Disable auto-loading of kexts?

[TIMMAYOSX]

Hello,

 

I have an Alienware m15x (not the dell version, but rather the original)

GF 8800M 512, 4GB Ram, Core 2 Extreme 2.8GB, et'all.

 

Anyhow, the system works great with Snow Leopard (via retail DVD and MyHack).

 

My system is a little weird in that the FireWire driver causes an immediate KP with Snow Leopard, and Leopard > 10.5.7. What I need to do to install is simply delete the FireWireFamily.kext from the install DVD, and my own system after the install which allows it to work great.

 

My only problem is a software update (say, to 10.6.7) will put this blasted extension back in mid-install, and activate it causing a KP. This requires me to do a time machine restore.

 

Is there any way to prevent the system from auto-loading this damn extension during the update, or perhaps a way to black list it, or create a dummy extension to put in it's place so the original will not load any longer?

 

As far as my system goes, everything in it is stock OSX (kernel, etc. with the exception of a few extras such as FakeSMC), and have fully QE, etc.. only this one firewire issue is troubling, and cannot be disabled in the BIOS.

 

Thanks again.

[TIMMAYOSX]

Hmm.. never dealt with dsdt before. Time to start reading I think.

 

Thanks for the tip.

 

Use a DSDT and delete the FW device

[TIMMAYOSX]

Well, I removed it from the DSDT (FWHD), and verified that it is no longer listed in IORegistryExplorer, however it is still in lspci, and also still detected by the kext along with the usual KP.

 

Another idea. I have the MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.7.pkg downloaded from SoftwareUpdate (along with the other companion .pkg files). Maybe it is possible to crack open the .pkg file and remove the FW device from there.. The only problem, is that it is a binary file and not the usual, easy to manipulate directory. Is there any tool available that can crack open these Installer .pkg files?

 

Hmm.. never dealt with dsdt before. Time to start reading I think.

 

Thanks for the tip.

[TIMMAYOSX]

Thank you for the link, I will check it out.

 

For the short term however, I have managed to install the 10.6.7 Combo Update now, using a somewhat hackish method using the terminal.

 

All I did was, in terminal

sudo -s
while [ 1 ]; do rm -rf /System/Local/Extensions/IOFireWireFamily.kext; done

 

I run this just before launching the Combo Update, and it finished installing without issues (at long last).

 

At the tail end of the update, my laptop just powered off unexpectedly, however that did not seem to affect the final result, and the system is working flawlessly now (minus my Intel Pro ABGN wifi card, but I have a cheap Ralink 150N 11n card that works great).

 

Update: The laptop powered off due to SleepEnabler being installed, and is incompatible with 10.6.7.. Delete before the upgrade, and then update to the latest SleepEnabler version that supports 10.6.7 and all is good now.

 

Thanks again.