Preface:

 

This guide is not intended as an all-inclusive how-to for running snow leopard on your PC. It is intended as a simplified method which focuses on how to get up and running with Snow Leopard quickly and easily utilizing the myHack application and will cover basic concepts including but not limited to hardware selection, kexts, permissions, etc in simplest terms. I will continue to update this guide and my ultimate goal is to provide more detailed and complete information to help you turn your working myHack foundation into a flawless hackintosh.

This guide is by no means finished, consider this an active work in progress.

Basic Requirements:

 

- myHack 2.0 RC4.1 -

For Snow Leopard: OS X 10.6 or 10.6.3 “Snow Leopard” Retail DVD or a dmg image of it.

For Lion: Install OS X Lion.app or InstallESD.dmg from the Install OS X Lion.app.

USB External Hard Drive or Flash Drive w/ at least 8GB of space.

 

Note: An internal drive can be used as well but keep in mind any drive you use will have the chameleon bootloader installed on it – and it is best to use a drive which is physically independent of your actual OS X installation. In the event that something goes horribly wrong with your actual OS X installation the 10.6/10.7 installer you have prepared will prove to be an invaluable tool with which you can repair your OS X installation and get it working again.

A system capable of running a “vanilla” OS X kernel… Including but not limited to the following:

• -Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core i3*[1], Core i5*[2], Core i7
• -Motherboard: LGA 775/1155*[2]/1366 Intel chipset with ICHx southbridge
• -At least 2GB of memory (4GB or more recommended).
• -USB Keyboard and Mouse. (Apple keyboard recommended)
• -Most Nvidia 8xxx, 9xxx or 2xx “GT/GTX” series graphics cards*[3].
• -Most ATI HD 5xxx/6xxx series graphics cards*[4].
• -At least 40GB of internal hard disk space attached via SATA running in AHCI mode.

You will also need access to a system that is currently running OS X 10.5 or above (Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion) to prepare your USB installation device.

*[1] Core i3 processors are only supported by the vanilla kernel after 0S X 10.6.5.

*[2] LGA 1155 chipsets (P55 for example) and Core i5 processors are only supported by the vanilla kernel after OS X 10.6.2.

*[3] Some people with 8xxx/9xxx cards still have issues using Graphics Enabler, particularly users on “GTS” models of these cards.

*[4] Most reference design HD 5xxx and 6xxxx (except 69xx) ATI graphics cards will work oob on Lion and Snow Leopard but on Snow Leopard you will need to install the ATI kexts from the 10.6.7 MBP update. There are a few very minor issues with framebuffers that will prevent some applications like DVD player, geekbench, steam, etc, from working – these minor issues can be resolved with a patch to your dsdt. If your graphics does NOT work out of the box the best resource for more information on ATI graphics and “Fermi” based Nvidia graphics  on OS X is netkas’ blog.

Section 1 : Basic Installation Instructions

 

Step 1 – Create OS X 10.6 or 10.7 Installer

 

If you haven’t already done so, download the myHack dmg. Mount it and drag the myHack.app to /Applications or your desktop – it can not be run from the dmg’s read-only filesystem.

Insure that you have inserted your internal/external stick/drive that you will be creating the OS X installer on and that it has a partition of at least 8GB in size on it that you will use as the target partition in the next step.

If this is a Snow Leopard installer creation insure that you have inserted the OS X 10.6 retail DVD or mounted the dmg image of it prior to proceeding.

If this is a Lion installer creation insure that you have downloaded the Install OS X Lion.app from the app store or have it or the InstallESD.dmg from it somewhere on your system.

Run the myHack.app, select your install type – Create OS X 10.7 Install Disk or Create OS X 10.6 Install Disk for Lion or Snow Leopard respectively.

myHack will ask you to enter your administrative password – note if the user account you are running myHack under does not have “sudo” permission you will need to logout and run again from an authorized administrative account.

Select the target volume to run myhack on… This should be the location of the USB stick or whatever internal/external device you want to create the installer on.

myHack will now attempt to locate the installation source. If this is for a Snow Leopard installer it will look for /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD – if this is for Lion Installer it will prompt you if you want to have myHack attempt to locate it for you or browse manually – it will accept the location of Install OS X Lion.app or InstallESD.dmg.

myHack will then prompt you to warn you that all data on the target you selected will be erased. Once you press ok it will ERASE all data on the target volume you selected and copy the files to it.

Note: If the file copy progress appears to be stalled, don’t worry, the progress bar can only calculate based on files completely transferred – large files may take a while to completely transfer to the destination prior to the progress being reported. Also if it appears to be transferring slowly, remember that the speed of transfers will be limited only by the speed of the device – some USB sticks are very slow.

After all files have been transferred it will automatically install chameleon, utilities, OSInstall MOD, etc. It will however prompt you if you would like to install the generic Extra & Extensions bundled with myHack or if you would like to supply your own. This is particularly useful if you already have a finely tuned OS X installation, you can simply provide the Extra of your choosing and it will migrate it properly for you. The generic bundle will boot most vanilla systems perfectly, but does NOT contain any extensions for audio/ps2/acpi/ata/etc or dangerous DSDT “auto patchers”.

That is it, assuming you followed the steps correctly (the app is rather foolproof) you may now reboot, select the USB stick at your bios boot prompt, and boot to your installer!

Wasn’t that easy?

Step 2 – BIOS Setup

 

Some information will be posted here eventually…

Step 3 – Installation

 

Assuming everything is configured properly for your system you should be able to boot to your USB device and be greeted by the OS X installer.

Go ahead and run a normal install however you like. NOTE: If you can not select your drives or you see nothing but the USB drive, go into your bios and ensure that your SATA device is running in AHCI mode. Alternatively you can try to install the IOATAFamily.kext as it will allow many systems to access SATA (and even some PATA) devices without the need for AHCI but it is not recommended.

After installation completes go ahead and reboot the system. Note: If you get an installation failed message after install it is safe to ignore it, this is a common but inconsistent error. It happens when the installer can not “bless” the targeted partition and it believes your system will not be bootable.

Step 4 – First Boot

 

When you reboot again boot to the USB (you are going to use the chameleon bootloader and kexts on your USB device that worked to load the installer, to load your freshly installed OS X system). At the boot prompt select the internal hard drive partition that you installed Snow Leopard on and boot it.

Go ahead and go through the initial configuration, I tend to advise against using migration assistant – especially if you are migrating from a hacked leopard installation, unless you are absolutely certain it was a clean retail install. There are a number of reasons for this that I may write about later.

Step 5 – Post Install

 

After you make it to your desktop open up finder, browse to the USB device and locate the myHack app (it will be copied automatically to the root of the install device during the initial preparation described in “Step 1?). Run the myHack app, this time choose the “Install Chameleon + Extra” option and set the target to “/”. It will install chameleon and prompt you for the Extra installation just as it did in step one but since there are no large files to copy it will be done within a couple minutes at most.

You should now be ready to reboot your system without the USB installer attached.

Unmount/Eject the USB drive and reboot the system with the internal drive.

Congratulations! If all went well you now have a functional OS X operating system running on your system!

If you haven’t done so already you should now get to work on creating a patched dsdt, and further fine tuning your system so that it runs like a well oiled machine.  I suggest you visit the myHack forum for additional information and help from others in the community.

Section 2: Software Updates

 

Generally speaking with vanilla OS X installs you can use software update without much concern. The updates you should avoid to install through software update are the “10.X.x Updates” which will contain a full revision # (10.6.1, 10.6.2, etc). I will make a post in the FAQ section of the forum with what we know about each software update as it becomes available and what benefits/potential problems will result from installing it. It is important that you do not install these updates until you have researched and ensured your system will not be negatively impacted by them.

First a few general notes that are true of all updates:

 

Always backup your system prior to running an update, if you don’t want to create a complete system backup at the very minimum backup all the files in /System/Library/Extensions and /Extra to your USB Installer or other convenient location and ensure that the USB Installer is functioning correctly (it boots and you can use the terminal on it) prior to running the update. This is critical in case something goes wrong, a bootable installer will enable you to fix the problem from the installer’s terminal app (available under the utilities menu) without having to completely format and reinstall your OS or use a separate machine/operating system to attempt to repair it.

I’ve seen some confusion come up with this issue so I am going to state it here: I recommend waiting at least 10 minutes before rebooting after applying any  combo updates, this gives kextd time to finish it’s caching process. Alternatively you may also run myFix prior to rebooting, it will tell you when kextcache has finished. If you do not wait, it may take 10-15 minutes to boot, this is “normal”. If your stuck on the boot screen after an update, take a walk, be patient, it may take a while for your login prompt to work – and hitting the reset button will only cause you to have to let this process run all over again until you finally wait the 10-15 minutes for kextd to do it’s thing. Again this is due to issues that only a *few* people will see with kextd under snow leopard. Note: I have never seen this issue on lion, lion’s kernelcache system works differently.

After you have successfully booted  and logged into a freshly updated system, wait a few minutes for the system to finish background processes and become idle, then run myFix. Running myFix will ensure that everything is tuned properly and that the system caches are happy. This may not be necessary, but if you have noticed after a few boots that it is still taking “longer than normal” to boot and get to the login screen that is a sign that something isn’t right in your kextd/kextcache/kernelcache/system cache. Running myFix should correct it.

If you get a kernel panic during reboot, the first thing you should try is booting to your USB Installer, opening the terminal and running myFix, sometimes kextd doesn’t properly rebuild your system caches after an update. If you still receive a kernel panic on reboot, boot in -v (verbose) mode and see if you can narrow it down to a suspect kext, the SleepEnabler.kext in /E/E has been a notorious source of these issues after a kernel update. If you can figure out the kext that is causing the problem you can move it out of /S/L/E or /E/E and then run myFix from the USB Installer – this will prevent it from loading. If that still doesn’t work you may need to replace the suspected kext with a newer or older version of it from a fresh download or a backup you have.

If you follow these few general notes you should seldom have a problem, and even if you do, you should be able to fix it quickly and easily.

Section 3: Credits

 

myHack was made possible by:

- The chameleon bootloader.

- FakeSMC

OSInstall MOD for 10.6 was made by myself, the 10.6.3 and 10.7 versions were contributed by nawcom.

EvOreboot.kext & OS X port of lspci created by Evosx86 Team.

Graphical front end development was aided by the use of Platypus and CocoaDialog

I would also like to personally thank the following people for helping to make this possible and for all the help they have given to myself and others:

(in alphabetical order)

apocolipse, aschar, blackosx, fassl, Galaxy, JaS, Kabyl, Krazubu, lastExile, meklort, modbin, monsti, Mushishi, nawcom, netkas, p|astikman, PolishOX, prasys, schnitzel, Signal64, XyZ

Additionally thanks go out to everyone who has worked on the Chameleon bootloader, without which none of this would be possible, and everyone else who has contributed to the hackintosh scene! [except those fakers who steal other peoples work, you know who you are]

Source : myHackBlog