booting up, they only say 'Darwin Boot Loader' and restart in a continuous loop. Now, the Jas Mac 10.4.8 disc, however, worked fine in vmware test i did. It installed and worked fine, but it doesnt do anything when i try to install it on my partition i made.

 

iDeneb 10.5.5, and 10.5.6, I have gotten the farthest with: They get to the Darwin Boot Loader, and i do the whole '-v' thing and it starts the diagnostics screen. But, at a certain point it freezes saying "Firewire Error" and then like 30 sec. later

"still waiting for root device" appears in a continuous loop.

 

Now, I haven't tried every osx86 disc out their, but i don't know what to do and im getting tired of trying to guess and figure this out. I really want to have OSX, I love mac, but win. was the better option $ wise.

I've done a bit of research into it and I'm not sure what to do still. I know (but don't understand) it may have to do with any of the following things (from my research):

BIOS settings

kext files

SATA HDD

nFORCE patch

 

And also I know that even if i get it to work, i still have to wory about drivers, but i'm not worried about that right now.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've been trying to figure this out for months and even my computer tech buddies, and video editor friends can't tell me what to do.

 

Thanks for any help.

[lcsper]

It seems to me we are on the same boat here...

I tried many methods to install OSX Snow Leopard and none of them quite work.

The furthest I got was into Darwin bootloader and got stuck at "Still looking for root device..."

 

However, I was able to install Snow Leopard onto VMWare player and it works like a charm.

I'm using it to create a boot USB as detailed here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=199832.

 

(a good tutorial for installing it into VMWare can be found here: http://prasys.co.cc/2009/11/snow-leopard-b...ware-player-3/)

 

Hopefully I can get it to work, now that I have a working installation of OSX I can use.

 

It looks like we have the same problem, I think we just have the wrong kexts and once we can fix that it will work.

[TheBMan]

Ok, well I can't even get snow leopard to run in vmware, now i've only tried one version, and have others downloading for me to try, but I can't get it to run at all.

And as for booting from USB, I have seen stuff on it, but I don't have an 8GB USB Drive and id really rather be able to boot it off of a disc, but if i have to boot from USB because of my computer specs. that'll be fine, I just need to get a 8GB USB flash drive. All I really need is to install this as a dual boot, and then eventually in the future, reformat the entire HDD with MAC OSX as the sole OS.

 

Also you said "Hopefully I can get it to work, now that I have a working installation of OSX I can use". That may be true, but like with my Jas Mac 10.4.8 disc, it ran and installed in vmware fine, but when i tried to boot off of the disc for a dual boot install, it wouldn't even load to the Darwin screen. All I need, and you too probaly, is just some sorta patch that will find the root device during boot up it sounds like.

[lcsper]

Well I got Snow Leopard to be fully functional in VM Ware using that tutorial I posted a link to. In fact I am posting this from inside it.

 

From the research I've done what seems to be the problem is that we are missing a kext that would allow our HDD to be found and thus we can't install. In your case you are using an nVidia chipset which is why you can't install it since it isn't natively supported. However, as far as I know there is a kext that you can use for your motherboard (I think it is this one here: http://darwin-ata.googlecode.com/files/App...%2810_4%29.zip) that will allow you to install OSX. In my case I have the dreaded P965 chipset which for some reason seems to be a pain to get it to work.

 

You will have to create yourself a boot USB to be able to install it and unfortunately for that you need a working OSX installation. Does your computer support hardware virtualization? If it does I'm certain you will be able to install Snow Leopard on VMWare and that will allow you to create this boot USB easily, just follow this tutorial: http://prasys.co.cc/2009/11/snow-leopard-b...mware-player-3/

I assure you this works, it takes some time to get it working but it does work.

 

Once you got that working then you can start creating a boot USB (there are many tutorials for that - I am using this one as it is very good: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=199832)

 

Also, do you have a retail Snow Leopard DVD? If you don't make sure you get one as you will need it (and besides they are only 30$).

 

Well, good luck to you and be patient, it is pretty annoying to get this to work but I'm sure its possible, just needs a little prodding in the right direction.

[TheBMan]

OK, I think I understand, your not using a modded-patched version of osx like i was, ur using the actual osx snow leopard install disc, then patching it with a special boot loader? Then ur making a bootable USB driver (flash stick) thru osx, in vmware? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Now, at this time I won't be able to get a legit snow leopard disc, but I can get my hands on the regular OSX Leopard Install Discs from a legit iMac, will that work the same? And then could I upgrade to Snow Leopard?

 

Also, could u give me the specific name for the kext u said might work? The link is dead, and I was able to get to the main page with the kext downloads, but I don't know which one I need. And also, is it possible to use and external USB HD (like a 500g one) to make a bootable USB, or do i NEED a flash drive?

 

And also, I will be trying out this tutorial u gave me. I will get back to u after I test it and tell u if it works and then ill probaly need ur help from their finishing it.

Best of luck to you too, thanks again, saved me a buttload of time. I probaly won't get back for a couple of days, but I will be checking this forum and respond to anything new u post.

[lcsper]

Exactly, I am not using a patched version of Mac OSX, I am using the standard retail version of it. What I did was install Snow Leopard inside VM Ware and used that to create a bootloader USB with the kexts I need to make it work on mine. However, as of right now I am still stuck on Still waiting for root device but I think I know what I need to do to fix it. In your case however you need a kext to make it work as you need it to.

 

Since you got a retail version of Leopard I think it should be pretty much the same process to get it to work on VMWare as Snow Leopard. Once you do that you should be free to create this USB bootloader. You DO NOT need a USB stick for that if you have an external USB HD you can use. It should be the same exact process to install it as if you are using a USB stick.

 

The kext you need is AppleNForceATA.kext (I think). Follow that tutorial and with a little luck it shouldn't be too much trouble to make it install. Once you have gotten it installed then you might run into problems, but then again you might not. In any case post whatever happens here as it could help me fix my problem too.

[TheBMan]

Allright I tried it in vmware, it will not load the download, featured on the top of the tutorial page u linked for me. The " VMware image and darwin_snow.is" download is not being recognized by vmware. It shows the file, in the folder where i downloaded it at, as vmdk. file format (for the 10.6 snow virtual machine). Did I miss something?

When I try to load the pre made virtual machine that i downloaded, it says "The file specified is not a virtual disk".

[lcsper]

What version of VMWare are you using? Make sure you are using either VMWare Player 3 or Workstation 7. Also make sure you are trying to load the files in the right places because if you don't then well it won't work. Try to get a Snow Leopard retail DVD since that tutorial is for Snow Leopardl

[TheBMan]

What version of VMWare are you using? Make sure you are using either VMWare Player 3 or Workstation 7. Also make sure you are trying to load the files in the right places because if you don't then well it won't work. Try to get a Snow Leopard retail DVD since that tutorial is for Snow Leopardl

 

Im using workstation 7. As for loading the files in the right place... When I get to the customize screen when making a new virtual machine, it asks if i want to make a new virtual disk or using an existing one, and i click on "chose and existing one", and then browse, and pull the download up. Thats when i get the error.

Also, I'm getting a copy of Snow Leopard retail.

[lcsper]

Hmmm... thats odd. Try downloading the files needed again. Also make sure you are picking the right vmdk file, there are two in the package, it should be the one without the _ before it. Then go to CD/DVD and make it load the darwin_snow.iso thing. That will do the trick. After that its just installing it and running it.

[TheBMan]

Hmmm... thats odd. Try downloading the files needed again. Also make sure you are picking the right vmdk file, there are two in the package, it should be the one without the _ before it. Then go to CD/DVD and make it load the darwin_snow.iso thing. That will do the trick. After that its just installing it and running it.

 

I tried downloading them again, the only 2 files are the vmware virtual machine, with the _ before it and a vmware readme. notepad file. Their isn't a darwin snow iso. thing either.

 

Is their a way I could try making a bootable USB in OS X Tiger? I know I'm tryin to make snow leopard run, but I just installed 10.4.8 Tiger on vmware and don't know if i can make the bootable USB thru leopard or tiger only. Im gonna try it in Tiger and get back to u.

[TheBMan]

Ok, right now I'm currently on step 17 of the guide u sent me, thanks again. I'm stuck though for copying the com.apple.Boot.plist files, I don't know where to get them from. Any help here? Btw how far did you get on the guide?

[RCP]

TheBMan - I see you have not posted on this thread since December. As it turns out I have the exact same hardware as you and am just starting to attempt to install Snow Leopard on my Gateway machine. I was wondering if you resolved your issues? I am planning on trying to create a boot USB from the Snow Leopard DVD and use the AppleNForceATA.kext. I am a little concerned about the video as this machine seems to use a video card (GT 120) that I have not seen anywhere else.

 

Do you have any suggestions? Thanks for any info you can provide.