jahudka

Out of sheer curiosity, I tried installing with a bootpack for the lo-res model of D830 with X3100 graphics card. Just to see what would happen. Once the installer went into graphic mode, the screen went black, but overall it seamed that the system didn't hang - caps lock still worked, for instance. So it occured to me to connect an external monitor and voila - the screen came up happily with the gray Lion wallpaper. Then it was just a matter of closing the lid to get the actual installer to show on the external monitor. So I tried installing on an external GPT-partitioned drive. I never got as far as an actual installation though, because it would always crash - not a KP, as far as I can tell, but an installer crash accompanied with full output of the installation log and a prompt to view/save the log or shutdown/restart the pc. The log didn't make me any wiser, but I think there were some lines about not being able to open some files because they don't exist. I didn't think to save the log and post it here; I could do that, but obviously solving errors that came up with an incorrect bootpack for my system doesn't make much sense. But it occured to me that I may have a damaged source DMG after all. With the wrong bootpack it seemed that the error is as random as with the correct bootpack, the difference being that with the correct bootpack the error doesn't show - instead the installer just freezes, possibly trying to show the error. One more reason to try a different DMG ) If any of you guys think that the error log from the installation with the wrong bootpack might be of any use, just let me know and I'll post it.

ok, but then it means that something else is wrong that causes the installer to freeze.. Any ideas what that may be?

Oh yes, there is - I currently have Win 7 installed on one partition and also I have a rather large partition with data on the drive. I need to keep the Win 7 installation for my work currently - I really need a smooth transition, i.e. one day I'm on Win 7 and the next on OSX. I can easily backup the data partition (actually, most of the data on that partition is already backed up, kind of obviously), but the thing is, I need to come home from work, reinstall to OSX and be able to work the next day - so cloning my system partition and restoring it in case of a fail is a bit cumbersome to say the least. If I knew for sure that there will be no problems with my OSX install, I'd have done it already, but until then I can't depend on it... Well if there's any other way of getting the installer to work, I'm all ears. My (wild) guess is that something goes wrong with myHack when it tries to patch the OSInstall framework and mpkg to enable installing on a MBR drive, something that a) does not fix installing on a MBR drive and breaks the installer altogether (and causes the freezing). Is there any way to bypass that step, and either leave the files intact (and install on a GPT drive) or patch the files manually?

Hi all, so I'm back at it. I got a fresh copy of InstallESD.dmg from a friend; this time it's 10.7.2. The installer still freezes before I can do anything useful. After a couple of tries I got as far as Disk Utility and I managed to format my target partition. But then again, in the Disk Chooser, the Installer told me that I need to repartition the whole drive to GPT. I believe I already know the steps to create the installation USB stick by heart. I already did it a thousand times with a dozen different USB sticks and a dozen different sources. I re-read all the related tutorials and how-tos, and then re-read them again. I just can't seem to find what am I doing wrong. Something is rotten in my D830. The two problems that I have are that the installer randomly freezes without ever giving up a clue as to what was the cause and that the installer won't allow me to install to a MBR-partitioned drive, though myHack specifically patches the OSInstall framework and mpkg to circumvent that. I believe the latter might be hinting at what the real problem is and solving it could effectively also solve the former, but I don't know anything for sure, as there has not been a single error message, not a single KP to give me a clue. The next step I'm going to try is a vanilla install on my friend's Mac Book, then reboot from his hard drive, plug my own drive in his Mac Book's USB through an adapter and apply the bootpack's Extra through myHack. Then I'll replace the drive into my laptop and I'll see what comes up... should God feel merciful enough, I might even get as far as trying to install the EDP. Then we shall see. Do you think the above method may be at all successful? Thanks!

OK, so IDE vs AHCI doesn't do it either. The installer booted without complaining when I switched SATA operation to IDE in BIOS, but again, in the target disk chooser, it told me I need to launch Disk Utility and reformat to GUID.

Well me neither. And I believe it wasn't always that way.. I don't remember having to replace the packages in the past in order to install on my MBR drive (I just never managed to get it properly running - I've had problems with EDP, touchpad / keyboard etc). Well, I already tried 10.7.2, but I'll give it another go and I'll try turning the SATA mode back to IDE - I believe that's about the only thing I changed in bios that was a permanent change and I believe I managed to install 10.7.4 before I switched to AHCI. It's all a bit strange and smells of black magic, but whatever gets me going

Thanks for that. I tried it and the installer did freeze, but not before I could open the installer log window and see that there's been a problem opening OSInstall.mpkg - the very package I had to replace in order to install to a MBR drive. Now that's an error I can probably fix, as soon as I get another hard drive to try a GPT install

Ok, some update's due, I guess... I've managed to install SL 10.6.3. First of all I ran the software update. That required a reboot (said something about what I assume to be a combo update). Anyway, after the reboot my system came all the way up to 10.6.8 and failed to boot at all. It just simply froze on something during boot... something different every time. Sounds familiar? Anyway, I never got to install EDP there. So I scratched that and reinstalled 10.6.3 again. This time I disabled sw update rightaway and then I installed the EDP - that's where my previous report comes from. And that landed me in a working 10.6.3 install, with Bluetooth working, WiFi (Intel) disabled in BIOS, touchpad being a little oversensitive (could be lived with I guess - plus, when I push a tiny little harder, it behaves as a two-finger scroll - on a non-multitouch trackpad! nice!), sleep not working at all (I close the lid, wait a while, but nothing happens - LEDs indicate the system is still running; when I open the lid again, the screen is blank and all I can do is press and hold the power button... bye sleep). Moreover, I cannot move on from here: a software update would probably break things, and I can't run the 10.7.4 installer directly, because I need to be running 10.6.6. or higher to install Lion from the running system. So, with a sigh, I shut the laptop down again and tried a 10.7.4 install with the Intel wifi and the Bluetooth adapter physically removed. Exact same situation as before: the installer freezes. Sometimes during boot, sometimes during install, once it freezed upon loading the language selector on the welcome screen. No KP, no error, nothing to cling to. I'm getting desperate. Anyway, I was thinking about maybe putting my hard drive into my friend's mac book and installing through there. Any tips on that? Would that be possible at all? What about the myHack finishing steps? I figure I should replace the HDD back into my laptop in-between the post-install reboot.. Heck, but I'm still trying!

Okay, so now I'm running 10.6.3 on my MBR drive along with Win 7. Friend's drive was needed elsewhere for the foreseeable future, so I went and modified the OSInstall framework and mpkg like before (only using files specifically for 10.6.3). So far everything is running smoothly, I just installed EDP and before I reboot, I thought I'd post this here as it might be useful.. This is part of what the EDP script told me: Step 2) Preparing kexts for myHack.kext Start by cleaning up in /Extra/Extensions Copying the PS2 controller kexts (mouse+keyboard driver) to /Extra/Extensions Copying the Audio kexts to /Extra/Extensions Check if we need NullCPUPowerManagement.kext for disabling Apples native power management.. Check if we need SleepEnabler.kext for enabling sleep... Copying IOATAFamily.kext to /Extra/Extensions.. Check if we need VoodooTSCSync.kext for syncing CPU cores... Check if we are using emulated speedstep via voodoopstate and voodoopstatemenu Copying Battery kext (VoodooBattery.kext) to /Extra/Extensions Copying BCM5722D.kext to /Extra/Extensions... Copying standard kexts to /Extra/Extensions.. Copying sl kexts to /Extra/Extensions.. cp: /Extra/storage/standard/sl/Extensions/*: No such file or directory Copying common kexts to /Extra/Extensions.. cp: /Extra/Models/Dell_Latitude_D830-intel2/common/Extensions/*: No such file or directory Copying sl kexts to /Extra/Extensions.. cp: /Extra/Models/Dell_Latitude_D830-intel2/sl/Extensions/*: No such file or directory As I haven't rebooted yet (in order to post this here), I don't know if those cp errors are going to be a show stopper or not; I'll be back with that info in a couple of minutes.

Hi there, just noticed that somebody's hacked the forum. Whenever I hit the bookmark in my browser, the forum page starts with a couple of error messages along the lines of Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /hotel/osxlatitude.com/forum/index.php(1) : eval()'d code:6) in /hotel/osxlatitude.com/forum/admin/sources/classes/output/formats/html/htmlOutput.php on line 127 and my antivirus sw pops up a window saying it's blocked access to a malicious site.. I've seen that before on another site, I believe it's a hack which is meant to "steal" requests to the forum in favour of a third party which means that for example you can end up with Google indexing your forum as "cheap viagra sales" and the like... All the best!

I will roger that, sir! Thanks EDIT: Thanks again, I now have a working 10.6.3 installer. Strange thing though, it still wants me to partition the hdd to GUID, even though I distinctly remember myHack saying it's patched the relevant OSInstall packages and OSInstall framework which I believed was meant to enable installing to a MBR drive. So the next step is trying to install to a GUID partitioned drive.. I'll have to borrow a spare drive from a friend again so that will take a day or two. I'll post the results then. Bye

Yes, I've got the Intel wifi, I'm disabling it in BIOS before even attempting to boot the installer, along with Dynamic Acceleration and Bluetooth. I'm yet to try installing with the wifi and the bt card physically removed as Bronxteck suggested, didn't have much time in the past few days.. Also, I have a little isssue with myHack while trying to create a 10.6.3 installer. I'm actually running 10.6.3 in VirtualBox, that's what I use to prepare my installation dongle. The issue is that when I opt to create a 10.6 installer, myHack never prompts me for the DMG; it just says that it's found a 10.6.3 install DVD even though I don't believe there's any way it really could. I think that myHack might be actually rebuilding the installer from the actual 10.6.3 system that it's running on. Anyway, I tried to let it do it's job a couple of times, but I only got to the part where myHack says it's gonna copy some 13 GB of data to the dongle and there it got stuck - it still looked like it's working, but there wasn't any progress for more than an hour. So I can't prepare a 10.6.3 installer to try instead of 10.7..

quick update: installing to a GPT-partitioned drive freezes as well.. BIOS confirmed to be A16.

Hi Bronxteck, yes, I tried all three USB ports available on my D830, though the WiFi and BT cards were physically inside my laptop everytime I installed - I only turned them off in BIOS. I'm using the latest BIOS (A16, I believe). The npci flag is one thing I didn't try recently, same as switching the HDD back to IDE - I'll try both of those if installing on a GPT-partitioned drive fails. Thanks, guys! I really appreciate your help.

Yep, strange it is... I'm borrowing a spare drive from a friend tomorrow; I'll try and see if I'm able to install to a GPT-formatted drive. I'm not letting my hopes high though.. this does seem to be an installer issue as I'm pretty sure GPT wasn't the only option a couple of months back (just an older version of myHack and the bootpack, same source DMG).

Hi Hervé, yes, there's a reason for that ) When I create a fresh USB stick with myHack, the installer won't allow me to install to a MBR-partitioned hard drive. And, answering your second question, yes: I have just the one hard drive and currently I'm running win 7 off it. As I do much like all of my work on that system, I can't afford to wipe it clean unless I'm sure I have a fully operational alternative. That wouldn't be a really big deal though: If I knew I can actually install OSX I could easily just do a backup on an external drive, partition my hdd to GUID and install with the stock myHack USB stick. But like I said, the installer freezes every single time, no matter what - if I use the stock OSInstall packages that myHack provides, if I replace them with the patched ones that allow installing on MBR, it even freezes with different source DMGs (tried 10.7.4 and 10.7.3), it freezes regardless of the battery present or missing... there's just no way to make it through the install, whatsoever I try to do. Unless I can be at least hopefull of succeeding with my OSX install, I can't really get rid of the win system... :o/

Okay, so it indeed does freeze with the original packages; it just takes way longer before it does. Tried again today with a fresh 10.7.3 dmg; same problem. *SIGH*

Hey again... so I tried replacing the OSInstall.mpkg and OSInstall packages and now I can select the desired partition on my MBR formatted hard drive... but guess what: the freezing problem is back again. I'll try putting the original packages back tomorrow to see if it really doesn't freeze with those and if that works, maybe I'll go for a second drive in the media bay that'd be GPT formatted...

All right, you have GOT to be kidding me... Gentlemen, I believe I cracked this. It's the battery. I bought my D830 second hand, so my battery life went pooh quite fast. I didn't want to spend a fortune on a genuine Dell replacement, so I bought a way cheaper "compatible" battery off of Ebay. Never gave it a second thought. Having remade the installation usb stick a couple of times using different machines to do the job and different usb sticks I was already running pretty low on hope. Just this last time when I was reading through various stuff regarding the installation process to see if I missed something the previous zilion times, a line in the Pre-installation guide caught my eye: "Our bootpacks contain almost every kext (driver) you need, except the battery and audio driver." Battery. Battery. Battery. So I tried again with the battery removed... And the installer just works! I'm now stuck at the disk selection where it tells me that I really need to reformat my whole drive to GPT (more on that follows), but instead of freezing right there after virtually a couple of minutes it just sits there, still operational, and operational still, and on it goes... WOW!!! I would never have guessed that. Well, obviously I did in the end somehow... Peter, if you're still watching this, do you, perchance, have a non-genuine battery installed in your system? Could you try booting and installing with the battery removed? I sure will laugh my arse off if this really is the issue... As to the GPT thing, I remember having seen that before, but I'm unsure now whether I had to fix that or if I had just recreated the installer with a newer version of stuff.. ultimately, now I'm using the latest versions of both myHack and the bootpack for my system; I read through the "Install OSX Lion on MBR" guide again that Darvinko pointed out before and it does say that myHack-based installers shouldn't need to be modified as myHack updates them itself. Tried searching, but the myHack guide just says that you can pick either GPT or MBR and I was as yet unable to find a reasonable explanation as to why this shouldn't work the way it's described. If anyone could point me in a direction here, I'd be really grateful ) I'm gonna try the guide mentioned by Darvinko anyway and will post results in a couple of minutes. Sorry for the "novelistic" length of this post, I'm just so excited right now! ) Laters )

Thanks for the tip, good reading, it will come in handy eventually - but I don't see how the target partition being not active could make the installer freeze before I actually do anything - I mean, it did freeze on me a couple of times before I even got to launch the Disk Utility (for example in the language chooser dialogue). Or even in the single-user recovery console in safe mode (-v -f -x -s at boot from USB), though that time it was surely when I tried to mount the drive, so it could be related. But in the installer that shouldn't be the case - why would the installer hang because of a partition being active/inactive before I can even tell it which disk we'll be installing on? Strange. I'll definitely try it, but I'm not overly optimistic ) will post results. EDIT: and right I am. Booted from installer USB with -v -f -x -s; at the bash prompt I was first trying to restore the IO80211Family.kext I replaced previously (just in case), so I did a 'mount -rw /', then some cd's and ls's and right when I was typing the mv command to move the kext from SLE to a backup place it froze (I guess upon a TAB-completion which actually never happened). The target hard drive was never mounted or otherwise touched, as far as I can tell. It might still be a faulty installation medium - I'll try to make a new one tomorrow on another USB stick, to rule out both software and hardware faults. Will report. )

OK, tried the IO80211Family.kext you posted and it doesn't seem to change anything - I can get to the installer, then it gets stuck at 21 minutes left (right after the "Packagekit installation begins" message appears in the installer log window).

The page linked does not seem to work - there's nothing there, but I suppose I found the article you were suggesting on the site and it says that myHack does the necessary mods itself during install.. .. sorry about that, didn't notice ) A16 as well. thanks, I'll try that.

of course I can't ) I'm not that dumb. I have a separate partition on my hard drive which I intend to use for my OSX installation. The partition table is MBR though and as I have other stuff on the other partitions, I can't just wipe it and swap over to GPT. Another thing is that I believe Win 7 would complain about being installed to a GPT-partitioned disk on a non-EFI system and I need to dual-boot. Yes, I did all of those.

OK, I'll try remaking the image.. and yes, I'm on a MBR disk right now, but I thought it is not mandatory to make it GUID, only that it's recommended..? I can't afford to wipe my hard drive clean right now..

All right, waiting out the BIOS setup does not seem to do it for me.. meaning after having left the laptop sit in BIOS for my lunch break (an hour and something) the setup still remained perfectly operational. So I wouldn't say it's faulty hardware. The install log makes me no wiser, either. Any ideas?