Installing SL AFTER Windows...

[Ellis]

I posted a topic similar to this one a few months ago but I can't find anywhere with my created threads, so I have lost it

 

Basically, I currently have Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installed on a 500GB SATAII drive, and I would like to install Snow Leopard on a separate 120GB IDE drive, which I have installed and formatted in Windows.

 

I've tried to do as much research as possible to avoid asking you people too many questions

What I have worked out so far (please say if anything is wrong):

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 OCed to 2.6GHz - it is a Core 2 Duo processor which supports SSE3 so it will definitely work.

RAM: 4GB DDR2 @ 800MHz - I don't see why there should be any compatibility issues here.

Hard drive: is it possible to use IDE drives? Macs obviously used to use them, but current Macs don't, so I'm not sure.

GFX card: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB - I should be able to get this working by using an EFI string and OS X Tools according to this page.

Audio: Realtek ALC888 - I plan to follow this guide, or use VoodooHDA.

Motherboard: MSI MS-7392, P31 chipset. As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have any problems here.

Network: Tenda W311U (b, g, n) - I have downloaded the Mac drivers from the manufacturer's site, so this should work.

 

So basically, the only problems I am really left with are whether it will work OK with my IDE drive and how to actually go about installing it, because I'm not going to re-install Windows. I would prefer to use the retail disc to install it (is this a "vanilla" install?) but if it's easier and better to use a modified version then I will do that. I'm not really sure of the procedures here though. As far as I can make out, I can't just boot from the retail disc; I will need to use a bootloader of some kind. Once OS X is installed, will it be possible just to have my computer come up with the OS selection screen and have a choice between OS X and Windows? That would be the best possible outcome. One last thing; will it run fine in 64-bit mode? If no, then how do I install / boot it in 32-bit mode?

 

Thanks for reading all of that

[Kasakka]

SATA would be better for the drive. Not sure if IDE works.

 

Yes, you can have a OS selection screen. It's one of the features of the Chameleon bootloader, you simply have to set your BIOS to check for the OSX hard drive first, then you can boot into Windows, although it seems sleep doesn't work in Windows if booted from the menu (will apparently be fixed in Chameleon RC5, whenever it comes out) so you may want to check if your motherboard has a built in boot device choice feature accessible by some key at the BIOS screens.

By default Snow Leopard runs in 32-bit mode, but you can easily set 64-bit mode in com.apple.boot.plist (google for instructions). Will work with your CPU.

 

There are several guides on these forums for building a USB stick with Snow Leopard and the required boot loader (Chameleon) and needed extra kernel extensions (kexts).

[Ellis]

SATA would be better for the drive. Not sure if IDE works.

 

Yes, you can have a OS selection screen. It's one of the features of the Chameleon bootloader, you simply have to set your BIOS to check for the OSX hard drive first, then you can boot into Windows, although it seems sleep doesn't work in Windows if booted from the menu (will apparently be fixed in Chameleon RC5, whenever it comes out) so you may want to check if your motherboard has a built in boot device choice feature accessible by some key at the BIOS screens.

By default Snow Leopard runs in 32-bit mode, but you can easily set 64-bit mode in com.apple.boot.plist (google for instructions). Will work with your CPU.

 

There are several guides on these forums for building a USB stick with Snow Leopard and the required boot loader (Chameleon) and needed extra kernel extensions (kexts).

 

Is there any way of using the standard Windows OS selection screen? I've seen videos of people using chameleon etc. and they mostly seemed to take a while to load the bootloader, apart from

one, but I'm not sure which bootloader that actually is. I don't mind using it in 32-bit mode; OS X doesn't appear to use as much memory as Windows 7 anyway.

So I wouldn't be able to use sleep? Damn, I use it all the time.

Let's say that I could use an IDE drive or that I buy a new SATA drive. I use a bootloader disc to boot from the Snow Leopard disc and then after Snow Leopard is installed, I install the bootloader to the drive so that I don't have to put in the disc every time. Then, I set my BIOS to boot from the Snow Leopard drive and it will display the OS selection screen, right?

I don't think my motherboard does allow you to press a key and choose your boot device; I think you have to go into the BIOS each time and change it there

[Ellis]

Hi. I just wanted to thank everyone for their help; I now have a dream setup!

 

I decided to go ahead with the install and hope for the best. I used Empire EFI to boot the disc and then installed MyHack after SL installed. I didn't like the MyHack boot screen so I got rid of it and I now have the default Chameleon theme, which is good. I used VoodooHDA, OSX86 Tools and the manufacturer's Wi-Fi drivers. All working fine there - I have all of the visual effects enabled and my full 1680 x 1050 resolution as well as working audio and wireless internet.

 

There are, however, a couple of small niggles:

 

How do I set Chameleon not to boot OS X by default? I can choose my Windows NTFS drive by interrupting the startup but I would like to make it so that it just sits at the OS selection screen until I do anything.

How do I upgrade Chameleon RC3 to RC4? I just think that I might as well have the latest version

Does anyone know how to change the keyboard so that the "@" symbol is in the right place? I am British and so the @ and the " are the opposite way to the US keyboards. I have set the keyboard to British but the symbols are still the wrong way round.

 

Having said that, the problems are only miniscule considering what I am actually doing here, so again thanks for your help and I am overall incredibly pleased with my Snow Leopard setup

[saivert]

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14495/ukelele

 

Ukelele lets you edit your keyboard map.

I use it on my Hackintosh to get normal PC layout instead of having the @ key where I expect to find ' and * on a Norwegian PC-105 layout keyboard.

Also had to use it to get back | character which seems to be missing here when you are not using a real Mac keyboard.

[Fogaz]

I have a similar question, only in Amd-based computer. I have one SATA and it has Windows Xp in it, and im planning to install SL on my other SATA-drive.

 

So here's the questions:

1: Can i unplug the first SATA (with XP in) and install Snow Leopard on the second one, and after installation put the Xp-SATA as master and SL-SATA as slave?

 

2: I'm pretty much a noob in these OS X-things, so which distribution should i use? Or can someone put a link to some GOOD step-by-step instructions?

 

Sorry if there's something weird in my english, i'm from Finland so my english isn't so good...

[Ellis]

Basically there is no real need to unplug your Windows drive.

 

You will need to either buy or download Snow Leopard (the proper retail version). It is £23.99 on Amazon and I think it is $29 in the US.

 

1. Download Empire EFI for your CPU: http://prasys.co.cc/2010/01/empire-efi-v-1-085-is-out/

2. Burn it to a disk.

3. Set your BIOS to boot from your disk drive.

4. Insert the Empire EFI CD and wait for it to load.

5. Once you get to the boot screen, eject the disk, insert the Snow Leopard disk and press F5 after about 10 seconds or so.

6. Select the Mac OS X Install Disk.

7. Install SL.

8. Once you have rebooted, you will need to install Chameleon RC4 and follow the instructions here: http://www.taranfx.com/download-install-chameleon-bootloader

MAKE SURE YOU INSTALL IT TO THE CORRECT DRIVE!!! Type "diskutil list" into Terminal to find out which drive you need to install it on (hopefully it will make sense once you are there)

9. Restart your computer and set it to boot from the drive which you installed Snow Leopard on.

10. It will then load up Chameleon which will recognize both the OS X drive and the Windows drive, and allow you to boot from either one.

 

Now you can install any drivers that you want to in order to get OS X working properly.