Friday, February 1, 2008

How to Install a Hackintosh (Tiger and Leopard) on a PC

Your starting point should be like all of you out there you have a PC with some sort of Microsoft Windows OS installed, these are the steps you need to take in order to install hackintosh on your PC: (if you don't know what hackintosh is please read this post)


the end result of this procedure will be a PC with multi-boot windows and tiger and leopard OS, you may want to completely remove windows partition or delete the Tiger install.

  1. plan ahead
  2. download necessary Applications and utilities
  3. gather hardware data
  4. prepare the disk partitions
  5. BIOS options for hackintosh
  6. Install Tiger (mandatory for several install types especially iAtkos)
  7. Install Leopard (iATKOS_v1.0i, Leo4Allv3)
  8. Finalize your installment (and perhaps extra driver install)


1. Plan Ahead

Hardware and Drivers

maybe the first thing you would like to do is to read on leopard hardware compatibility list and make sure you own the appropriate hardware so that the installation process will end up with a bootable and fully functional computer system.

Apple OS (until 2 years ago) could be installed only on MAc computers, since May 2006 Apple migrated its OS to support intel based computers (A.K.A PC) so no Apple hardware is required to install their latest OS Tiger and Leopard as far as i know there are no earlier versions for PC (such as panther and jaguar).

these computer were named with 'i' prefix to indicate they are intel based (iMac for desktops but MacBook/MacBook Pro for laptops since in 1999 the G3 laptop was named iMac so that was already taken).

now that apple support also intel they shipped with the OS a limited list of drivers for intel based hardware (motherboards, cpu, memory, video cards, HD, wifi, bluetooth etc.)

since apple sell their computers with the OS and it is NOT possible to buy the OS and install it on a simple PC (apposed to Microsoft) they need to ship only drivers for hardware they use, sell, and support.

so a driver is a big issue, drivers that were not coded by apple and is not available by the manufacturer or by the open community cannot be supported by Hackintosh!

that is why you need to think reverse if there is no driver available for your hardware buy one that is supported.

to see what hardware is supported and at what level of support (some features/all features/protocol versions/standards etc.) you may go to:


scroll down to the hardware section there is a list of links for each version of OS X.

Note that: Tiger is OS 10.4.x and Leopard is OS 10.5.x
the x stands for minor release version number and depends on the install ISO that you will download but usually if it is supported on 10.5.x it should be supported on any x there is and the same goes for tiger 10.4.x.
another good place to look for is InsanelyMac site that helped me in my move to hackintosh,
you can find success stories and driver in Drivers forum or HCL 10.5.1

Decisions
next there are several decisions you have to take before you start the installation process,

1. if you would like to install Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (OS X 10.5) or both.
my suggestion: Read here

2. if you would like to dual boot with windows or install only Mac OS X on the target computer.
my suggestion: most of you (like me) will already have a windows installed and you will want to keep it (at least for a while until you will be sure it is a move you want to make), also mac has an obvious downside (games) if you settle for simple arcade games or 4-10 games of a greater scale then you are set, but if you are a serious gamer then mac cant handle your needs (yet), so keep your windows partition and enjoy both worlds. that said please note that i couldn't wait for the moment my hackintosh to be complete (almost) so i can kick my windows partition goodbye, when that day came i gladly formated it and shared the space with my hackintosh system.

3. if the installation goes into (an existing disk) into a partition, or to a separated (dedicated to OS X) disk
my suggestion: i used a secondary partition that i didn't have, i used a defrag and partition shrink on a vista disk to make room for the new bright shinny mac. if you have a disk to spare use it, its a better solution, you can format it detach it, identify it better at every stage, you can disconnect the other disk for the install process so you wouldn't make any mistake and if you have a bios that supports boot select then you don't need to be bothered with multi boot issues (if you choose seperated disk and multi boot from bios).

4. what kind of installation disk are you going to use. there are several version of hackintosh for leopard and several for tiger, for instance "kalyway", "iAtkos", "Brazil", "MacDotNub" ...
my suggestion: personally i use iAktos since it is significantly smaller to download and still includes 99% of the original 6.5G installation (that requires dual layer and makes things complicated), also iAktos have a tiger and a leopard version so they match each other without compatibility issues when upgrading from tiger to leopard. also these guys release fast, for instance they were the first to come out with 10.5.2 ppf patch to upgrade their ISO from 10.5.1, that said i read allot on this issue and i found people loving Kalyway. so if i didn't had the iAtkos option, i would use kalyway, that would be my second choice.


2. download necessary Applications and utilities
i cant really give links here but i am willing to give a check list of all needed material.

1. defrag + partition magic (for the windows partition in order to shrink it if you intend to use none existing partition rather then a seperated disk)
2. GNU Gparted or parted cd image. (this is free linux based utility that you need to burn on a cd and boot from in order to create partitions, destroy, move, resize, format, or flag as bootable)
3. uphack iAtkos Tiger 10.4 installation image (or any other hackintosh installation flavor)
4. uphack iAtkos Leopard 10.5 installation image (or any other hackintosh installation flavor)
5. CPUz (a windows utility that evaluates the CPU capabilities and lets you know if you have a SSE3 or not, if your CPU supports it then it is possible to install leopard on your PC)
6. softMCCS.exe (another windows application that will help you extract data of your video card in order to inject the video card kext(Kernel Extension) with it)
7. Property list editor dmg (for editing xml info files (definition part of a kext))

well thats about it.

the rest of the post continue at the post: "Gather Hardware Data".

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Man,
I followed your instructions carefully for the first step. I gathered all the files... and now I donno what to do with them...!

I want a mac on my pc!! please provide the next step of instructions.

E

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,
i am so sorry for not investing in this post, i know that this is the most important part of my blog, i wasnt sure that any one uses my suggestions so i kept delaying the completion, also i was supposed to install my friends a hackintosh and i thought it would be a great opportunity to log my actions for the next posts, but for other reasons it got delayed too,

now that i know there is at least one person that needs the rest, i promise to complete it by the end of the week.

sorry again and thanks for the reply.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm sure there's more than just me reading this.

And while we're at it - do you think installing to a flash memory card (A fast 8gb SD card, the ones used for cameras) will do the trick? this way my OSX will be truly portable...

Thanks,
Waiting for further instructions..

Anonymous said...

Hello again,
Since I'm not the most patient guy in the world, I took the liberty of trying to install the osx on my own.

It seemed pretty easy. I bought an external 120gb maxtor drive, hooked it and installed into it.

when the installation was done, I was asked to reboot, and when the pc came up again, it told me MBR ERROR 3, MBR ERROR 1

Any idea what those mean?

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

i am preaty sure that if you can get your bios to recognize your external card/usb/drive at install time then there is no reason that you cant install on it and boot from it (but making it portable for a different set of hardware thats another story, most hardware will be compatible but you will see some problems in several computers),

regarding your second problem (MBR Error) i think it means that the MBR (Master Boot Record) cant find anything to boot from.

did you have any previouse OS on the computer? did you install any bootloader? (Grub, Lilo...) did you install darwin on the external drive? and did you installed EFI?

sounds to me like most of these answers should be no, or what is darwin. if it so, then i will release my post tomorrow and you can see the screen shots, until then (use the install menu->tools->darwin and follow the instructions)

tell me how it goes.

b.t.w
although i can see people traveling through the blog i get no comments so i guessed no one is using the info.

Anonymous said...

hey, thanks again for your answer.

I did manage to get the bios to recognize the disk, but now all i get after installing and rebooting is a black screen with a blinking white cursor that seems to blink 4ever.

when i installed the last time, i opted for "customize" and checked everything there (darwin, bootloader etc). is that enough? should i install anything else?

I never installed EFI or grub or lilo..

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

blinking cursor can be caused from one reason that i know, that is you didnt flagged your main partition as bootable, try this:

boot from the install cd, press F8 and in the prompt write -s

after boot is done write:
/sbin/mount -fw /

then write:
fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
(0 is for the frist drive but yours should be some other number try 1,2,3,4 etc until you get the right one)

after entering fdisk you can write "print" or p for short, it will display you a table with all the partitions on the mounted disk, part of that data is the partition type, the leopard type is 'HFS+', if you see it that means you are on the right HD and you can flag that partition as bootable, in order to do that you write:
flag 1
if 1 is the partition with HFS+ type
and then you write:

update
write
quit

the restart your computer and you should be in the leopard configuration part (but i really think it is not over yet, you have several things to go through, tell me when you see those things you need help with)

Anonymous said...

Hey Again Shay,
I followed your orders, but when I typed /sbin/mount-fw /
I got:
-o force: option not supported

Stuck again...

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

sorry it shout have said:

/sbin/mount -uw /

also please note that ther is a space between mout and -uw, try it.

Anonymous said...

hey
thanks again.

well, the sbin/mount worked, but now when i type /fdisk -e/dev/rdisk1 i get "no such file or directory"

any clues?

shay.hackintosh said...

try this:

/usr/sbin/fdisk -e /dev/rdisk1

Anonymous said...

Yep, this worked.

So, now, after following your recent instructions, I'm stuck at this boot screen:

"Press any key to enter startup options"

{I click a key, or wait 5 seconds}

then:
"use up/down keys to select startup volume:"

"hd (0,1) 1"

I hit enter, but it just refreshes to this same page
also -v or ? do nothing

What's wrong with me, doctor??

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

did you by any chance named your partition 1? instead of Mac, Apple, or any other name? if so then it means that you have the system installed but as soon as it tries to load it crash and restart.

so acruallt the page is not "refreshed" you should see a full reboot occure, if that is the case then the reason is the CPU, mac is written to a specific set of CPU instructions and not all supported, that is why some times dual code or core2Duo are not fully supported, in order to launch the system anyways you should try entering your BIOS and find an option to disable 2 CPUs and instead use just one core, (post regarding BIOS setup is being prepared as we speak) alternative is to use the cpu=1 option in the darwin boot prompt please refer the post for further explanation. also there is another option in the BIOS that needs to be enabled it is called the Execute Option ROM or something with XD in the name or the help of the BIOS, try it and tell me what next. (p.s. you will also have to enable CPUID limit in the bios)

shay.hackintosh said...

b.t.w
if you are using an AMD CPU then BIOS feature is called "NX" (rather then XD), XD stands for eXecution Disable and NX stands for No eXecution.

so search for these two options and the core 2 duo vs core 2 solo i mentioned, these are the important ones to try first.

Anonymous said...

So,
Do I need to change the partition's name? Does that require a clean install?

Anonymous said...

* Edit:
I Reinstalled, and made te changes to the bios and partition name (I called it Leopard). No luck. Same result. I even tried it on 2 computers, one with Pentium D, and the other with P4 Hyper Thread.

Bummer! :-(

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

sorry to hear about you bad experience with leopard, but i urge you not to give up, its worth the fight,

regarding your problem, there is no need to reinstall since leopard install is not like windows there are no specific driver adjustments or setup during the install process, it is only a copy and generation of some scripts, so bios changes or hardware replacements will not require reinstall (perhaps install of extra kext but you are not there yet)

so, your problem comes from bios or hardware incompatibility, first send here or to my mail screen shots or pictures of your bios setup screens, next try to describe what happens if you use -v in the boot prompt, next describe the hardware list of one of the computer you installed, lastly:
try this: connect the external HD to a computer with windows on it, install an application named MacDrive, it will allow you to see the mac partitions and read, copy files:

after you can access the files find this path:

[leopard]:\private\var\log

or

[leopard]:\var\log

these are the same folders the second is just a shortcut

this folder is filled with all the logs the system generates, zip that folder and send it i will try to help

Anonymous said...

Hey there,
Thanks for the reply and the encouraging spirit.

I got good news! I managed to load Leopard!!! Woohoo!!!

What I did (following a post in insanelyMac Forum) was re-install, not checking the vga drivers. this did the trick, and mac is now running on my pc!!!

And now...new problems... :

1 - No internet, although it seems like the card is recognized, because i am getting an ip address. any clues??

2 - No sound

3 - No driver for video card (this is a problem when i try to load up photobooth for example)

Is there a driver site for osx86?

Thanks so much man
It's Fu@*ing 4:45 AM...Gotta get some sleep...
Good Morning!

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

it is really is a great news,

i have finished writing all the install guide posts as i promised (beside the leopard install, will be finished by the end of the day), in there you can find one of my screenshot displaying what custom part to select to install and what not, maybe i should have just sent them to you,

any way when leopard perform installation it only copy the files, that means that if you see in the log file (/var/log/system.log in single mode) your error and it say exception or error or panic on some kext (lets say ATIRadeon.kext) then the next action in single mode should be to neutralize/deactivate that kext, what in windows we would call uninstall the driver,

in leopard it is pretty simple, all you have to do is to delete,move or rename the kext so it will not be in that folder during boot time, and it will not be loaded (a better candidate will be loaded instead, in this case VESA),

the command for rename (always rename the extension and not just the file name):

sudo mv -R ATIRadeon.kext ATIRadeon.kext.old

you will need to enter your password at this stage and thats it, reboot

well that was for others that will need this answer now lets try and help you, for that i sent another post in order to separate subjects

shay.hackintosh said...

the thing with apple is that it sells their software bundled on a predefined hardware, you cannot buy a PC and the leopard/tiger/panther separately and install it on your PC,

since this is the case then apple know that it doesn't have to create drivers for hardware that they don't sell, therefor only hardware they use can be activated, and all the kext available from apple is already copied into your kext folder found at:

/System/Library/Extensions

so how can you operate your computer anyway?
you need to:

- download hacked drivers (most of them published and available at insanelymac)

- another thing you can do is buy a hardware exactly (or pretty close to) what apple puts into their computers

- you can buy third partyhardware that have Mac OS drivers

- the last option is to tweak with their current drivers

last one is the one i prefer (after no D/L is available)

for instance i have ATIX1600 but apple does not support this card, however they are supporting other ATI cards among them ATIX1000, in insanelymac you can find methods to take the info from your windows hardware (explained in my post gathering data), and put them into the supported ATIX1000 kext, the method was summarized by me on insanelymac and you can find that post here as well, the ATI post regarding other devices such as sound, network etc. its all the same,

network by the way was the only thing i had to resolve by buying a new hardware i tried so many cards that claimed to support apple but eventually didn't so at the end i bought a USB "Edimax EW7318Ug" and i am working since then (since this is a laptop external speakers doesn't work but with headphone it does, all Desktop PCs i installed worked right out of the box...)

you should check for hardware compatibility list on OSX86 wiki (HCL) it has all known hardware that works with leopard (10.5.x) maybe you can find driver and instructions for your hardware, let me know how it goes,

if you can't manage send me list of hardware you need to find i will try finding drivers and links.

Enjoy your new (yet virgin) Mac.

Anonymous said...

Hey
Thanks Again.

I think my osx installation boots with the VESA driver already.

Anyway, where do i type in that sudo command? in the terminal, or at the boot stage?

And one more - most apps require 10.5.2 Installed. I am running 10.5.1. Is it possible to upgrade? Is it difficult?

Thanks Man, You're a lifesaver!

shay.hackintosh said...

sudo (stands for: Super User Do in windows it is: "execute as system") command can be executed in a terminal (found in /applications/utilities folder) or at "single mode",

this is a mode that no GUI is loaded and only terminal prompt (Command Line) is available,

you can enter single mode like this:

first thing in boot (after bios tables) click on F8
you get the darwin prompt, choose the HD and partition you want to load (in your case 'Leopard')
then write -s and press enter (-s stands for 'single mode')
after this your mac write bunch of stuff and gives you a prompt you should follow the last two lines regarding fsck (stands for "File System Check") and then run the mount command to mount the file system (so all files will be available)

then you can ether run the sudo command i gave you or any other unix/mac command you want for instance
cd /
(Change Directory to /)

or

ls
(List files in current directory)

an any point you can use 'help' and press enter to see several commands available to that shell, or
man (stands for manual) followed by a command you want help on for instance:

man mv

it will display all the knowladge parameters, examples and see also section
you can browse it up and down using keyboard arrows or spacebar for page down or 'B' for page up, use / to enter search prompt and type in the pattern you want and enter (from there n for next occurred find) q to quit.....

find more on the net (gives me an idea that maybe a quick unix guide post is needed)

hope you manage

Enjoy.

shay.hackintosh said...

regarding your question about how to upgrade to 10.5.2, i would wait with it a couple of weeks, until you are familiarize with leopard,

its not that hard for some one that has basic knowledge in leopard, mac and Unix,

more then that 10.5.2 doesn't have a lot to offer to a new comer to leopard, but if you still want, there is a post covering all the steps needed here,

the most important thing is DO NOT USE SOFTWARE UPDATE for 10.5.2 upgrade

please first read everything then try it, make sure you understand all the steps or you will turn your OS to brick.

tell me how it goes.

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess it's back to square one...I did try the tutorial to turn 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 and it failed. Now I'm stuck again on the "refreshing page", only now nothing I do seems to overcome this phase. Last time I reinstalled without the VGA Drivers, this time it does not make a difference... I'm 3 days straight on the motherfu@*er. I'm very close to giving up...

Anonymous said...

I sent you an email with the current place I'm stuck at (after making sure the partition is active and tweaking the bios as you instructed)

Do you recommend a different install disc by the way? I am currently using iAktos.

Thanks a lot again.

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

are you saying that after upgrade to 10.5.2 you cant re-install the leopard (at the same steps you did), i guess you forget some step, check that you did all the bios options i wrote in my BIOS setup for hackintosh post.

also please note that at this point all the required posts for "how to install Leopard" are available on the blog, please use the last one and take it step by step it is very elaborated, it has images for every step and it should be very straight forward.

the reboot problem occurres mostly because of Dual core CPU and you need to disable one of them or the other is th NX/XD BIOS option find it in my post

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Sent you some more images of my bios. Actually, now (after reinstalling iaktos 10.5.1) what i get is a reboot, seconds after darwin is trying to load the system. this is the same symptom I got when I did that miserable upgrade to 10.5.2

shay.hackintosh said...

hi,

ok i think i got your problem, your bios is set in the complete opposite way of what i advised,

you need to change the option:
Limit CPUID MaxVal to disabled
Execute Disable Bit to Enabled

do this changes and continue with the installation,

if all goes well, after your done follow step by step with the 10.5.2 upgrade and describe what went wrong (write every thing you do so you can recreate the situation).

also if this is successful then you can install leopard whenever you want because you have the procedure written and the BIOS setup.

tell me how it goes.

Anonymous said...

Hey Shay,
I think 3 Straight days (and nights) of trying fucked my mind up completely.

Get this: It's almost 4 in the afternoon, I'm @ the office, reading posts about this since 11 in the morning instead of working...

Can't wait to get home and try to
apply your input into my beaten PC bios...

Thanks again for helping.
E

 
the menu is from: Milonic DHTML menus