[GUIDE] Retail Snow Leopard DVD install for G31M-ES2L

[Pibbman]

Been reading this guide like mad and other sites, however I have noticed that many who build a machine with this board have dedicated video cards, does the onboard video work at all with this or no? I'm hoping to use the onboard until I can save up enough money for a video card.

Haven't been able to find an answer to this one.

In any case, thanks for the guide. Hopefully it's smooth sailings for me.

[brfransen]

It worked for me while I was waiting for my video card but there are problems. One is that I couldn't get any video to display in Quicktime or VLC. There was sound but only black would display in the video window. Another problem was that the display would never sleep and when I put the machine to sleep all the fans would continue running. Once I got the PCI-E video card installed both issues were gone. I am thinking that both issues have to do with no specific drivers for the GMA 3100 chipset but I didn't do much research.

Britney

[MonkeyDLuffy]

Originally Posted by Pibbman Been reading this guide like mad and other sites, however I have noticed that many who build a machine with this board have dedicated video cards, does the onboard video work at all with this or no? I'm hoping to use the onboard until I can save up enough money for a video card. Haven't been able to find an answer to this one. In any case, thanks for the guide. Hopefully it's smooth sailings for me.

The built-in Intel GMA 3100 (not GMA X3100) is not compatible with either Leo or Snow Leo. It will work but you won't have QI/CE (VESA only) thus making it suck a lot - such as No resolution change, you might have problems watching videos, can't run a lot of programs that are QI/CE dependent, and lots more.

If you can stand that, you can just go ahead and install it while waiting for your dedicated video card.

BTW, when you decide to purchase the video card, make sure it is 100% compatible.

[Pibbman]

Thanks. Well, I do have a video card but from my understanding it hasn't worked since Tiger or something. It's a Sapphire Radeon x800 PCI-e, I might try it but from what I know it most likely will not work.

EDIT:

I went ahead and ordered the XFX 9500GT 1GB PCI-e, which is apparently said to work on the osx86project as well as having seen others running it.

[353inf]

Thanks again. I went to myhack installer page and reread ...noticed that I failed to follow 'post install' for sure. Little concerned that some 'fixes' seem to cause more problems. No big deal really letting usb stay inserted......boots system and then sleeps. You updated the 10.6.1 download? All the best.

[flukes1]

I've used the method described in the OP to install Snow Leopard onto my hackintosh with the following spec:

Mobo: GA-G31M-ES2L
CPU: E5200 2.5GHz
Graphics: 8600GTS (fanless)

I have a dual boot setup with Snow Leopard and Windows 7 both booting fine from Chameleon 2.0-RC3 on the same HDD. I'm using the dsdt.aml and smbios.plist given in the ES2L Kit zip, and have the following extensions installed:
fakesmc.kext
LegacyALC883.kext
NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
OpenHaltRestart.kext
PlatformUUID.kext
Sleepenabler.kext
In addition my com.apple.Boot.plist is set up exactly as suggested in the OP.

The system boots fine but is very unstable. It has never KP'd, but quite often the app I'm using will freeze, then the dock will freeze, followed by the Finder. At this point the system has to be forcibly powered down & restarted.

I had Leopard 10.5.7 installed for a few months before formatting and installing SL yesterday, but I've never experienced this problem before. Any ideas?

Update: I've removed PlatformUUID.kext and Sleepenabler.kext and added -legacy flag to force 32-bit kernel, will see if that helps & report back.
Update2: Switched off HDD sleep in Energy settings, ran chkdsk on the Win7 partition, and repaired permissions in Disk Utility - this seems to have fixed the problem, for now at least.

[Pibbman]

I got a question. I'm in my Network tab in system preferences, and my Netgear FA331 isn't showing in the list. When I try adding an interface, I'm only given the options of Built in serial port, VPN, PPPoE and 6 to 4.

From what I understand the FA311 is based on the Realtk 8139 chipset. Do I need to find rtl8139.kext first before it will show in that list or what? It seems IONetworkingFamily.kext doesn't work either. If i put in a new NIC, will it discover it automatically and show it in the list? I forgot to put the '<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key' deal when i installed SL, hopefully that didn't affect anything?

thanks for any help.

[Pibbman]

Ok, so I went out and bought that Dynex Gigabit PCI card at Best Buy, and it works without anything needed on my part.

I tested mine sound, and went by how OP told to set it up. The system sound plays sound, but when I go into safari and play a flash video, I don't get any sound at all? Gonna try normal media files and see where that gets me, but I can't figure out the flash video sound issue,

NEVERMIND. I forgot to change the Output tab too. Hehe. It works fine now. This is awesome! Now I just gotta test and see if my DVD drive works, and its all good. I also have to get around to installing Fusion, I wonder how that will work.

[syndoc]

Great info!

This is my setup:
Mobo: GA-G31M-ES2L
CPU: E5200 2.5GHz
Graphics: 8600GTS

I followed the instructions and everything installed fine. However when I reboot to my USB drive, the bootloader doesn't see the SL drive. It wants to load the installer again. Anyone have a suggestion?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Syn

[Pibbman]

Originally Posted by syndoc Great info! This is my setup: Mobo: GA-G31M-ES2L CPU: E5200 2.5GHz Graphics: 8600GTS I followed the instructions and everything installed fine. However when I reboot to my USB drive, the bootloader doesn't see the SL drive. It wants to load the installer again. Anyone have a suggestion? Thanks in advance for the help. Syn

I got stuck on this one too. Like the first time you load the thing by F12, you choose USB HDD or USB Thumb or whatever it was, and it was load and install. Then everytime afterwards it was gone or something. So during F12, I hit Hard Drive + and found that USB drive in there and it worked from in there.