Girlsrockmovie Posted October 29, 2010 Share Posted October 29, 2010 Hello all, Not too long ago, I made the (in retrospect) stupid decision to buy a Hackintosh from a local guy (named Sam in the SF Bay Area) who has gone amscray right around the time it decided to hang on Verifying DMI Pool Data eternally. Since we can't seem to find him or get support, I'm guessing (as we pursue legal channels) we'll need to figure out our way in to at the very least get our files off the computer. It worked great for awhile, but I'm guessing some software update or something threw it off and now we can't get it started. I wish I could even tell you a lot of particulars about the system, but I'm wholly a mac person and don't really know how to find specs when it won't load up. I do know how to get to the BIOS/Cmos screen (pushing delete on startup), but once there don't know how to use to fix things. I know this is a big question, and I may need to just learn how to build the damn thing so I can fix it enough to work with, but I'd love to know where to start. Things I do know: It was built using Kakewalk. Inside is an i7 2.8 ghz quad core chip. 6 GB RAM. NVIDIA video card (don't know which one). A boot drive, and a second 1.5 TB HD. We have a firewire 800 card and that's about all I know... Thanks for any help you can give! Arne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snackole Posted October 29, 2010 Share Posted October 29, 2010 Did you get any boot cds when you bought it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted October 29, 2010 Author Share Posted October 29, 2010 Did you get any boot cds when you bought it? Yes...we got something with handwriting on it that says "p55m-ud2 Boot disc", and a Snow Leopard install DVD. We tried booting up with the boot disc, and it gave us the option to load the snow leopard disc. But, obviously, we don't want to reinstall everything in MAC OS, because at this point we can't even get to the OS...Is there something else I can do with that boot disc? When it loads, it says Kakewalk at the top, and then just gives instructions on how to startup with your mac disc. Also, I noticed while starting up today, before getting to the pool data, a brief screen that looks like a big ad or something that says 333 and some other stuff, and seems to be a description of the motherboard. ARne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snackole Posted October 29, 2010 Share Posted October 29, 2010 Is there an option to load your SL hard drive after booting with boot cd? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted October 29, 2010 Author Share Posted October 29, 2010 Below that, it says Ultra Durable 3 Motherboard... Is there an option to load your SL hard drive after booting with boot cd? Yes there is...but when we do that, it just hangs on the grey apple screen... Arne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snackole Posted October 29, 2010 Share Posted October 29, 2010 Try to load your SL hard drive in safe mode (-x) if you press tab while in the boot cd you should be able to use boot arguments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted October 29, 2010 Author Share Posted October 29, 2010 Try to load your SL hard drive in safe mode (-x) if you press tab while in the boot cd you should be able to use boot arguments. Now that screen is frozen. Hitting tab does nothing, and I can no longer select OS X drive...also, tried putting the SL dvd back in and nothing... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nameci Posted October 29, 2010 Share Posted October 29, 2010 Hackintosh is not for the faint of heart. When you load you boot disc it should take you to chameleon or any bootloader, there you can type, -v -x, -v for verbose, -x for safe mode Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted October 29, 2010 Author Share Posted October 29, 2010 Hackintosh is not for the faint of heart. When you load you boot disc it should take you to chameleon or any bootloader, there you can type, -v -x, -v for verbose, -x for safe mode Yes, we are quickly learning that! Thought we were just buying a nicely amped up system to do renders, but looks like we bought a bit of a hornet's nest. It's alright, I'm brave. Will try, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headspin Posted October 29, 2010 Share Posted October 29, 2010 Excuse me if im wrong but I thought u had to press F8 at startup to get the boot arguments :S with chameleon 5, u just start typing and the boot arguments show up at the bottom... All I can say is if u have a windows cd, u can stick it in go to command prompt when it boots, type diskpart and select disk 0, select the partition with mac osx and set it active... or u can remake the boot disk... I also had problems with the stupid hanging at apple logo and people said wait 20 mins and itll boot but never worked for me so I partitioned my drive, installed osx 10.5.4 ipc on it, made a boot disk and installed 10.6.3 over the ipc partition... No clue how to fix your problem though but thats just a few theories that should help u Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted November 2, 2010 Author Share Posted November 2, 2010 Excuse me if im wrong but I thought u had to press F8 at startup to get the boot arguments :Swith chameleon 5, u just start typing and the boot arguments show up at the bottom... All I can say is if u have a windows cd, u can stick it in go to command prompt when it boots, type diskpart and select disk 0, select the partition with mac osx and set it active... or u can remake the boot disk... I also had problems with the stupid hanging at apple logo and people said wait 20 mins and itll boot but never worked for me so I partitioned my drive, installed osx 10.5.4 ipc on it, made a boot disk and installed 10.6.3 over the ipc partition... No clue how to fix your problem though but thats just a few theories that should help u Ok, it looks like it's just frozen at the Kakewalk boot screen. I can't get it to move from Kakewalk to OSX HD, or type in -x or f8 or anything. I eject the disc and put snow leopard in and hit f5 and nothing happens....I tried tonymacx86's [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] to, and same result. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted November 2, 2010 Author Share Posted November 2, 2010 Ok, it looks like it's just frozen at the Kakewalk boot screen. I can't get it to move from Kakewalk to OSX HD, or type in -x or f8 or anything. I eject the disc and put snow leopard in and hit f5 and nothing happens....I tried tonymacx86's [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] to, and same result. Ok, I figured out the frozen kakewalk...USB keyboard wasn't enabled in bios. Now I'm able to do -x for safe mode, but get a kernel panic. This seemed like a helpful line: "Unable to find driver for this platform: "\ACPI\".\n"@/Extra/builds/xnu/xnu-1456.1.26/iokit/kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1393 Thoughts? Ok, I figured out the frozen kakewalk...USB keyboard wasn't enabled in bios. Now I'm able to do -x for safe mode, but get a kernel panic. This seemed like a helpful line: "Unable to find driver for this platform: "\ACPI\".\n"@/Extra/builds/xnu/xnu-1456.1.26/iokit/kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1393 Thoughts? Sorry, learning slowly here...that was because i had chosen kakewalk disc rather than hard drive. When choosing the hard drive in safe mode it still hangs on the grey apple screen. And trying in Verbose mode just shut the computer off after some code ran across the screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted November 2, 2010 Author Share Posted November 2, 2010 Ok, I figured out the frozen kakewalk...USB keyboard wasn't enabled in bios. Now I'm able to do -x for safe mode, but get a kernel panic. This seemed like a helpful line: "Unable to find driver for this platform: "\ACPI\".\n"@/Extra/builds/xnu/xnu-1456.1.26/iokit/kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1393 Thoughts? Sorry, learning slowly here...that was because i had chosen kakewalk disc rather than hard drive. When choosing the hard drive in safe mode it still hangs on the grey apple screen. And trying in Verbose mode just shut the computer off after some code ran across the screen. Just gonna keep updating here until someone sees a way to help! So, I've tried to reinstall Snow Leopard using Kakewalk and the instructions on their site, and it stopped at the end and said Snow Leopard couldn't be fully installed because it couldn't be restarted from the disc. And now when I try to start the snow leopard boot drive from the bootloader, the grey apple screen comes up for a second and the computer turns off. Grr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Girlsrockmovie Posted November 2, 2010 Author Share Posted November 2, 2010 Just gonna keep updating here until someone sees a way to help! So, I've tried to reinstall Snow Leopard using Kakewalk and the instructions on their site, and it stopped at the end and said Snow Leopard couldn't be fully installed because it couldn't be restarted from the disc. And now when I try to start the snow leopard boot drive from the bootloader, the grey apple screen comes up for a second and the computer turns off. Grr. Full text of what happens when it doesn't install, at the end of the installation: Install Failed Mac Os X could not be installed on your computer. The installer could not start up the computer from the disk OSstart. Try selecting your disk using the startup disk utility. Click Restart to restart you computer and try installing again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headspin Posted November 3, 2010 Share Posted November 3, 2010 Have u tried the iPC 10.5.6 PPF5 Final? Try that and see if it works... if it does then u can insert a retail cd, restore it to a usb and change the OSinstall.mpkg to a modified one for MBR booting... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hangten Posted November 3, 2010 Share Posted November 3, 2010 Have u tried the iPC 10.5.6 PPF5 Final? Try that and see if it works... if it does then u can insert a retail cd, restore it to a usb and change the OSinstall.mpkg to a modified one for MBR booting... You don't have kernel support for the p55 of i7 until SL 10.6.3 @Girlsrockmovie If you want to get the data out you can use Transmac or Mac drive while your SL HDD is connected to a Windows machine and get @ your files so you can at least check if your E/E directory contains the proper kext. Its not difficult you can simply use a USB to SATA dongle if need be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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