D620 dvd reading issue

[oudeis]

Hi, 

 

First off I apologize if this topic has already been covered. I'm handling a lot of things right now and the cursory forum searches I've had time to do either turn up too many keyword hits or a few results that don't seem to pertain to my problem.

 

I just got a used D620 from a friend whose company is upgrading their equipment. It's running the A10 bios and appears to have all settings at factory default. I'm trying to install Snow Leopard from an Apple retail installation DVD and everytime I try  I get a warning that no bootable device exists. I tested the dvd drive and hdd by installing Windows 7 x64, which completed without issue, so I know that they both work (I wiped the drive afterwards by plugging it into the external dock on my main Win7 box and doing a quick format), but the dvd drive just doesn't recognize the disk.. It's worth noting that when I tried to install CentOS 6.4 it started the installation but hung up on an interactive screen where I was expected to hit enter to move to the next step, but no matter how many times I hit enter, or how long I waited after hitting enter just once, the process never moved past this screen. What is going wrong here? Shouldn't this drive recognize these disks? 

 

The installation guides mention creating a bootable usb key to start the insallation, but they all seem to presume that you don't have an actual oem disk, which I do. Do I still need the usb key to do this? From what my web searches have turned up, if this was an actual Mac laptop the OS should install, but then if I had an actual Mac I wouldn't be here, would I?     

 

Has anybody else encountered this? Can anybody tell me what the problem is?  Thanks.

[Hervé]

What you're experiencing is perfectly normal: you can't just boot an Apple retail DVD like that; you need a bootloader. That is the most basic aspect of hackintoshing... Since you're trying to use Snow Leopard, get hold of Nawcom's ModCD software image and burn it to a DVD. Once you have Nawcom's ModCD booted up, you'll be able to load and use that Apple retail DVD and install SL on your laptop's HDD.

 

You'll then be able to make an image of that DVD, image that you can subsequently use to make a myHack USB installer. That is what our OSXL procedure is based on.

[oudeis]

Thanks for all the help, and thanks again for not flaming me for such an RTFM question.  I would be at a complete dead end without your information.

 

Here is what I've been through in the past few hours trying to get this to work:

 

• tried to format a logical disk within Windows on which to install Snow Leopard
• tried without success to install the OS on the Windows-created partition
• downloaded Nawcom's BootCD
• realized I'd already downloaded and burnt it to disk last year  
• found out that I needed a 3rd party utility to format the disk as anything other than NTFS
• downloaded and burned GParted
• formatted the drive- incorrectly- as FAT32
• reformatted as HFS+
• installed SL
• got a boot0:error message after the OS took 60 minutes out of the estimated 30 minute installation time

 

So after jumping through all these hoops now  I find out I have to use something called unifail to get past this error

If I didn't already hate the way Apple does business in general, especially with regards to restricting the allowable hardware, I certainly would after all this. Truthfully, if I wasn't trying to learn this to increase my professional skills and widen my employment prospects I would never have bothered. I think I will regret to my dying day that I never had the chance to meet Steve Jobs and kick his ass on stage at MacWorld .

 

Anyway, I'm going to try to get this finished with unifail. If you have any further suggestions I would be most grateful. Thanks again.

 

[Hervé]

You need to sit down a little longer to finish to RTFM!  You've gone all over the place, in all directions, a bit like a headless chicken... You need to familiarize yourself with Apple Macs and Hackintoshing before you jump into this too quickly. You still don't grasp this bootloader matter in particular. Take your time, do your research on the Internet, you'll avoid frustration and disappointment, because it appears you're coming off a long way...

 

Your laptop is one of the easiest model to install Snow Leopard on. You're going to use Nawcom's ModCD to start with because "all" you have is the Apple DVD (it has to be the retail version by the way). You boot off the ModCD and when the background display appears with instructions at the bottom, swap CD/DVD for your Apple disc then press F5. The Mac OS X installer should then load off the DVD.

 

Once loaded, you'll have to click continue or next a couple of times and you'll get to the main installer screen. Go to the "Utilities" menu in the top menu bar and select "Disk utility".

 

You'll then see your internal HDD and you're strongly advised to wipe it out entirely, partition it with option GUID (not MBR); create 2 partitions if you want OS X + Windows and format your 1st partition Mac OS X (journaled); you can leave your 2nd partition unformatted for the time being. Once that is done, exit Disk Utility.

 

Back on the main screen, select your freshly made OS X partition (if you double click on it, you'll be offered to select/unselect a few options; you can uncheck languages and printers for instance) and proceed with installation.

 

At the end, you'll obtain a "vanilla" (i.e. a "natural" real-Mac-alike) Mac OS X installation that you can reboot into. You would normally be able to reboot straight into your fresh installation on the D620 (I know you can on a D620 nVidia) and complete 1st boot setup before you get to the Snow Leopard desktop.

 

At that stage, you'll have completed what I'll call your Phase1. Not everything will be operational yet, far from it, but you will be in a situation where you can prepare a myHack USB installer and then restart the installation process from scratch in a way that'll get your entire hardware functional under Snow Leopard.

 

Put your retail DVD back in the laptop and open up Disk Utility (click on "Go" in menu bar, select "Utilities", then "Disk utility"). You should see your HDD with its partition(s) and the DVD underneath. What you want to do now is an image of that retail DVD, so click on it and select "Image" at the top of Disk utility. Create that image under a name like "SL_image" and save it on your desktop. This will take a few minutes.

 

Meantime, go online and download myHack 3.1.2 tool. You'll use this to create a USB installer that will be bootable, will contain the while Snow Leopard installation package and the OSXLatitude bootpack that is necessary for your specific D620. Download the bootpack off our web site.

 

You're now going to need a USB key of at least 8GB, or an external USB HDD. That's gonna be used to create your USB installer. Using Disk Utility, partition it GUID and format it Mac OS X (journaled).

 

Once your SL image is done, run myHack, select "Create 10.6 installer" and follow the instructions displayed. Select your USB key or HDD as target volume. Towards the end, you should be prompted for an "Extra folder". Select "Use your own" and point to the bootpack you'll have previously downloaded. later on, if/when asked to remove kexts/extensions, answer "Yes" to all of them.

 

In the end, you'll have a USB installer that you'll use to re-install Snow Leopard from scratch, your very 1st installation just being a temporary one.

 

From there one, follow the procedure detailed on our web site, which you should read thoroughly, especially the EDP pages. Don't use unifail or stuff like that, our OSXLatitude method is much better on those D Series laptops and well proven.

 

Good luck.