Hackintosh 2.0
After spilling water through the fan vents of my desktop on my current hackintosh, I had to make a new one. All that needed replacing was the motherboard. I wanted to pick a board that had been put through it’s paces in the OSx86 (hackintosh) community. There was an amazing guide for the first board I picked, but it wasn’t being sold on Newegg.com anymore, so I decided on the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P.
You can find more information about my setup on my hackintosh v2 wiki page. If you want to see every step I went through to get this system working, check out that page.
What To Expect
This guide will let you install OS X Leopard 10.5.6 from the retail disk (straight from Apple!). You’ll have a system with full functionality and minimal hacking.
I have not tested this setup extensively since I got it working, so I make no guaranty about it’s stability. The way I went about it isn’t the cleanest, but it works. I’m hoping weaksauce12 will release a Universal OSx86 Installer plug-in for this board in the near future. Keep an eye out on my blog for another post involving that installation.
Hardware
Here is the hardware I used. You can poke around the InsanelyMac forums to find instructions for your own system.
Same hardware I used in version 1, except with a new motherboard. The motherboard is the most important factor in a hackintosh as long as you have an Intel processor and an NVIDIA video card.
- Motherboard – GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P (newegg)
- Processor – Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz (newegg)
- Video Card – EVGA GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit PCI Express x16 (newegg)
- RAM – CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin 800 (PC2 6400) (newegg)
- DVD – SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R SATA (newegg)
- Power Supply – COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus 460W (newegg)
- Case – COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower (newegg)
Required Goodies
Here is what you’ll need to complete this guide.
- Retail Leopard install disk
- Note: Please purchase the CD and support the Apple developers!
- Download the handy UD3P-package I compiled for this motherboard. See “Credits” section below for all the original content in the package.
Preparation
- Burn grub-dfe.iso to a CD. Disco is a handy app for doing this.
- Put the UD3P-package onto a USB flash drive.
Steps
- Boot with GRUB-DFE boot cd.
- At the “fake darwin” screen it will say have a prompt that says “Boot:”. Switch out the boot cd for retail leopard.
- When prompted for a 2-digit hex number, press “fe” to boot to the Leopard CD.
- Note: I used retail verison 10.5.0, but any retail disk should work.
- Once you’re in the installer, format your drive (Utilities > Disk Utility). Make sure the partition type is set to GUID.
- Install OS X normally.
- When installation is done, restart (you might have to do this forcefully) and place the boot cd back in.
- Boot to the boot CD as before.
- This time when you’re prompted for a 2-digit hex number, enter “80″ to boot to your hard drive.
- Follow the on-screen steps to complete the Leopard installation
- When prompted to register, press CTRL+Q and select “skip”
- When you create your account, keep in mind you can only have each username once. If you plan to migrate files from a previous OS X installation, pick a different “Name” and “Short Name”
- Once this is done, it should load you into OS X.
- Install all updates (including 10.5.6) from Software Update. Restart when directed to.
- Boot from the GRUB-DFE disk again.
- Use -v at the real Darwin screen so you have verbose output. The update should apply itself during the boot process. When you see “MACH Reboot”, go ahead and forcefully restart the computer.
- Boot from the GRUB-DFE disk yet again.
- Keep installing updates and restarting until there are no updates left in Software Update.
- Run Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.dmg (located in the UD3P-package) (Note: I don’t think this step is completely necessary since we install PC_EFI v9 later, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to do it anyway).
- Drag all the files in the “Kexts for Chameleon” folder into the “Extra Contents” shortcut in Chameleon’s .dmg.
- Run Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.pkg to install the bootloader.
- Reboot with the boot CD. Use -x to boot into safe mode
- Use Universal OSx86 Installer
- Select the following options:
- Do OSx86_Essentials as motherboard
- Boot timeout to 5
- Native resolution to 1920×1200
- Install PC_EFI v9 Chameleon
- Apply Ethernet EFI String (Time Machine Fix)
- Apply EFI String for video card (I selected NVIDIA DeForce 7600FT 256MB for my card)
- Click “Add extra kexts” and select all the files in the “Kexts for Uinstaller” folder.
- Eject boot CD.
- Restart
- Select the following options:
- Everything should be working!!
Finishing up
- System Preferences > Sound > Output > Switch it to “internal speakers”
- Disable sleep and the “turn off monitor” features. For me, every time it went to sleep or turned off my monitor, it would come back with a blue screen.
- Migration Assistant
- When selecting parts you want to restore, make sure you do not select Applications or Library. Restoring the Library folder could ruin all the work you’ve done to get your system running.
- Press Transfer and let it go to work
- You can start installing applications while you wait. I have a helpful list here. Some programs might not expect to be installed on one account (your current one) and then be used on another account (the on you’re transferring), so use with caution.
- Fix drive icons if you wish
That’s all!
You should have a working system at this point. Please add a comment below if this worked for you or if it broke everything or if you just love me. Please share your own experience if it wasn’t based on my guide. Thanks to everyone at InsanelyMac for creating an awesome community of hackintosh-ers!
Bonus:
XBench Results (with hardisk): 135.72
XBench Results (without hardisk): 201.97
Credits
- Adapted heavily from basshead’s blog, the thread (for the EP45-UD3R board), and weaksauce12′s amazing guide (for the P45-DS3L board)
- Universal OSx86 Installer (Uinstaller.app) – Please donate to PCWiz for the incredible amount of work he has put into this application.
- Chameleon DFE for Hard disk
- grub-dfe.iso (download)
- An alternative is to use the boot-132 “modified kexts” ISO (download)
- .zip for audio kext
Jeremy Blanchard: Student, Nerd, Enviro-geek
Awesome guide! It’s much more readable than the ones I saw when I was working on my Hackintosh laptop.
When did the scene start using retail disks? That seems like a huge improvement to me
It’s definitely been a recent improvement. From what I’ve seen, it’s been the last month or two. And the Universal OSx86 installer has been around for even less time.
They are MAJOR improvements! It’s wonderful. And if apple failed to copyright OS X, it could all be legal!!
Oh wow, that’s crazy.
That would be awesome. I’ve been keeping up with the case and I definitely believe Psystar is getting help from somewhere because man, they are getting the right breaks.
Great Job!!
When prompted for a 2-digit hex number, press “fe” to boot to the Leopard CD.
correct “ef” for my.
Thanks.
Xus
Asus P5Q PRO MotherBoard
Q9550 Quad 2,83Mhz
4 Ghz DDR2 1033mhz
Asus EN9800GT HybridPower
——————
MacPro Dual Xeon 2,66Ghz/4Gb/Ati x1900xt/Raid5 3TB
Macbook Dual 2Ghz/2Gb
Iphone 3G
Ipod Touch
Great!!!
Auzigog you saved my life with the audio kext.
Thanks. Thanks a lot friend for having shared all this stuff.
Your friend
ginosky
Hey, thanks for this guide and the files!
I’ve used it to install two UD3P based Hackintosh systems so far. Works perfectly. This is definitely a great board for OSX.
Later,
Zaap
@Zapp: That’s great to hear! I’m glad it’s working well for people. Thanks for sharing your experience.
weaksauce12 should be releasing his package very soon and I think that will serve as a great replacement for this guide.
Auzigog,
Thanks a lot. Your post makes my hackintosh life easier.
BTW, did you solve the problem of wake-up?
After waking-up network and sound is not working.
@flyfree: I have not solved that problem. When weaksauce12 releases his, the problem will probably be resolved. I can’t use sleep functions at all because I get a blue screen whenever my monitor turns back on.
Auzigog,
I saw a weaksause12′s posting on insanelymac with UD3P.zip.
It’s posted Jan 5 2009.
Did you include these files on your UP3P-package.zip?
@flyfree: Nope. I’ve been waiting until he makes a post with solid instructions and a final package before acting on that.
Thanks Auzigog, all the kexts were really useful. I installed by this method: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=127330
I put all kexts from the chameleon folder in the EFI boot partition, installed audio and video through OSX86 Universal Installer. The nice thing about the EFI boot partition method is that I ran updates (10.5.4 up to 10.5.6) after everything was up and running, rebooted and all was still good.
Just building my hackintosh and want to know if Firewire ports work with this MB?
@SLIM: My back Firewire port has worked just fine. I use it with a Western Digital MyBook and Time Machine to do backups.
Quick question: Thinking of using this same mobo and just wondering if I start with Core 2 Duo and then upgrade later to a Quad, will I need to reconfigure/reinstall anything? Or will OS X automatically detect it? What if I start with 4 gigs ram and upgrade to 8?
Thanks for the guide man!
@Todd: I can’t say that I know the answer to that. I’d suggest doing a search on InsanelyMac forums (but use google for the search, since the forum search engine sucks).
Hi,
First : great blog!
Want to try this Ga-ep45-ud3p board, but now the Ga-ep45T-ud3p is also available.
I wonder if this ep45″T” version100% compatible with this method?
thanks,
Peter
Good post… any news on fixing these:
cos not having sleep working kinda seems like a bit of a kludge to me. Likewise monitor not able to be switched off.
If you crack these do update the post???!!!
Hi, i’ve a weird problem with grub-dfe, or boot132 cd.
It reboot with an eroor on AppleRTC
here are the screen of the error,
Well, html syntax doesn’t work, so the direct link to the screen :
http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0221bg7.jpg
http://img384.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0223as3.jpg
I picked up my UD3P board, an e5200 cpu and PNY GeForce 9500 GT yesterday.
Your install instructions worked perfectly. The e5200 is really a mighty little cpu for not a lot of cash and the 9500 GT works awesome after checking on the forums and installing the Apple Nvidia 9xxx series drivers.
Awesome.
Excellent work Auzigog. Can’t wait to buy this mobo and try it out, I’ve been successful with my MSI p6n Sli Plat, but for some reason, I’ve had nothing but problems with freezes and KP’s ever since I tried dual booting and went back to just Leopard using Kalyway 10.5.2 – So this is good news to know of a fully compatible MoBo. Granted it still needs slight patching, but it’s good to know.
Ok i have kinda the same issue as matthieu. I get to setup 4. Download the updates. About half way through the updates it asked me to restart. So i restarted and put in the grub-dfe disk and typed -v and it gives me an error and stops right there….. Never says MACH Reboot. I have done this with four different copies of osx86 and cant seem to get it to work. But now it has finally installed after a horrible 3 days. Please help…
Also this might be a little bit of a stupid question. But are you supposed to boot up osx86 with GRUB-DFE boot disk everytime you restart?? If so why cant we boot up from the HD? kinda new at this.
@Roland: Not sure what to say about your error. The best I can do is point you to the InsanelyMac forums.
As far as booting from the GRUB DFE disk every time: You need to use that disk every time up until step 5. Step 5 essentially puts that disk and those kexts into your boot sector (or something along those lines). After you finish step 5, you won’t need the boot disk anymore.
Auzigog- Thanks for putting this together. I have the EP45-UD3R and followed your guide to the T (except the Time Machine fix which wouldn’t work because I had an error “the device ‘ethernet’ was not found on this system” – this may have been due to BIOS settings I used in which I had turned off the LAN… not sure about that). Anyway, after step 6, the final reboot (without the boot cd) ended in a kernel panic. I’m not 100% sure how to identify what the issue was but I noticed that the following item was one of the last things mentioned when I tried with -v.
appleintelcpupowermanagement
Any idea why this might be – is it possible that it’s because I’m using a slightly different motherboard?
Thanks again for your work.
Great post!!! I need help with one problem that I am having. I keep getting a circle with a line in the middle when I boot without the cd. Everything works perfect if I use the cd to boot.
Any ideas on what is causing this? I am running the same hardware except the video card. I have a 8800 gt.
Thanks
Auzigog – Great post. I followed your directions implicitly and had no issues whatsoever. I do have a post-intall issue, though, and this may be more for weaksauce12..but here it goes. I’m using the UD3P box to host all of my media files on a separate internal RAID set. I’m sharing the RAID drive to my network, and all is fine until I log out of my UD3P box. The kexts I’m using see my SATA drives as external and ejecable, and therefore unmount them on logout (all except the boot volume). This isnt’ good for file sharing! I’ve installed Kalyway 10.5.2 and that sees my drives as “internal” and “Non Ejectable”, so I am able to share the RAID set. But with the kexts I used from this post and weaksauce12′s post at, these drives are seen as “External” and “Ejectable”. the problem is I don’t know enough about these kexts to load the ones I’d need from Kalyway and still keep it “vanilla”. Ideas?
@Jorge
I am not sure if you already found the solution to your problem, but you need to checkmark “Apply Kext Package” under select motherboard package to install. Otherwise when you boot without the cd in you will get the screen you described. I made this mistake as well the first time. After correcting that, it works perfectly booting from HD.
Link to a screenshot of this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/thgill/untitled.jpg
@Auzigog – Perhaps adding a couple photos/screenshots to your guide would make it even better?
@Jorge
I’m having the same issue as Jorge. I have almost an identical setup to Azuigog. E6600, EP45, Samsung Sata Dvd, SataHD. When I install from the Retail DVD, I get to the grey screen, then I get the spinning and the prohibitory sign. I read on other forums that this might be due to the ox trying to find the boot hd, but I’m lost here… any help would be appreciated
Has anyone managed to get the yellow SATA ports to work on this board? I get a kernel panic about the JmicronATA.
Jorge, you have to set the hard disc to AHCI in the Bios Settings, and enable the native sata 0-3 to make it work.
Use only the yelloy sata ports, never use the violet ones.
Hi. I’m using this as the guide for my install. Can I use a 10.5.6 disc? Thanks so much, can’t wait for my hardware to get here.
@Skinny: You can use any version, as far as I know.
Hey, does anyone know how can i do to set the graphic card (nvidia geforce 8600GT) with a 1024×768 screen, it´s driving me crazy and i can´t find the way to do it
thanks
I have the EP45-UD3R board but am running a Radeon 4850 card, am I completely out of luck, or can it work?
I keep getting an error from Grub saying:
Error 23: Error while parsing number….
I have an IDE dvd drive that I’m trying to boot Grub DFE in. Is this a problem?? Is there an alternative to using Grub DFE to boot?
Hi, I’m a complete noob, The first screen I got when I switched the computer on was the GIGABYTE logo screen. I pressed F12 to boot with CD. I tried both the grub-dfe.iso and the modified kext files, and it says “missing operating system” everytime. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks!
Yeah, IDE drives are known to cause issues. You should really try to use a SATA drive. Also, make sure you SATA ports are switched to AHCI instead of IDE. Use the yellow SATA ports and not the purple ones.
Auzigog – I agree with the other users. Thanks so much for all your efforts in putting this together. I cant even get past the bootloader.
I am a pretty advanced user and built many PC systems, HOWEVER, I am a complete NOOB. I wish my GRUB-DFE disk worked as well as everyone elses did. I have burned three different disks and get the boot screen when it boots up, but I am never prompted to key in anything and if I dont hit ESC it only gives me 5 seconds to swap out the boot disk with the leopard Retail 10.5.6 DVD that I have. Then I get an Error15: File not found. I do wait for the light on my DVD drive to stop blinking before hitting enter. I have tried a SATA DVD drive, a USB LG DVD drive and a EIDE DVD drive and I always get the same results. I have dumped around $450 in motherboard, a proc, memory, video card, etc and am anxious to get this working but cant seem to get anywhere with it.
I have a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P, Intel Duo Core E8500, 4GB XMS2 Corsair Memory, EVGA 9400 GT Video card, and a Samsung SATA DVD drive.
I really would appreciate any help. Thanks for providing such a fantasic guide and blog for everyone!!!!
kmj1268, I had lots of problems loading the grub file too. With a lot of help from the guys at insanelymac, I found out that i was copying the grub file incorrectly. I downloaded a copy of “disco” as auzigog suggested and tried again. yay, it worked. Hope this helps.
P.s., does anyone know how to install a network card? I got a Trendnet TEW-421PC, but have no idea how to set it up. tks!
thx speeeding for your response, well i am so excited I got past the grub part and am on step 3. I wasnt using the grub boot cd correctly and letting it boot all the way. Now I am on the ‘create your account step’ and it just sits there with a spinning colored wheel. I am a complete NOOB at the Mac OS X hack thing, but much further along then I was. auzigog’s guide is excellent and I know with persistence I will get there.
np kmj1268. Btw, this is a link to my own noob troubles: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=154688
Hope it’ll help too.
Having “fun” with my ud3r & will try some of your method. Hopefully I can converge at a solution….
Note – mediafire sez your UD3P-package file is unavailable. Try your link.
well…
I have been meaning to post this earlier.
I got my system up and running this past Friday.
I cant express my thanks enough to you guys on this forum, especially auzigog and speeeding. Also thanks to gordon french’s site, to help me correct my sound. That was the only thing that didnt work afer the Universal Installer. The ONLY problem I have is with a popping sound before any audio is emanated from my system. I would like to correct it but everything else is working and I have a 3GHz system with 4GB RAM for just a little over $500 including the OS 10.5.6.
Here is my system:
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
Intel 2 Core Duo E8400 3GHz
4GB Corsair XMS2 Performance Memory
EVGA GeForce 9400 GT
500 GB SATA Hitachi Hard Drive
Samsung DVD SATA Drive
OCZ 600 Watt StealthStream PSU
This system specs out faster than the iMac 24 that goes for around just over $2000. It’s amazing the kind of hackintosh you can build your self for a fraction of the price.
My only regret is that I wish I would have bought the Value Pack for $170 which inculded iLife, iWork, and Leopard 10.5.6 as opposed to paying $130 for just 10.5.6.
Thanks again everyone!!!!!
JMK
Zoom 4311 Bluetooth device – 100 Meter Range
Auzigog,
I wanted to comment on what you mentioned at the top ‘if Apple failed to copyright the OS X, it could be legal’.
I purchased a copy of the retail 10.5.6 and followed your guide here which worked incredible for me.
I also read the license agreement. Strangely enough, the license agreement allows you to install the OS on an Apple-labeled machine. They provide Apple label stickers to boot – no pun intended. So the way I read this is if slap one of the nice Apple labels they give me on my hackintosh clone case, I am good to go and doing everything according to the license agreement and in Legal bounds.
I strongly believe that Apple did that on purpose because they certainly dont want to discourage the sale of their software to hackintosher’s like those on this forum. It never ceases to amaze me though the Mac biggots out there that want to start flame wars with hackintosher’s. Maybe because they realize they sunk a lot of change into some hardware where we pay a fraction of the price and get everything running close to perfect if not perfect with persistence and patience. I hope I didnt digress away from your post too much but I wanted to point this out to everyone, because I was amazed myself when I read this in the license agreement. If Apple didn’t want hackintosher’s to put their OS on clones then they would have written the legal license agreement much more specific and instead of saying Apple-labeled machines they would have denoted them as Apple -manufactured machines. Big difference. Anyways, your post here is amazing and I know many of us are very appreciative for your hard work and the guidance in helping us with our hackint0sh projects.
Will this guide work for other mobos such as the Gigabyte – GA-G31M-ES2L 775? I really want to try and build a machine and this is the best step by step guide for a non power user like myself. Thanks in advance.
I followed all of this to a T. Everything worked great until I restarted after UInstaller. The only difference is I set my graphics card to my NVidea and my native resolution to 1920×1080. I now get a “Your computer needs to be restarted…” freeze upon every boot attempt! I would love some help.
You need to checkmark “Apply Kext Package” under select motherboard package to install. Otherwise when you boot without the cd in you will get the screen you described. I made this mistake as well the first time. After correcting that, it works perfectly booting from HD.
Link to a screenshot of this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/thgill/untitled.jpg
@Todd
Thank you Todd!!! That was it!