What myHack is:

The myHack application aids in the installation of a retail OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”, OS X 10.7 “Lion”, and OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” operating systems on PC’s which is commonly referred to as “Building a Hackintosh” or “Hackintoshing”. myHack is designed to save time by simplifying and improving on most of the installation process, by automating as much as is possible to do safely and cleanly.

myHack makes it quicker and easier for both novice and experienced users to create a functional OS X system and the myHack OS X Installation Disk that it creates is an invaluable resource for troubleshooting and repairing your system when/if something goes wrong.

What myHack is not:

It is NOT a replacement for the human brain and is not intended as a 1-click solution to install OS X on PC. Such “1-click install solutions” ultimately fail (just like “OSx86 Distros”) because they do not educate the end users as to why something is done, how something is done and where something is done.

These installation methods are not optimized for your individual system and often use dirty tricks or modifications which, at best, leave your system in a partially functional, damaged state and at worst, fail to function at all and damage your hardware or filesystem in the process. When you run into a problem in the future, which you will, it will be difficult or impossible to correct the problem without knowing exactly what has been modified on your system (which you won’t know since you used some auto-patching fail-ware).

Of particular danger is anything that includes packaged or ‘auto generated’ dsdt’s, while some may just be partially broken and fail to boot your system, as is often the case as even a clean dsdt made by hand has to be rebuilt when you change bios revision, memory or other hardware components, but if you attempt to use a dsdt which has invalid pstates and voltage settings for your CPU there is a very real possibility that it could permanently damage your hardware.

myHack is not a collection of scripts and files that were stolen from others in the community and passed off as original work. I have written myHack 2+ from scratch in c and I make every effort to credit each and every person who has contributed either directly or indirectly to the files or utilities it contains.

myHack 2+ – a new chapter:

Unfortunately myHack 1.x was pirated and bastardized by others, for what reason I do not know for sure, I know I have barely ever seen a dime in donations so I doubt it can be financially motivated, perhaps they just like to stroke their own egos by acting like they are skilled at something other than copying and pasting the work of others.

This unfortunate action prompted me to completely redesign myHack 2+ as closed source software, not only to protect myself, but to protect the end user from the dangers of using software made by people who clearly can not be trusted to act with integrity. If you have downloaded myHack from any site other than this one, please erase it and download the official releases hosted here to ensure that you are receiving a trusted application from a reliable source.

Most importantly, enjoy the journey, I have been involved with hackintoshing since apple first made the move to intel back in the OS X 10.4 pre release days. I have found it to be a wonderful hobby full of interesting people from diverse backgrounds. I hope you find it as enjoyable as myself and others have.

Please help yourself, read the documentation, and do join us in the Forum or on IRC if you need some help.

Happy hackintoshing!

-Conti

OS X 10.7.4 Software Update

Posted on 2012/05/12 by Conti

So I waited a few days to gather some information from users on what has gone wrong with this one before posting if it is safe or if caution is advised. The verdict – caution is advised.

This is the first update that I myself have encountered a problem with so I will attempt to cover what I know as well as what others have found, and how to fix what we’ve seen break.

First problem report I heard was – a kernel panic when running the combo update.

This was related to ApplePolicyControl.kext – when the update loaded it, the system panicked and left things in a non functional state. The users resolution was to re run the combo update from a separate OS X installation, remove the problematic kext when it was done and to then run myFix. This extension is removed by the myHack “Remove Problematic Extensions” feature but that won’t help if it is loaded on a running system by a combo update.

This can be avoided however – if you have an smbios.plist that identifies your system as something that ApplePolicyControl.kext will not panic on – no panic will happen, this was the case with my own system. So you have two options:

Create an smbios.plist for your system that ApplePolicyControl.kext will not panic on
Run combo update from another OS X installation, targeting the 10.7.x OS X installation you want to update, when finished, run “Remove Problematic Extensions” function from myHack.

Ok, next problem – This happened on my system. When the update was completed, I rebooted. The system panicked on IOPCIFamily.kext. So I rebooted again with -f -v, no panic this time, but the system hung when trying to load AppleHDA, and claimed that kextd was not running. So first I attempted to boot into my ‘fail-safe partition’ which is basically an extra myHack OS X Install Disk for 10.7 that I have on my internal boot partition so I don’t have to dig out my USB stick every time something goes wrong. It hung at the same point….

While I am not entirely sure why the separate partition with a 10.7.0 OS X installer on it was effected by the update the reason for it happening isn’t really important – the solution is simple – I plugged in my USB myHack OS X Install Disk, ran myFix – a full one, not a quick one – and rebooted – everything works fine now. So to sum it up:

Ensure your myHack OS X Install Disk is not attached or mounted on the system
Run the 10.7.4 update and reboot when it is finished
Boot to your myHack OS X Install Disk
Run myFix, select full not quick, run, and reboot when it is finished
Boot your OS X 10.7.4 installation

The last problem I have seen was reported by a user on the forum. His Nvidia GTX295 stopped working after the update. This is a problem I have seen in past updates and why in the myHack guide I always advise users to backup at minimum their /S/L/E directory prior to running any OS X updates. You may read the thread he opened on the forum HERE

The solution for this problem is as follows, and the following method can be adapted to virtually any hardware device that no longer functions after an OS X update due to Apple’s modifications of the System Extensions:

Prior to running an OS X update, always backup /System/Library/Extensions
In his case his NVidia graphics no longer work due to updates of the Nvidia graphics so he could either determine exactly which kext is the problem and replace only that one with the one from his 10.7.3 backup, or he could replace all of the nvidia graphics extensions including the frame-buffers
Determine which extensions you want to override in /System/Library/Extensions in his case he took all of the Nvidia extensions and frame-buffers
Place the extensions from 10.7.3 backup in /Extra/Extensions
Run myFix, reboot
Boot to OS X 10.7.4

A full list of the NVidia extensions and frame-buffers is in the thread I linked to, the clean way to do it would be to just grab the ones for your card specifically – I will be explaining to him how to figure out which ones he needs in the forum thread.

So there you have it, that is how to avoid the 3 most common problems I have seen thus far with this update. If you encounter a new one please let me know via the forum – I will update this post if needed.

Additionally, keep in mind 10.7.4 is pulling code in from 10.8 so there might be a number of issues for users who are still relying on older graphics or i386 libraries…

Welcome to myHack

What myHack is:

What myHack is not:

myHack 2+ – a new chapter:

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OS X 10.7.4 Software Update