higee

Thanks, I love the 2nd partition idea, as it always provides a live fallback as opposed to wiping the single partition and restoring from USB. I will get that going to sandbox every new update, combined with superduper (love their smart update) for cloning and restoring. The first one is security update 11-006, then on to Lion. Couldn't find anything in forums about the relative safety of this 11-006 security update, have you installed it? BTW, on my D630/nvidea with 10.6.8, all sleep/shutdown/restart functions seems to finally be working, including a very efficient sleep (pulsing power led) and wake when shutting and opening the lid. Regular sleep wakes from short press to power button. What is not working for you in SL?

Greetings from my 10.6.8 installation! Happy New Year indeed! Freedomrock, you certainly do! Thanks to all for responses, but the order of steps listed above was particularly helpful, and should be rolled into the USB pen instructions IMHO, especially with the 8GB key being too small to fit the apple install image (or am I wrong about this?). You cleared up several misconceptions: That iFail 10.6.3 install (or any other flavor) could mix with EDP, better to wipe and start over with 10.6.0 The USB keyboard is a must, I didn't think of that obvious workaround (or trust that it would be fixed by end of install) I wouldn't have thought it was ok to proceed with the 10.6.8 update when all was not functional in 10.6.0 base install (keyboard not recognized, wouldn't boot from hard drive boot loader, but would boot from usb stick boot loader). other noobs might have trouble with how and where to run edptool.command from terminal (won't run without ./ preceeding it since not in the path) after download and install of EDP, and that EDP also should be installed to the USB key for safety backup. I had to reinstall chameleon boot loader from EDP to get it booting from hard drive again. And I recommend installing iStat from EDP, it's veri nice. I have now loaded my 16GB install key (so much headroom!) with all sorts of downloaded postinstall goodies, including the 10.6.8 update file which otherwise takes an hour or so to download, and don't forget superduper (spend $30 for smart update/incr backup). I also want to share that most D630s come stock with a non-compatible OEM wifi card, but I was able to buy a broadcom card on ebay for $5. DELL provides detailed instructions on how to remove the keyboard and install. I had it installed, reassembled, identified and configured on next reboot all in under an hour. Thanks again to all, you have put me in the giving spirit toward this worthy community.

Hi Andy, Many wasted days have gone by, but I am determined to remain calm. Creating the boot pen took some persistence to put it mildly, but on the eve of success, the fresh install fails. It can't recognize the keyboard. I followed your boot pen instructions. Bought a 8GB USB pen (sandisk) as directed, and wondered why transfer kept failing (after hours of waiting each time... tried from my working iFail install, then windows XP). It turns out the boot image is LARGER THAN 8GB key capacity, that would have been really good to know. So I splurged on a kingston 16GB key. It then took over 10.5 hours to copy at bs=1024 got 0.2MB/sec (kingston claims write-speed is 5MB/sec) on my iFail 10.6.3 (overnight). This morning I copied the entire unzipped bootloader Extra directory for my 630/nvidia onto it, rebooted, but installer failed to load. Then I removed the previous Extra directory that came with the boot image and copied the 630/nvidia Extra directory again. Install runs, but now keyboard is not recognized, so after 30 min, the install ends fatally, unable to "bless" the boot drive. So anticlimactic! I did manage to get the apple install welcome screen, then can't get past no-keyboard message. I can tell there is no keyboard on install, because I can't relabel the partition prior to install. Please advise. Did I botch the bootloader somehow? Happy New Year

Hi, First of all I am so glad to have found this community and would love to make a contribution soon. Thank you. I just bought a refurb D630 for $280 with the purpose of building a hackintosh for developing IOS5 apps (xcode requires 10.6.5+). I have a successful iFail installation of 10.6.3, but still need to update to 10.6.8. I have tried the DSDT-free multifail route without success. More research landed me here. From your "Supported Models" page, I have downloaded your extra bootpack for my D630+nvidia graphics. I see some here have had success with 10.6.8 on my same hardware but i am a noob, and confused by the usb pen how-to saying "10.6.0 (not anything higher)". I did look around for instructions before asking directly (might have still missed it). I have tried running apple's MACOSCupdCombo10.6.8.dmg and then an EDP 1.9.2 before rebooting. That failed and I restored 10.6.3 from superduper. Do I run the apple combo updater inside my 10.6.3 session, reboot and then install just the bootpack extras from a pen? Or am I supposed to put the 10.6.8 updater on a pen with the bootpack extra and install all from the pen? Or something else entirely? thanks in advance.