Mac OS X Lion Hackintosh Guide

If you are interested in running Mac OS X on your computer but want to do it on a PC which is more powerful than the comparable Mac and built for a little over half the cost then a Hackintosh just might be for you. Click here to know what a Hackintosh is. This guide follows tonymacx86′s method, but it also attempts to explain every part of the process in detail, from beginning to end.

Things you would need:

1.) A compatible computer: Not every computer will work with Mac OS X, even with the help of tools like Unibeast and Multibeast. You could use Google to check if your motherboard and CPU are Hackintosh compatible. There are (incomplete) lists of compatible motherboards and CPU’s maintained at OSx86 wiki and tonymacx86 wiki. But a good rule of thumb is that if your Motherboard and CPU are post 2010 then most likely they will be compatible. Note: A very large number of desktop motherboards are compatible but in case of laptops the compatibility list is very thin.

2.) Unibeast Lion Edition: This is a small tool from tonymacx86 which modifies the installer of Mac OS X Lion and writes it onto a USB drive. You can then use this USB drive to install Lion on your PC. Click here for tonymac download page.(You will have to create an account first) 

3.) A Hackintosh with OS X already installed OR a real Mac OR or a Mac OS X virtual machine: Unibeast is a Mac application. Thus, for it to run and to modify the installer of OS X Lion you need run Unibeast in OS X. You could use my guide to install Mac OS X Lion in a VM and then use it to run Unibeast to prepare your hackintosh install USB.

4.) An empty USB drive (8 GB or larger): The USB drive used for Unibeast must be at least 8 GB in size. You can reuse this USB drive for normal stuff after you finish installing Lion.

5.) Multibeast: Multibeast is a collection of kexts that your Hackintosh will need to run properly, after the initial installation. Download it onto a USB drive from the downloads page of tonymacx86.com

6.) OS X Lion: This guide requires you to have a copy of the Lion installer app from the Mac App store, or the Lion USB Thumb Drive from Apple. Wherever you get your Lion installer from, just make sure that your file has ‘.app’ extension. Note: UnderstandingExistence.net doesn’t endorse piracy. Although it is possible to get your copy of Mac OS X Lion installer app from torrents, I don’t recommend it.

The Guide:

1.)    Prepare your pen drive for Unibeast:

Plug in your USB drive into OS X. Open Disk Utility, located in ApplicationàUtilities then follow the instructions in the attached image to prepare your USB drive for Unibeast.

2.)    Put your Mac OS X Lion Installer app in your Applications folder.

Simply paste your Lion Installer app into Applications folder.

3.)    Download and install Unibeast:

Download Unibeast from the downloads page of tonymacx86. Run Unibeast, press continue, agree to their terms and get to the following screen and follow the instructions in the screenshots.

Finally the Unibeast will start modifying and copying the Mac OS X installer onto your pendrive.

This could take a very long time(30min to 2hrs), depending upon the speed of your USB drive.

4.) Setting up your PC hardware

Open up your PC, and make sure that the SATA cables for your hard drive and your DVD/Bluray drive are plugged into the 3GB/s SATA ports on your motherboard, not the 6GB/s SATA ports (these should be labeled on the motherboard). On Gigabyte motherboards, the 3GB/s ports are blue while the 6 GB/s ports are white. The 6 GB/s SATA ports simply don’t work well with OS X. Usually 3GB/s SATA ports are light blue in color.

Unplug all USB-connected devices from your computer before you begin the setup (except your keyboard and mouse). A faulty external USB hard drive can cause your Hackintosh bootloader to give you EBIOS errors on startup.

Also, unplug any extra internal hard drives that your computer has, besides the hard drive that you’re installing OS X on. (Just unplug the hard drive SATA cables from your motherboard.)

5.) Change your Hackitosh BIOS settings:

Go to the BIOS of your Hackintosh. Then, Advanced—>S.A.T.A Mode, make sure that the SATA Mode is AHCI Mode. Also, change the boot priority, making your Mac OS X USB as the first boot device. Save and exit BIOS.

6.) The bootloader:

After exiting BIOS, when your PC restarts, it should load the bootloader.

In case this shows more than 1 option, use your arrow keys to select your Mac OS X installer USB drive, use any bootflags, if required and press enter. 

Note 1: In case you don’t see this bootloader screen, then most likely your boot order was not correct. Restart. Go to BIOS, make sure that the Lion installer USB drive has the first boot priority. Save changes and reset. If you still don’t see this screen, reformat your USB drive and redo the previous steps with a different drive.

Once at the bootloader screen, select your Mac OS X installer USB and press return(enter) to start installing. You may have to type extra command line flags to reach the installer. If you get a black screen, white screen, or flickering, reboot and try one of these options. In order to apply a bootflag, simply type it in(at the bootloader screen, shown above). When done press enter. You can type or hit arrow-down to access boot even more options.

Here are some common bootflags:
Asus Motherboard + NVIDIA Graphics – type PCIRootUID=0
Unsupported graphics or NVIDIA 6xx Series – type GraphicsEnabler=No
Boot in Single-user mode – type -s
Boot in Verbose mode – type -v
Boot in Safe mode – type –x

7.) Install Lion:

If all goes well, your Mac OS X installer will start. You will see the following screen.

Continue, and you will eventually come up to a page that asks you for a "destination" for your Mac install. Select the hard drive that you want to install Mac OS X Lion on, and continue.

In case you are installing Lion on an empty hard drive, or its your first attempt to install Mac OS X on a hard drive, then the hard drive selection box will be blank. You’ll have to erase that hard drive and format it in Mac OS X journaled format using the Disk Utility located in the utilities menu. Mac OS X installation will begin, it would take around 20 minutes. Restart.

At the boot screen, use the arrow keys to select the icon for the hard drive where you installed Lion. Press "Enter". If you fail to boot successfully, restart and now try with bootflags.

Note: Asus motherboard + Nvedia Graphics card shlould Always boot using the ‘PCIRootUID=0’ bootflag.

Finish the last remaining part of your Mac OS X install. You are done!

This was the ‘easy’ part. Now comes the post install.

8.) Post install with MultiBeast:

Multibeast is a collection of kext files that you’ll need to install for your Hackintosh to have sound, internet, a high resolution screen, and more. Kexts (or also known as Kernel Extensions – that’s how it got its name from Kernel + Extensions), are actually drivers on Mac OS X. Now one problem here is that unlike windows which is designed to work with seemingly infinite variety of hardware and thus has incredible driver support built in, OS X has support of only those (internal) hardware components which apple makes thus getting all your Hackintosh hardware to work can be challenging. But Multibeast makes this process easy.

Different Hackintosh builds require different Multibeast setups, though most setups are very similar. Use Google to find out what kexts you need for your setup. Google ‘your motherboard name here Multibeast setup’.

Also check the user DSDT section at tonymacx86.com here to see if you have a pre made set of kexts for your motherboard that would make Sound, Bluetooth, Graphics card work. To make the user DSDT work, download the file, rename it DSDT and put in on your desktop. Now open Multibeast and select user DSDT option, install and you are done. Its important to note that user DSDT is specific to a Motherboard and its BIOS number. You will have to upgrade or downgrade your BIOS version to match that of the user DSDT. DSDTs are basically collection of kexts custom packaged for your motherboard.

I have ASUS P8P67 Pro, and I have everything working(Sound, Bluetooth, Graphics card). Ill be posting its post install guide soon.

That’s it. You are done. Enjoy your Hackintosh!