Hackintosh?

[Flow Of Time]

It took me the whole sunday to install it on my old laptop. Partly due to the reason that it overheated during the installation, and I only could get through the process by placing it on the balcony, where it was cold enough Anyway.. It still only boots in safe mode and I didn't have the time to do the post installation stuff yet.

Is it worth all the hassle?
Do your hackintoshs work flaweless after setting up everything correctly?

Beacause I'm really considering putting a double boot Win7/Mavericks on my main system. The Windows versions of InDesign and Photoshop are driving me nuts...

 

[Mancha]

Laptops are a bit tricky due to specific hardware and power management, so not many models will work properly (HP Probook series is usually a best bet), but my desktop hackintosh is working flawlessly. As long as you pick the right motherboard, it's fairly easy to set up.

 

[Flow Of Time]

Well the thing is, I just bought a new PC a few months ago, and I didn't think about a Hackintosh back then.. It has an Asrock H87M in it iirc.

Any experience with dual booting and/or installing the Hackintosh on an external drive, so I don't have to touch my running system?

 

[JeffTD]

It's all about picking components. Mine booted up first try and I've had minimal issues with it, all of which were linked to me not having the right parts.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/411-building-customac-buyer-s-guide-february-2014.html#custo_pro

 

[Flow Of Time]

Okay I googled my mainboard and it seems to work for most people.. I think I'll just try installing it on an external harddrive, I guess it won't touch my current windows then, right?

 

[LeSedna]

It's all about finding the current list of compatible components.

If ever you are considering using MacOsX, maybe think about doing it the other way : Have MacOsx as your only true system and use Parallel Desktop. I just installed it (as opposed to dual booting with bootcamp like before) and it works super fine for me, with a quadcore i7 2.2Ghz (haswel), 16Go Ram DDR5, SSD PCIe storage and 2Go videocard. If you are in this ballpark , consider it, it is pretty nice and actually launches W7 apps like they are inside MacOs, and you can still have the option to open a full W7 window which looks like the W7 screen and use it from there. It shares files from one to the other like you have only one storage, and if you really need to separate things it automatically loads the virtual C: drive as well so you can put Windows specific files inside the virtual machine too. This option has become viable now unless you need a heavy and pretty specific thing on Windows. It integrates very well too and it is nice to be able to download an exe file, clic on it, and it automatically launches the virtual drive and OS in like 10s and starts the install inside W7. Very nice, for 70e.

 

[Flow Of Time]

I think I didn't explain that clearly^^ I don't plan using OSX for recording. I'm working at a graphic designer-ish job, so I'm using OSX there obviously. At home I'm using Windows (for founded reasons). But since I have to do a lot of stuff for my family and friends recently, I noticed how glitchy the Adobe stuff is on Windows.. It's a real pain in the ass to work with. So OSX would be nice to have, but I wont buy new hardware for that^^

 

[Winston Wolf]

I've had good results with Dell Latitude laptops,everything worked out of the box most of the time,this is my third Latitude, E series.

 

[Flow Of Time]

It's all about finding the current list of compatible components.

If ever you are considering using MacOsX, maybe think about doing it the other way : Have MacOsx as your only true system and use Parallel Desktop. I just installed it (as opposed to dual booting with bootcamp like before) and it works super fine for me, with a quadcore i7 2.2Ghz (haswel), 16Go Ram DDR5, SSD PCIe storage and 2Go videocard. If you are in this ballpark , consider it, it is pretty nice and actually launches W7 apps like they are inside MacOs, and you can still have the option to open a full W7 window which looks like the W7 screen and use it from there. It shares files from one to the other like you have only one storage, and if you really need to separate things it automatically loads the virtual C: drive as well so you can put Windows specific files inside the virtual machine too. This option has become viable now unless you need a heavy and pretty specific thing on Windows. It integrates very well too and it is nice to be able to download an exe file, clic on it, and it automatically launches the virtual drive and OS in like 10s and starts the install inside W7. Very nice, for 70e.

Ok, so I thought about it a bit last week, and I think I'm going to pull the trigger and switch to OSX completely after all How did you manage to set up Bootcamp on a hackintosh?

 

[Line666]

Ok, so I thought about it a bit last week, and I think I'm going to pull the trigger and switch to OSX completely after all How did you manage to set up Bootcamp on a hackintosh?

You don't - (assuming one OS hard drive and not one each) you have to install Windows first using a split partition with a GUID boot table that you set up from a bootable OS X dongle, then you follow by installing OS X and use the tonymac software on OS X to install a version of the Chameleon boot loader which allows you to choose between the two.

 

[Flow Of Time]

Alright, I guess I'll search for a guide on dual booting at tonymac ^^
I hope I find the time to do the installation this weekend.. I'll let you guys know if it worked

 

[drew_drummer]

Mine works perfectly. But it's a desktop, not a laptop.

 

[Flow Of Time]

Update: I managed to get it running after a few hours of googling and patching the kernel. Only thing that isn't working right now is the preview...

 

[arv_foh]

It's super easy to dual boot if you have 2 hard drives. Just install windows to one and OSX to the other, then you can choose which one to boot in chameleon by tapping any key when the bootloader starts.

When you say preview isn't working do you mean the application or like pressing space to preview a file?

 

[Flow Of Time]

I mean the applicailtion. It works with PDFs, but always crashes when opening images. Works fine in safe mode though.

 

[arv_foh]

I mean the applicailtion. It works with PDFs, but always crashes when opening images. Works fine in safe mode though.

That means your QE/CI (aka native graphics) are not working. What graphics card are you using? And are you on mountain lion or mavericks?

 

[Flow Of Time]

I'm using a GTX780 on Mavericks. But it does work, it's shown in "About this Mac". I also did some Benchmarks, with good results. Photoshop is running smooth aswell for now...

I noticed a similar crash in Logic Pro X in the settings. If I click on "General" in the audio menu for example (this applies to all submenus) Logic crashes.

The crash reports of both problems give me a
"EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)"

Sorry if this post is confusing, I'm tired as hell right now and can't concentrate properly...

 

[arv_foh]

I'm using a GTX780 on Mavericks. But it does work, it's shown in "About this Mac". I also did some Benchmarks, with good results. Photoshop is running smooth aswell for now...

I noticed a similar crash in Logic Pro X in the settings. If I click on "General" in the audio menu for example (this applies to all submenus) Logic crashes.

The crash reports of both problems give me a
"EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)"

Sorry if this post is confusing, I'm tired as hell right now and can't concentrate properly...

Yeah that card works natively in mavericks so it's not graphics related.. you do need to use GraphicsEnabler=No in your chameleon boot plist.

According to this thread it sounds like you have a bad RAM module. There is a program you can download to test it

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-lion-desktop-support/70584-bad-memory-something-else.html

 

[Flow Of Time]

Thanks for your answer. GraphicsEnabler is set to no. I'll try the ram test, although I don't think it's the culprit, beacause I never had a problem like this on windows. Since everything works fine in safe mode, I suspect a kernel extension causing the crahes..

 

[greyskull]

I'd say its not worth bothering with on laptops, as something will probably not work; but with Desktops, theres no reason why carefully chosen parts will not work