Installation

It is best to have another Mac if possible when doing this. Before starting, open a text document and title it "Installation Attempts". In this document you will want to keep notes of everything you did. This way, if you mess up you can see why you messed up. You must understand that this process can take a lot of time and that it won't always work on the first shot. I had many kernel panics and had to start over many times because I had no backup drive. A kernel panic, for those of you who don't know, is when the OS detects an error internally that is unfixable. Sounds bad right? Well it is and you really want to try your best to avoid those. This installation info is for the motherboard I am use, EP43-UD3L, if you have a different motherboard I would suggest you try InsanelyMac or Hackint0sh.org, both of which have very helpful forums. Google is also a great source, but the links can lead to headaches.

First things first is to prepare the USB thumb drive. You will need minimum an 8GB USB drive. You will also need a copy of the Snow Leopard installation CD. Retail!

Steps

1. Follow the Lifehacker Guide to Building a Hackintosh, BUT ONLY PROCEED UP UNTIL THE PART WITH THE TERMINAL COMMANDS. Once you are at the part with the terminal commands STOP!

2. Use the same guide (above) and scroll down to where it says "Setting Your Bios". Use the pictures there to assist you in settings your bios. Your bios won't look like theirs, but most of the things will be the same so you can match them up.

3. Now that you have set your bios, you are almost ready to install. One last thing must be done to the USB drive before we install. Download the SnowBootLoader from InsanelyMac EP43-UD3L Installation. Proceed by running that on your USB drive. DO NOT RUN THIS ON YOUR ACTUAL COMPTUER! It will ruin your Mac if you do!

4. In the link above, also download the /Extra folder along with the other attached files. Next, place them all on your USB drive along with the SnowBootLoader.

5. Now boot off your USB drive. This can be done by holding F12 and selecting "USB HDD".

6. You will now boot into the Snow Leopard Installation disc. Click continue at the first screen after selecting your language.

7. Go up to the top bar and click "Utilities" and then choose "Disk Utility".

8. Select your hard drive and format it. Make sure that you format it as a GUID partition scheme, also make sure that it is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

9. Proceed by finishing the installation, it will ask you to restart the computer when you are done.

10. When you reboot make sure to boot from the USB drive again! Now when it shows the "Snow leopard installation disc" hit any of the arrow keys on the keyboard. You will then be able to choose your hard drive. Highlight it and hit "enter" on your keyboard.

11. Snow Leopard should boot normally. If you made it this far, the hard part is over! If you don't have sound, not to worry we are going to fix that.

12. Once at the desktop you will see the USB drive, open it up and locate those files we placed on it earlier.

13. Drag the "VoodooHDA.kext" onto Kext Utility. It will ask you for you password, type it in and let it proceed with installing it. When complete click "Quit"

14.Drag alc888.txt onto AppleHDAPatcher. Again put your password in and let it install.

15. Next, run the "About this mac" package. This will identify your CPU/Processor. This is aesthetic, but should be done any way ;).

16. Run the SnowBootLoader on the Snow Leopard Hard Drive.

17. Open up your Macintosh HD (or what ever you named your hard drive). There should be a folder there named Extra. Go to your USB drive and copy all the contents in the Extra folder to the Extra folder in your Macintosh HD.

18. Now open up the application Terminal. Paste the following code and hit enter:

sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /Extra/bonjour/ifconfig.command

19. Go to energy save and turn off sleep, it won't work.

20. Eject your USB stick and reboot your computer. It should reboot and boot right into the Snow Leopard hard drive. Update to 10.6.4 and you are ready to go! Congrats!

I hope this guide helps some of you out there. I know it can be hard to do this, but it is totally worth it in the end. Also, if the "About Mac" part of your computer doesn't show the proper information, that is because of your DSDT.aml file. I won't get into this now, but you can patch that to make the computer read the information correctly. Thanks to InsanelyMac and Hackint0sh.org for all their help!

~Dave