_loosh_

This is something I've been thinking about doing for quite some time now. My PC/HackIntosh is getting to the stage where I want to upgrade it and I've been wanting to go down this route. Can't get more compatible than genuine! That said, I've found little in the way of info online, every search I do comes up with HackIntosh guides. What would be really useful is to come up with a complete list of all the parts needed, to help others following. It would be great to work out which parts had to be Apple parts and which could be generic or modded/flashed parts from a PC. Where are you getting your Logic Board from in the UK? Also, is the choice of 2008 MacPro down to costs or is there other reasons? I'd be interested to see how you get on. _loosh_

Has anyone got the mic working yet? Not here and I would love it for my webcam! _loosh_

I can add myself to the 10.6.1 update crowd using Software Update - ran it, rebooted, all works as before. YMMV _loosh_

No. I created a separate EFI partition on a second hard drive so I can tinker and change without affecting my OS install. I can also change the OS install, of course, without affecting my bootloader, replace the hard drive, reformat and more. _loosh_

Not brave enough Only just got it working. What does it add that we don't already have? When it says you don't need mkexts in the extras folder, does this mean we can forget the whole kextcache command? This could help anyone having problems... _loosh_

The error you are getting when making the mkext can be fixed by doing this before the kextcahce command: sudo chown -R 0:0 /Volumes/YOUR EFI PARTITION/Extra sudo chmod -R 755 /Volumes/YOUR EFI PARTITION/Extra This should fix this, however I found I had to do this (and the kextcache command) from Snow Leopard (booting in safe mode). It simply wouldn't build correctly otherwise. Not sure why... Check the text that comes up when you boot in verbose mode (-v): look for the kexts in your 'Extra' folder not loading - if they are not loading, your mkext is likely not correct and you must fix this before proceeding. _loosh_

No problem. OK, the first thing I would try is getting your /Extra/Extensions.mkext working as without this I couldn't get the installer to load. WARNING: when I did this, I couldn't boot into Leopard any more when using this drive to boot - if you have another bootloader on your Leopard drive, then you will be fine booting from that into Leopard. Now I can't remember 100% what I did to get this working, but I'll try and outline as much as I can! Delete your Extra/Extensions.mkext (you can do this from Leopard). Can you boot the installer in Safe Mode (-x -x32)? If so, try this and when you are in: load Terminal and type each of the following lines and press return (don't type the numbers!): kextcache -m \ /Volumes/YOUR BOOT DRIVE/Extra/Extensions.mkext \ /Volumes/YOUR BOOT DRIVE/Extra/Extensions Does this rebuild your mkext? If not you may need to do this first: sudo chown -R 0:0 /Volumes/YOUR BOOT DRIVE/Extra/ sudo chmod -R 755 /Volumes/YOUR BOOT DRIVE/Extra/ Now reboot and boot the installer in Verbose mode (-v). Do you see your kexts loading? It's often easier to spot them when they do not load. You should be able to see either of these, if so, does your installer boot now? I also removed System/Library/Extensions/IOATAFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext from the install disc using Leopard (remember to have hidden files turned on for this) but used Snow Leopard to rebuild it. Let me know if this helps, _loosh_

Hi everyone, thanks for all the info in this thread. I am now up and running. My main problem seemed to be that the kexts in my Extra folder were not loading properly. I think this was down to the /Extra/Extensions.mkext not being created properly and possibly the Snow Leopard Extensions.mkext also. This is likely why I could not boot the installer - my Extra/Extensions.mkext was not allowing it to boot the right extensions. As soon as this was fixed it booted first time. I managed to get into Snow Leo in safe mode and rebuilt them from there and all is fine now. Not sure why it didn't work on any of the other attempts. Weird. My advice is to study the verbose mode text and check your kexts are loading... if not, there's your problem. Wish I had spotted this ages ago I have created a separate EFI partition on one of my drives where my bootloader lives so I should not have to go through this again. I can wipe my Snow Leopard partition should anything go wrong in future. One really annoying problem I have is that if I try to restore my Time Machine backup form my 10.5 partition, it causes a KP on reboot. Tried it a few times and it does it each one. Irritating having to copy everything across. Thanks again to everyone on this post, and if I can be of any help just ask away... _loosh_

That's the exact same error message I get on install, same place too. I'm all SATA drives in my machine and one USB drive for install. That's all the storage I have. _loosh_

Thanks for everyone's help, although I still cannot get into boot. When I run the installer it gets to the point where it loads the OS, the screen goes grey and the cursor appears... but then it stays there. If I boot it in safe mode (-x) it gets all the way, the screen goes grey and then the desktop background appears and the language chooser pops up. However, in safe mode, it KPs about 2 minutes in Think this could be down to my Graphics Card? Tried it without the EFI string and got the same problem, but in 1024x768. I'm now at a complete loss. At least Leopard runs flawlessly _loosh_

Wish I could get there So I chmod and chown'ed the System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/ folder, and then ran the kextcahce ... is this what you were recommending? This time, it wrote the mkext but still gave an error about not being able to write to / I can still get it to boot the installer, but as soon as I get to the GUI (where you pick your language) I just get a grey screen with a cursor which stays there as it is until I press a key or click them mouse, where I get the spinning wheel of doom! Anyone else with similar experience? _loosh_

Argh - still having problems with this. So, I've got the partition fine and booting, however when I try to build the Mkexts, I get problems. For the Mkext for the Extra/Extensions folder, I use the CHOWN and CHMOD commands (as I get the same error without that CuriousMac gets. When I do, I get the following on each of the kexts: For the installer, I have ownership problems: /sbin/fsck -fy /sbin/mount -uw / kextcache -v 1 -t -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions/ reboot When I enter the kextcache command from the single user mode of the installer, I get the error: When I boot from the DVD afterward it boots until it gets to what I believe would be the country chooser but the screen is grey with nothing on it other than the cursor. Thanks everyone, getting a lot closer! _loosh_

Thanks for the link. Just checked my ISO and it installs fine on my MacBook, os I'll give this a try tomorrow. Thanks, _loosh_

OK, so I read somewhere to enter this into Terminal: open /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg This does indeed launch the installer and go all the way through but then it fails right at the end! Says it cannot find a file on the new partition, or some such. Has anyone any help? Thanks, _loosh_

Actually, I just checked the MD5 and it says it's correct, tried installing from hard drive - same thing. Weird. Gareth