[Guides]NEC(Lenovo) Lavie Z HZ550 hackintosh with UEFI only

[y010204025]

Update： on February 13, 2022, support to the latest macOS 12.2.1, update OpenCore and drivers to the latest, and solve the problem of logging in to the screen, wifi, and sound.

 

Update: On October 24, 2020, using clover to solve the macOS11 beta10 boot problem, you can now enjoy macOS11beta10, and the compatibility of subsequent versions is not guaranteed.
HIDPI uses a modified version. You can directly execute the hidpi script to get a better experience. If you lose the repair, it is not within the scope of my support.
Support upgrades without destroying the integrity of the original image.
There seems to be a problem with the shortcut keys. If you can help solve it, thank you for your contribution.

 

Perhaps it was the first NEC (Lenovo) Lavie Z HZ550 to install hackintosh. I hope more people who like Lavie Z series can experience Hackintosh at HZ550. She is really great.

 

I found HZ550 & HZ750 on the Chinese website, which is amazing. It weighs only 790g, 13.3 inches, and the standard 2k screen, which is too attractive to me. I am a Hackintosh enthusiast. I think HZ550 or HZ750 with MacOS is the best Unfortunately, the Lavie Z series is not listed in China, only exists in the Japanese and American markets, and in the Japanese market is the NEC brand, while the American market uses the Lenovo logo.

 

Fortunately, I got an HZ550 from Taobao. Yes, not HZ750. In comparison, HZ750 has more touch screens and 360 ° flip. These are hard to attract me. More importantly, HZ750 is about 200g heavier than HZ550 That's why I chose HZ550. Well, because he is only 2,000 RMB.

 

The specific introduction can refer to NEC Japan official website:http://nec-lavie.jp/products/hz13b/

 

The HZ550 hardware list I obtained:

                              
                 -/+:.          ningnan@ningnandeMacBook-Air
                :++++.          OS: 64bit Mac OS X 10.15.5 19F96
               /+++/.           Kernel: x86_64 Darwin 19.5.0
       .:-::- .+/:-``.::-       Uptime: 19m
    .:/++++++/::::/++++++/:`    Packages: 1
  .:///////////////////////:`   Shell: zsh 5.7.1
  ////////////////////////`     Resolution: 3840x2160
 -+++++++++++++++++++++++`      DE: Aqua
 /++++++++++++++++++++++/       WM: Quartz Compositor
 /sssssssssssssssssssssss.      WM Theme: Blue (Dark)
 :ssssssssssssssssssssssss-     Disk: 11G / 108G (12%)
  osssssssssssssssssssssssso/`  CPU: Intel Core i7-5500U @ 2.40GHz
  `syyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy+`  GPU: Intel Iris Graphics 6100
   `ossssssssssssssssssssss/    RAM: 4376MiB / 8192MiB
     :ooooooooooooooooooo+.    
      `:+oo+/:-..-:/+o+/-     

 

 

Advantages: small size, light weight, 2K screen, 8G memory, 512g SSD, keyboard feels good, and wireless network card can be replaced, which is unimaginable in today's thin and light books.
Disadvantages: The sound is small, almost the same as the mosquitoes.

 

Ok, bragging is over!
In order to use the wireless network, I changed the wireless network card from inter 7265 to BCM94352ZAE. Some people called it DW1560. It is uncomfortable that in China, this card and his elder brother DW1830 were hyped to a high price of 480RMB. of. Fortunately, I bought it early, and this card is also very stable under win10, and there is no high delay and outage. The hard disk should be PM951 of Samsung, not PM981, which is lucky.

 

Before installing Hackintosh:

You need to prepare a 16G U disk, SanDisk is not a rough choice for making MacOS installation disk, I used the latest MacOS Catalina 10.15.5, got config.plist from Rehabman, and put together an EFI, the latest version of clover and kext drivers. Thanks to Rehabman and the developers of the Black Apple community. I do n’t like that OC team very much.
Make an installation disk: If you have a computer running MacOS, you can use the command line to make it, if you do n’t have a computer running MacOS, you can try VMware, I know that the insanelymac forum allows discussion, or use ether to write the image to U disk, use the EFI I provided to boot into the installation process.

 

BIOS setting:

Press F12 at boot to enter the BIOS settings, Tab switches to "Security-Secure boot", set to "DISable", this is what we need, and switch to "Boot -Boot devices", set the U disk as the first boot item You can directly enter the clover guide interface, please follow it for google it.

It is worth noting that the remaining space of your EFI partition needs to be greater than 200M, otherwise, the disk format will be wrong. In addition, the format partition format is APFS, do not choose to encrypt, your data is not valuable, at least you must have this awareness of Hackintosh, the file safe is also the same, do not enable, do not use to find your mac, otherwise, change the machine, OK .

 

Fortunately, no additional ssdt patch is required. All the patch functions are implemented through clover. The flat Apple is turned on. This is to solve the problem of the flower screen. You can find a solution yourself.
Experience your black apple, this will bring a better experience than MacBook Pro.

 

 

OC-078.zip

Edited February 13, 2022 by y010204025

[Borgy Manotoy]

I have the same laptop and I want to try to make it run on catalina.

 

My problem is that I do not have any macbook or any mac machine here to create the installation disk.

 

Is there a way to create it on windows only? I tried running vmware + mac ... but it was super slow.. that is why I ask if there are other tools on windows that I could use to create the installation disk.

 

how is your battery running on catalina? is it the same? or it consumes battery faster on catalina? how about the temperatures? comparing it when running on windows 10

 

Thanks!

[y010204025]

Hey, I can understand your confusion. This is how I tried. You need a mirror that can be used for installation, and you can get it here. Then use etcher or transmac to write to the U disk, so you will get an installation disk with clover boot. It is recommended to delete the EFI directory in the installation disk and move to the EFI provided by me. You will be able to or a USB flash drive that can be booted/installed on HZ550.
step:
1. Make and install U disk, replace EFI boot
2. Make a winPE maintenance disk, which is helpful for you to perform some other operations, including modifying the disk partition and the ESP partition size of the notebook hard disk (500M is recommended, and the minimum is not less than 200M)
3. Modify the BIOS settings, disable fast startup, and select UEFI boot mode.
4. Shut down, insert winPE maintenance U disk, enter winPE, modify what you need to modify
5. Using bootice, add clover boot item in UEFI series, locate the location of cloverx64.efi, then rename the name of boot item to clover, and move it to the first boot item.
6. Shut down, insert the macOS installation U disk, boot, if you are lucky, you will see a brand new interface, and then you can install normally.
Tip: Prepare 2 U disks, one for making macOS boot disk and the other for making winPE maintenance U disk. The remaining space of the hard disk ESP partition cannot be less than 200M, otherwise you will not be able to format the hard disk partition as HFS before installation or apfs format. Finally, don't choose encryption, don't choose anytime.
Maybe you have difficulty reading Chinese. This is the same as when I read English. On blog.daliansky.net, there are some articles similar to insanelymac, you can read them. skepe:y010204025@hotmail.com, you can communicate with me if necessary.

[Borgy Manotoy]

Hi,

 

Sorry if I can't really understand some steps... I am pretty new with Hackintosh. A friend lend me a hackintosh running on catalina but he is not the one who installed it so I cannot ask him.

 

1. Downloaded catalina from app store.

2. Formatted the USB (Sandisk 128GB - I have no other usb drive here): Opened `DiskUtility` > Erase (Format: Mac OS Extended, Scheme: GUID Partition Map)

3. Run this in Terminal: sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USB /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app --nointeraction

4. Downloaded Clover Configurator

   a. Tools > Mount EFI

   b. On `EFI Partitions`, click `Mount Partition` on the USB drive

   c. On the USB drive, click `Open Partition` and it will open in Finder

5. Downloaded your `EFI_HZ550.zip`, and Extracted it. I found two folders `BOOT` and `CLOVER`

6. Replaced the EFI folder on the USB installer with the downloaded EFI from y010204025

7. Restarted my lavie and go to BIOS to disable secured boot, and set boot priority to USB disk. Then Restart lavie

8. When it boots from USB, select boot from USB to install catalina (left side choice)

9. It shows something like when booting in recovery mode, do not install catalina yet... Open disk utility to erase the partition on the disk where you will install catalina.

10. Before erasing the main disk, Select Format as `Mac Journaled` and Scheme `GUID Partition Map`. Then click `Erase`

11. After erasing the main disk, its time to install catalina on the main disk. Proceed with the installation process/steps. It may restart a couple of times, when it do... during booting on USB... select the option on the right side (boot mac on disk... not on usb installer).

 

Issues I encountered AFTER installing catalina on my lavie:

1. Whenever my lavie restarts, before showing the apple loading logo... it first show the clover boot UI and you have to press enter first to select boot mac from HDD. It would be great to just see the apple logo loading directly instead of presenting the clover boot page for a few seconds before the apple loading logo.

   Solution: None as of the moment 

2. Wifi and Bluetooth not working:

   Solution: I need to change the wifi card to an apple compatible card like DW1560, hopefully it will be supported by apple and no driver/kext will be needed (just a guess)

3. USB ports works selectively depending on the device plugged in: I tried plugging in my wireless mouse (2.4Ghz) and it cannot connect via USB dongle, Same with my USB mech keyboard (wired and wireless BT)... it does not connect also. But when I plugin my USB -> Ethernet which is from apple.. it works like charm. I am using this to connect to LAN (Internet). Also, I connect a generic wired mouse via USB and it also worked.

   Solution: Seems not all USB devices can be used with mac.

4. Track/touch pad basic functionality only: Only left and right click and mouse pointer functions on my track/touch pad. No gestures yet, unlike when running on windows where I can do multi fingers gestures.

   Solution: Download VoodooI2C, extract and copy VoodooI2C.kext and VoodooI2CELAN.kext to (mac partition) EFI > CLOVER > kexts > Other. Then restart. You should be able to use simple gestures.

5. Display resolution quality: The current resolution is 1440p which displays the texts and icons very small. I need to lower the resolution to make the text readable. In windows, I can set the resolution to 1440p but set the quality to either 150% to 200% and the texts will be readable and images are more sharp (nice to look at). In catalina, I cannot find the settings for display quality 100%-200%... I can only change the resolution.

   Solution: Select appropriate scale/resolution in Settings > Displays > Display. This is not the best solution but with this you can set/change the resolution.

 

Update: DW1560 I bought seems not compatible with Lenovo, what is the specific wifi card you use y010204025? I just installed my DW1560 on the other catalina hackintosh machine and it works... but not on my lavie.

Problem is that I do not know how to install the wifi antenna for DW1560 in a SFF/Mini PC .. seems there is no improvement in the Wifi/BT hahaha.

 

 

Thanks y010204025!

 

Edited September 23, 2020 by Borgy Manotoy

[y010204025]

HIDPI uses a modified version. You can directly execute the hidpi script to get a better experience. If you lose the repair, it is not within the scope of my support.
Support upgrades without destroying the integrity of the original image.

one-key-hidpi_xizih.zip