Install Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on Lenovo G770 i5 Sandy Bridge HD3000 laptop.
I’ve tried all different ways of dual booting with windows 7 premium 64 on this laptop and Mac OS X 10.6.8 but I always get the “chain booting error”. The only way I can dual boot to the Mac OS X is to use the USB flash drive loaded with Chimera 1.5.3 (although 10.5.4 just came out, but it does have some bugs IMO). Anyhow, I can load lion dp4 with full QE/CI/CL and native resolution 1600×900 without modifying anything. If I use retail lion.app, QE/CI disappear unless I use the intel HD graphics kexts from the lion DP4 and it’s not very stable and the atheros wifi and ethernet don’t work well.
Lion is nice and new, but the best is to load both of these OS X to an external USB drive and play with them. This tutorial is for dual booting windows 7 premium 64 (came with the laptop) and Mac OS X 10.6.8 with the mean of booting from a USB chimera 1.5.3 boot loader. I’ve been trialed and errored many times and here is the sure way to get your laptop working with these 2 operating system. Things need to be prepared:
iboot-legacy, multibeast 3.8, chimera boot loader 1.5.3, UpdateHelper (for updating 10.6.8 from 10.6.3 without kernel panic) , snow leopard 10.6.3 retail DVD, update combo 10.6.8, external usb drive 250GB (4 partitions), 1 usb flash drive (small in size 256MB will do for chimera boot loader to boot to OS X) , my extra folder with dsdt.aml (this one has the display slider backlighting), if you plan to install lion, get myhack to make the lioninstaller, try to get Lion DP4, if not buy the retail and download hd kexts from DP4 (will be on the lion tutorial).
iboot-legacy_multibeast_updatehelper
Myhack download
Let’s get started
We need to back up our hard drive IMAGE, not files so we can restore in case something goes wrong using windows 7 back up tools. Make sure you select the boot sector also. Also make a window repair cd.
Burn iboot-legacy to a cd (no need dvd), download all the files above to a usb flash or put them all on the FAT DATA partition of the external USB hard drive we’re using to load SL10.6.3 retail dvd.
With external usb drive plugged in and iboot-legacy cd in dvd drive, reboot the laptop and hit F12 to select first boot device which is the DVD where iboot-legacy cd is in. Or we can hit F2 to access bios setting and change the dvd as the first boot device by default, choose the one that’s more convenient to you.
Now we need to eject the iboot-legacy cd and put in the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD. Wait for about 5 seconds then hit F5 to refresh the boot menu, the OS X Installation DVD should come up. Move the cursor select the DVD icon then hit enter.
If the iboot-legacy is correct, you should be in the installation screen in less than 2 minutes, in there, we need to access diskutilities to partition GUID 4 partitions, 1 for 10.6.8, 1 for lion, 1 for lion installation, 1 for DATA using FAT format.
When done, close disk utility then select the correct partition to install, I would name them usb1068, lion, lioninstaller, DATA for identifications.
It should take about 20-30 minutes to install, and watch for the reboot, because we need to switch the OS X DVD with iboot-legacy again, the best way is to hit F12 (after restart) to get to bios then replace the CD.
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Dog, great tutorial and videos. Before I give this a shot, I wanted to ask a few questions to make sure that this will work well for me:
1) Will this setup (once completed via dual boot option #2) be capable of using MacOSX’s Software Update utility to install future Snow leopard OSX updates, or will I have to stay at 10.6.8? (It’s no big deal, just curious if future updates for either Snow Leopard and/or Lion will require additional work to install on the laptop).
2) Is there any special tricks to backing up the dual boot system so that I can easily restore the entire setup without repeating all the steps again? In addition, would a single boot (MacOSX only) simplify the backup/restore significantly?
FWIW, I would like to use continue to use SuperDuper for my full backup/restores, and TimeMachine for my incremental ones… I am not opposed to using other software if necessary, mainly curious if superDuper would/should work for full backups/restores.
NOTE: My main concern is to have a simple restore solution in case the hard drive fails, be SUperDuper or some other package you recommend. I figure it’s important to know before starting since HDD manufacturer’s don’t make ’em like they used to 😉
3) Speaking of HDD failures, is this setup at all tied to the WDD 750GB drive? For example would I be able to upgrade to an SSD or hybrid in the future by doing a simple restore (sort of tied to question 2 in a way).
Thanks in advance, and again, great job on the tutorial.
I believe Snow Leopard ends @10.6.8, Lion is the new operating system and it doesn’t upgrade with hackintosh at all because we have to buy the OS @29$ on line.
Very good question, I haven’t thought of this yet, I backed up the hard drive BEFORE the Mac OS X installation using Windows 7 image back up. It doesn’t work after we installed Chameleon over the MBR. The best is to try Tom’s dual boot with Easybcd (which does keep the windows MBR), back up the windows images only.
This set up is for all Hard drives, but WDC750 seems to be the most problem ones. SSD, I have no idea.
I you install LION, it will upgrades well without doing anything, the only problem you will have is the AppleHDA.kext that needs to be removed before reboot for the VoodooHDA.kext to work.
It’s good that you do research before messing with the original Hard drive. That’s why I strongly recommend to install Mac OS X onto an EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVE and back up all original Hard drive images.
Hi,
I have used this process, your process and it works great. There is one thing I noticed. Random crashes. Where I will just have to reboot. Strangely enough, i found these only happen when i use the Ethernet port. With wireless, it is rock solid. Is it possible i need a kext other than what you have here?
Thanks a lot.
Hello,
I haven’t used ethernet much to connect to the internet so I don’t notice the crashes. If the ethernet works, the kext you’re using is correct, when it crashes, it’s the software you’re running. Why not Lion?
Cheers,
Hi,
I am looking at your lion install and have created the bootable usb. Using LION 10.7.2 and MY Hack. But some of the instructions on what to do with the extra folder is confusing.
Also, I understand what you are saying about the kext. But I have been doing heavy multitasking and copying large files to and fro across the lan using wireless with 0 crashes. If I connect via Ethernet, then start a transfer across the LAN and say, browse the web. It will crash. I didn’t believe the results either.
Ooops BTW thanks for your timely response. And this site is great.
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