Mac OS X on x86 Hardware 2008–2024 Technical Archive
InfiniteMac OSx86 › OSx86 Core & 10.X › Help installing Snow Leopard
10,951 reads · 2010-01-28 – 2010-02-06
Report 10.X Core AMD OSx86 ATI Radeon Retail DVD / USB

Help installing Snow Leopard

Hope you guys can provide some assistance. I'm having problems installing Snow Leopard. I downloaded the Snow Leopard Torrent by Hazard and unzip it. I then proceed it to burn the iso onto a DVD and tried booting off it. However, after…

Primary Author
@snakeo2 Published 2010-01-28
Collection
OSx86 Core & 10.X
Archival Footprint
10,951 historical reads · 5 curated field notes (from 14 dispatches) · 2010-01-28 – 2010-02-06
Credited Voices (4)
@snakeo2 (9)@00010 (3)@srs5694@razy60

Hope you guys can provide some assistance. I'm having problems installing Snow Leopard. I downloaded the Snow Leopard Torrent by Hazard and unzip it. I then proceed it to burn the iso onto a DVD and tried booting off it. However, after burning the iso, I end up with 8 files totaling less than 200kb which doesnt make sense since the iso is 4.37GB.

I'm using Nero, and I can find the setting to lower the write speed to 4x. I also tried copying the image to my 8GB usb stick and i get a message that the my usb stick is not large enough for the iso file. I also tried installing ideneb 10.5.7 and Im able to get to the screen where you pick the language, but as luck would have it, my mouse or keyboard dont work.

Below are my specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 940
Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P
4GB Corsair DDR2
ATI Radeon HD4650
1TB Hitachi Sata drive.

I currently have a triple boot:
XP (has its own drive)
Windows 7 (installed on the Hitachi Drive)
Gentoo ( has its own drive)

I plan to install Snow Leopard on the Hitachi Drive. I'm using Grub to boot all three Operating systems. Thanks.

Author Updates & Technical Revisions

Follow-up dispatches by @snakeo2

Author Update #1 @snakeo2 2010-01-29

00010

Thanks for the reply. The other distro is ideneb 10.5.7 and I never really got a chance to install it as I could not get pass the language selection screen.

srs5694,

I have tried booting off the dvd with no success. As soon as the screen that tells you to hit enter to load darwin, my computer reboots. I will try again. I've read that you need to burn the iso at 4x...is this accurate? I tried changing the writing speed in nero but could not find the setting. thanks to you both for your suggestions. I will post back with more info.

Author Update #2 @snakeo2 2010-01-29

00010

The thought did cross my mind. Is it as simple as putting the kext and iso file in a folder and then burning them onto a dvd? I've read of patching, so maybe I need to download patch-o-matic ( the name could be wrong) in order to patch the iso file with the proper kexts?

If I were to successfully install ideneb 10.5.7 on my system, what are the chances of then upgrading to 10.6? I would like to avoid installing 10.5.7 only to find out later that I can update to snow leopard? thanks again for your help.

Author Update #3 @snakeo2 2010-01-30

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm downloading snowosx now and will report back later. This computer is a new build, but I was able to install ideneb 10.5.5 on an AMD dual core system a few months back. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are supposed to create the partition prior to booting off the dvd as the disk utility will not see/find your disk unless it has been partitoned correct?

Author Update #4 @snakeo2 2010-01-31

razy60,

Thanks for the suggestion. I will download imgburn and give it a go.

00010,

I downloaded snowosx universal 3.5 as I could not find version 3.6 and encountered the same problem. After booting off the dvd, it would always crash when loading system libraries and then a hard restart would follow. I tried setting different flags such as "-v cpus=1" & "-v busratio=20 cpus=1" with no luck. I will try reburning the image at a slower speed and see if that makes any difference. Thanks

Author Update #5 @snakeo2 2010-01-31

After downloading imgburn and burning the snowosx universal 3.5 at 4x write speed, still didnt make a difference. My system kept rebooting after loading system/libraries. It appears that I may be running out of distros. The only distro which boots and gets me to the language selection screen is ideneb 10.5.7, however, as i mention before, my mouse and keyboard freeze. I will try to find a fix for that and/or wait for ideneb to release their snow leopard distro.

Author Update #6 @snakeo2 2010-02-03

I know Apple uses sata drives, on all of their computers, and I have also heard that you have a better chance of installing hackintosh if you have an IDE drive, so my question is this really true? I do remember than when I was able to install ideneb 10.5.5 on my amd dual core, I had and IDE dvd drive. Right now, my system has a sata drive. Any opinions/suggestions?

Author Update #7 @snakeo2 2010-02-06

I think I'm making progress. I found a usb keyboard/mouse and booted off with ideneb 10.5.8 lite edition, changed bios to "ahci", use the following flgas busratio=20; cpus=1 and it worked. I got as far as creating partitions on the my free space but some reason I couldnt. Also, I want to research more as to what I need to do to be able to boot mac using grub, before going through with the installation. anyone has any suggestions as to what entries need to be added to grub.conf?

Author Update #8 @snakeo2 2010-02-06

any suggestions? After firing disk utility in order to create the partition where leopard will be installed, I get to the part where you have to pick your partition scheme. You can pick anywhere from one partition all the way to 16+ partitions, you can also keep your current set up. In my case, I'm planning on installing Leopard in an disk drive where I already have windows 7, so there are already 2 parititions. I have a little over 630GB of empty space which is where I want to create the partition for leopard but is "grayed" out and I cant do anything with it. when i click on the empty space, the little "+" sign at the bottom which would normally allow you to create a new partition wont let me. Any advise?

Synthesized Community Field Notes

5 technical responses curated from 14 original dispatches

Field Note #1 @srs5694 2010-01-29

MacOS discs often have dual filesystems -- one ISO-9660 and one HFS or HFS+. When you view such a disc in most non-Mac OSes, you'll see the ISO-9660 filesystem, which may give you access to few or none of the HFS/HFS+ files. This certainly seems to be the case with the Hazard disc; on my system, the ISO-9660 filesystem totals just 192KB in size, but it does install correctly, and in Linux (or OS X, of course), I can mount the HFS+ side and see 4.4GB of files.

Thus, I recommend you try booting the disc and see what happens. If you can't boot it, then post back with details about what happens when you try.

Field Note #2 @00010 2010-01-29

As for the other Distro you installed it sounds like you need eiather PS2 fix or a USB 2.0 fix to get your keyboard/mouse working depending on what type you use.

00010

Field Note #3 @00010 2010-01-29

Why not inject a PS2 kext in the ISO image before you burn so that it installs it aswell with the other kext files so you can use your PS2 keyboard and mouse, unless the iDeneb DVD already has that option in the installer.

00010

Field Note #4 @00010 2010-01-29

You can upgrade from leopard to snow leopard, but it would be better to just do a clean install, I suggest downloading and installing SnowOSX Universal 3.6, that already has PS2 kexts but you have to select them from the "Customize" menu during install.

It also has PS2 drivers on boot aswell so your PS2 keyboard and mouse will work when you use the installation DVD.

0010

Field Note #5 @razy60 2010-01-30

Hi, just as a suggestion i would personally burn the iso using imgburn as i have found in the past that nero is not that good at burning the iso images correctly. also as your first post indicates you are only getting a small part of the image 200mb of the 4.7GB this also suggests that nero failed to burn the iso correctly.

You can get imgburn from there web site its free and less cumbersome than nero.
img burn.com/

Raz

Sources & Contributor Provenance (4 credited usernames · Thread #5341)
UsernameDossier ContributionDispatchesActive Window
@snakeo2Primary Author92010-01-28 → 2010-02-06
@00010Core Contributor32010-01-29
@srs5694Contributor12010-01-29
@razy60Contributor12010-01-30