Dell Precision 380 & Empire EFI
 

First off, let me say that I am a complete noob to installing OS X on a PC.

I have a Dell Precision 380 that I am attempting to install Snow Leopard on with Empire EFI. Empire EFI loads fine, but when I run the DVD, it brings up a 'Boot device not found' error. What do I need to do to fix this problem?


Dell Precision WS380
Intel Pentium D Extreme 3.73GHz
Micron 4GB 333MHz DDR2 RAM
80GB WD SATA HDD
TSSTCorp CDRW/DVD
Intel i975X Chipset
Intel 82801GB Southbridge
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450/4000 256MB

Installing Retail on a PC that cannot boot the OS X stock kernel (Vanilla) is always a little more difficult... Have you tried with Leopard, yet? If so you could try to create a dualboot setup for the first time, using your exsiting installation to install Snow.

Apart from that I would recommend you to upgrade your graphics card to at least some 6000-series GeForce for use with OSx86.

I really want to try to get this working with as little hacking as possible. If I'm not able to get Empire EFI to work, I am probably going to try installing iDeneb or similar and use the USB install method. I don't really want to install it from Leopard because I want to have the cleanest install possible.

As far as upgrading the video card goes, that's not really something I can afford to do right now.

Install the snowy capable bootloader to the Snow Patition and erase Leopard one afterwards - you have the same "clean" installation as with EmpireEFI + one data partition ;) - maybe even better cause you know the fixes you applied. :)