So what’s changed between my last guide and this one? In short, one of the incredibly helpful and generous people who helped walk me through the installation process last time was kind enough to wrap all the tedious Terminal work into one dead simple installer. Where two weeks ago I showed you how to prepare your thumb drive (and after that, hard drive) with a custom bootloader that allows you to boot into OS X on regular old PC hardware, now all you have to do is run a package, point it at the drive you want to prepare, and then let it take care of all the nitty gritty. It could not be more simple.
Now onto the revised process!
NOTE: Just like the last post, this guide is focused specifically on the hardware I suggested in the previous guide—specifically the motherboard. If you try following this guide on other hardware, there’s a very good chance it won’t work as advertised.
In this step, you’re going to format your thumb drive and then restore the Snow Leopard DVD image to the thumb drive because later we’ll be installing Snow Leopard to your hard drive using this thumb drive rather than the DVD. Why? Because in order to boot the installer, we need to customise the disk image with some special helper files of our own.
I went into great detail on this process last time, so this time I’m just going to include the step-by-step video below (made by the same generous man who created the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard installer package). If you want to read the very detailed version for a detailed explanation of how to rip the Snow Leopard install DVD to a disk image and then restore that image to your thumb drive, go here. (Come back when you get to the “Semi-heavy Terminal work” warning. That’s when you’re ready for the new and improved easy part.)
Note: Watch the video in HD and fullscreen to get a closer look at everything that’s happening.
As you can see in the video, after you restore the Snow Leopard install DVD to your thumb drive, all you’ve got to do is fire up the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg file (if you haven’t already downloaded and unzipped it, you can grab it here), select your thumb drive, and, let the installer take care of all the dirty work that you previously had to do one line at a time in Terminal.
Once you’ve finished there, you’re ready to set your BIOS and install Snow Leopard.
Before you can boot into or install OS X on your Hackintosh, you’ve got to make some small adjustments to your system BIOS (press Delete at system startup to tweak your BIOS settings). Rather than taking you step by step through every change you need to make, I’ve simply snapped a picture of the relevant BIOS screens and added some notes. Just go to Step 2 here and make sure your BIOS settings match up.
If you’ve made it this far, the hard part is over. Now it’s time to install Snow Leopard, which—unlike what we’ve done so far—is extremely easy.
Make sure you’ve set the boot priority in your BIOS to boot from your thumb drive (you can see how in Step 2: Set Your Hard Disk Boot Priority), then simply plug your prepared thumb drive into your Hackintosh and power it up. Since screenshots aren’t really an option—and since it’s a fairly easy process—my install instructions come in video format:
The quick version goes like this: Boot into the Snow Leopard installer, format the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to (go to Utilities -> Disk Utility, then click on the drive, select 1 Partition, Mac OS X Journaled (Case-Sensitive Update: Several readers have suggested that case-sensitive formatting can cause problems with some applications, like Adobe’s Creative Suite, so you may be better off sticking with plain old Mac OS X Journaled.), give it a name, and make sure GUID Partition Table is set in the Options. After you Apply the new partition, go back to the installer and install like normal to that drive. When you reboot after the install completes, press the arrow keys at the graphical boot menu and select the drive you just installed Snow Leopard to.
You could just stop there and be pretty happy at your new Hackintosh, but there are two little, easily performed tweaks you’ll want to tackle to get everything in tip top shape: The first will get your sound fully working, and the second will allow you to boot into Snow Leopard without your thumb drive.
Tweak One: Snow Leopard should be up and running on your Hackintosh like a dream—with one exception: Sound isn’t entirely working yet. You may notice that sound actually does work in some instances, but not all. In the old guide, you needed to install a custom audio kext (your Mac’s equivalent to a driver); the setup has been slightly tweaked in this new method, so all you should actually need to do is open up the Sound preference pane in System Preferences (/Applications/System Preferences), click the Output tab, and change the output device to Built-in Line output (I haven’t tested with digital out, but it should in theory work fine).
Tweak Two: At this point, in order to boot to your newly installed Snow Leopard installation, you need to have your thumb drive plugged in so it loads the custom bootloader, from which you can select your new Snow Leopard hard drive. To install the custom bootloader to your hard drive (so you no longer need the thumb drive to boot), again download the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg zip file and run it, but this time, instead of choosing to install the package to your thumb drive, select the hard drive you’ve installed Snow Leopard to. Once the installer completes, you’ll no longer need your thumb drive plugged in to boot into Snow Leopard.
Where the method I covered previously required a good amount of time and care in Terminal, this new and improved method is a breeze, and it works even better. (Sound works out of the box without any custom kexts, for example.)
It’s also worth noting that you can go ahead an upgrade to OS X 10.6.1 without any problems.
If you’ve given the Hackintosh route a try since my first post, let’s hear how it’s been working out for you in the comments. If this extra ease-of-installation was just what the doctor ordered, go grab the parts listed in the last post and get ready for a fun weekend.
Mike Threesi
January 10, 2010 at 10:13 PM
I have a couple problems with Snow leopard hackintosh. (1) On boot, I get a kernel panic. I must unplug the power supply for a few minutes, then it boots ok. (2) Also, when I come out of sleep, the monitor remains black, so I have to soft re-boot. Other times, it won’t even come out of sleep.
Any ideas how to fix these 2 things?
Report PermalinkEdvins
January 15, 2010 at 8:56 AM
THis process workked great for me and it is an awesome machine, once built. I ran into an issue the other night with the latest software updates…I now get an error upon bootup:
“version mismatch between kernel and CPU”
Has anyone else encountered this? Is there an easy fix?
thanks.
Report PermalinkEdvins
January 18, 2010 at 9:21 AM
All –
I wanted to post the solution that got beback up and running. Thanks goes to Stella’s blog (http://stellarola.tumblr.com/search/lifehacker). There you can find an updated EP45-UD3P Package (version 3) at the following URL.
http://www.tehdork.com/stellarola/installers/EP45UD3P%20OSx86%20v3%20STELLBLOG.zip
Basically, I took my boot drive out of my EP45-UD3P, connected it to my mac mini. I then downloaded the EP45-UD3P package from the link above and ran the utility against the system disc that I had on the EP45-UD3P. after running this utility against that drive and installing it back into the EP45-UD3P, it boots beatifully into 10.6.2 – no errors – works great! I thought I’d post this in case it saves anyone from a few headaches…
Ed
Report PermalinkRaymond
January 18, 2010 at 12:24 PM
Hello everybody
Report PermalinkI just made my first Hackintosh using the instruction and hardware on this page, however, I used a GA-EP45T-UD3LR motherboard because I wanted to use DDR3 memory. Everything works just fine except that I don’t see a sound output device to choose from in the system preferences. I guess I will just use a USB sound card but I am extremely happy with my install. The hardware is exactly the same and I am using the onboard network adapter instead of the TRENDnet network adapter. The TrendNet adapter did not work so I plugged the ethernet cable in the onboard network adapter and voila! perfect network connection.
Thanks Adam. I would appreciate your help in solving my audio problem. Thanks again
Raymond
January 18, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Now it will be great to have a wireless network adapter.
Report PermalinkAny suggestions?
Faisal
January 24, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Please Somebody help me! I have tried thousand times but my Hard Disk is not detected. I have tried to set it to active but when I booted and enter disk utility, it was empty. No hard disk at all.
Report PermalinkDez
January 30, 2010 at 10:13 PM
lol 900? dude for that you can buy a mac mini.
but the idea you got is nice.
i’d try it if you made a easy installer for it.
and no bullshit involved.
just point..click…install….done.
so ya’ll want a mac huh?
here’s something super easy to do.
and you can customize it to look like a mac-in-trash.
http://www.ubuntu.com
it’s linux.
it’s virus free.
it’s free.
everything you get from the community software app.
is free.
and it’s always fast.
simple
and if you want that stupid mac dock.
you can get it again…for FREE.
i hope steve get’s a job.
haha.
*ladies and gentleman*……I bring you!!…..the iSHELF hahaha..
Report PermalinkDez
January 30, 2010 at 10:15 PM
oh and customize it any way you want.
Report Permalink4 free!!
kervs
February 19, 2010 at 6:28 AM
the image/video is missing on the terminal instruction. COuld you please relink it? thanks!
Report Permalinkryan
February 25, 2010 at 3:04 AM
okay so i followed your both detailed and non detailed instructions for snow leopard and every time i do it it wont ever boot off the flash drive iv tryed it on a douzen pc’s and laptops none of them will boot off the flash drive. im so eager to get this going but have no idea what to do
Report Permalinkaflah
April 5, 2010 at 12:33 PM
yea evrything worked but when I run the ^%#^%@ installer it keeps showing me a screen with two mouses one having its batterys replaced and the second moving down and I cant do anything but press the off button.
Report PermalinkIm using a toshiba satellight laptop
plz help
sean
April 7, 2010 at 5:25 AM
I had sound working on my ep45-ud3lr but did an update and I now have no output devices. anyone have any idea on how I can get them back?
Report PermalinkAqeel Ahmed
May 28, 2010 at 5:09 AM
I did everything as mentioned but when I boot the installer, I get a grey screen with apple logo, some error on the screen and a message to restart computer. Have a look here:
Report Permalinkhttp://www.dropshots.com/pgrafer#albums/Mac%20errors/2010-05-25/12:20:34
dane
July 9, 2010 at 7:23 PM
This was awesome! I installed on a sony vaio intel laptop and it truly was a breeze! Thanks for posting this. I used the upgrade $30 snow leopard 10.6.3 Only one issue the keyboard and touchpad of the laptop don’t work. I have to use an external, but I’m okay with that.. if anyone has any ideas to fix it though please let me know. Thanks again.
Report PermalinkPeterm
October 12, 2010 at 7:27 PM
Have tried this with a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mother board. This board will not work.
Report PermalinkI think it is because of the option in the BIOS on screen shot 1 that shows the VGA setting.
The GA-965P-DS3 does not have this option.
Peterm
Lexo
October 25, 2010 at 7:14 PM
Hey do you guys if this tutorial will work with a computer with 4gb of ram, an intel core 2 quad CPU @ 2.83 ghz, asus p5q pro motherboard and a ati radeon HD 4800 series graphics card?
Report PermalinkHarlan Gross
December 6, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Anyone update this rig to 10.6.5? I have basically the same build and I’m curious if it works or not. Going to hold out until I get a response
Report PermalinkTomcatw
January 17, 2011 at 4:50 PM
The guy here use iBoot & Multibeast
http://www.imacx86.com/2010/04/iboot-multibeast-install-mac-os-x-on-any-intel-based-pc/
Had anyone try yet?
Report PermalinkW
February 10, 2011 at 5:53 AM
Any chance that this might work with asus p5w dh deluxe? I tried following your first hackintosh guide, but the method never worked for me (the one where you used this mobo) Also, no chance that the generous hacker knows how to develop one?
Report PermalinkSteven
March 22, 2011 at 6:41 PM
Nothing beats a real Mac.
Report PermalinkBojan
April 4, 2011 at 12:28 PM
I followed Lifehacker tutorial to build my first hackintosh, and it seems that it turned out to be 99% success.
My hardware:
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel
Core 2 Duo E8500
xfx Nvidia geForce gt 240 512mb ddr5
I used 10.6.3 Snow Leopard image and EP45-UD3P package found in this blog to modify the image on the flash but I used V3 version found on the following url: http://www.tehdork.com/stellarola/installers/EP45UD3P%20OSx86%20v3%20STELLBLOG.zip to install on my hackintosh hard drive.
I was able to successfully update to 10.6.7. I downloaded 10.6.7 combo from apple website and ran it, but I did not restart. I then ran EP45UD3P V3 and installed it on my hard drive, and then restarted.
Everything seems to work fine, except the screensaver. However sleep and display sleep work fine.
Report Permalinkbojan
April 6, 2011 at 1:46 PM
I was able to fix the screensaver issue by reinstalling SL, but this time I used EP45UD3P V3 to patch both my thumb drive and the hard drive.
I also used another graphics card, evga 8600 gt which was fully recognized.
The only thing that sorta bugs me is that my monitor’s display is not so bright and crisp looking as on original macs. I have acer H213H, fully recognized by SL and I was able to set my resolution to 1920 x 1080. However colors and fonts looks better in windows 7 than on SL using this same monitor.
Report PermalinkWill Lehman
April 14, 2011 at 9:15 AM
I know this is a dumb question, but can anyone direct me how to manually enter boot options from the Chameleon boot screen? If I hit the down arrow, there is an option for verbose and a few other things, but I need to pass a “cpus=1″ option and nothing I try gives me the option of typing in options manually. Here’s a screen shot of the point that I’m at. (If I select boot, it starts booting without letting me type anything).
Report PermalinkThanks for any help!
http://getonnow.net/screenshot.jpg
Julien Deveraux
June 28, 2011 at 12:43 AM
it appears that 10.6.8 finally broke this configuration. After installing 10.6.8; you lose access to your USB; ANY PCI devices (like wireless cards) and you lose Audio as well as the built-in ethernet.
I havne’t yet tried installing the update and then re-running the “Magic” installer. I think 10.6.8 simply over-writes or renames KEXTs
Report Permalink