This is a supremely nerdy post, so my regular readers who come here for the pretty pictures may want to skip this one.

I do a LOT of writing these days, and I recently decided I need a more portable laptop-ish device than my gigantic 17″ MacBook Pro. Something that only needs to run word and the internet and is small enough to fit in my purse. So, I hopped on the interwebs and found a great deal on Craigslist for a Dell Mini 10v, known by some as the ultimate netbook for Hackintoshing. Unfortunately, all the step-by-step guides online are horribly outdated, and it took me 3 days and about 10 attempts to get it fully working. Now that it is, I am LOVING my new Mac netbook! So, without further ado, here’s how I did it:

How to Hackintosh a Dell Mini 10v to OSX 10.6.7

UPDATE: Now with working audio! Instructions at bottom of post – big thanks to Damian in the comments. :)

These instructions are based off the very detailed but also outdated instructions from MechDrew. There are really only 2 big differences between those instructions and mine, but they’re important:

Loading time:

I ended up doing this whole process 4 or 5 times because it would pause at one of the loading screens for 15 minutes and I thought it had frozen, so I hard rebooted it. Obviously, since it WAS actually in the middle of doing something, this caused everything to fail and I had to start all over. If the loading screen hangs for a while, as long as the wheel is spinning just let it sit. If it takes over an hour, something is probably wrong but other than that don’t interfere.

Not Running Netbook Installer: (EDIT: jk! See update at bottom for audio fix)

MechDrew’s instructions include manually running Netbook Installer after you install or update OSX. I believe that NetbookBootMaker has been upgraded so that now it runs it automatically whenever you install or update. I tried running NetbookInstaller manually on my first attempt at this, and it killed everything and I had to start over.

 

Necessary Materials:

 

Make your OSX Boot Drive – do this on a real Mac

Reformat the USB drive

  1. Insert your USB drive into your Mac
  2. Open Disk Utility
  3. Select the high-level USB drive item (the one that states the capacity of the drive, not one that’s beneath it and indented) in the left-hand list of drives.
  4. Go to the Partition tab in the right-hand pane.
  5. Set:
    • Volume Scheme: 1 Partition
    • Name: OSXDVD
    • Format: Mac OS Extended
  6. Click Apply
  7. Click Partition (this may take a few minutes)

Copy the OSX install disk to the USB drive

  1. Insert the OSX install disk into your DVD drive.
  2. In Disk Utility with your USB drive selected, open the Restore tab.
  3. Drag “Mac OS X Install DVD” from the left pane into the Source field in the right pane.
  4. Drag OSXDVD from the left pane into the Destination field in the right pane.
  5. Click Restore, then click Restore in the popup window.
  6. Enter your password, and then wait anywhere between 25 minutes to 2 hours for it to finish.
  7. When restoration is finished, close Disk Utility and eject the DVD.

Run NetbookBootMaker

  1. Open the NetbookBootMaker application. If a warning prompt shows up asking, “Are you sure you want to open it?” click Open.
  2. For USB Partition, select “Mac OSX Install DVD” – this is the renamed partition of your USB drive.
  3. Press “Prepare Boot Drive”
  4. Enter your password, then click OK. MechDrew claims this can take several minutes, but I’ve never seen it take longer than 15 seconds.
  5. On the popup window that says done, click OK, then exit the NetbookBootMaker app.
  6. Eject the USB drive.

 

Install OSX on your Netbook

  1. With the netbook off, insert the USB drive.
  2. Press the power button. When the Dell logo appears, press F2 to enter the BIOS setup. (I usually just start tapping F2 repeatedly as soon as the BIOS starts loading so that I don’t miss it)
  3. Go to the Adanced tab and change the following settings as necessary:
    • USB BIOS Legacy Support: Enabled
    • USB Wake Support: Disabled
    • Bluetooth: Disabled
  4. Hit F10 to Exit Saving Changes. Press Enter again to confirm, and the computer will reboot.
  5. At the Dell logo press F12, the one-time boot selector. (again, taptaptaptaptap)
  6. Select USB Device and press Enter.
  7. A grey screen will appear. Depending on your current setup, it may give you the option to select a boot drive; select “Mac OSX Install DVD” if necessary.
  8. The Apple logo, then a spinning wheel, will appear.
    • If the spinning wheel does not appear after two minutes, try power cycling the netbook and try again.
    • After the spinning wheel appears, it may sit on that screen for a while. As long as the wheel keeps spinning, just let it sit and think.
  9. Once the Install starts running, go through the steps to select your language and agree to the licensing terms.
  10. Once you get to a step where the top Menu Bar appears, open Menu Bar > Utilities > Disk Utility…. You need to reformat the HD so that OSX can use it.
  11. Select the icon for the internal drive.
  12. Go to the Partition tab. Configure:
    • Volume Scheme: 1 Partition
    • Name: <Any name without a space in it.>
    • Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    • Options…: GUID Partition Table, press OK.
  13. Press Apply, then Partition. When it is finished, close Disk Utility.
  14. Select your newly-formatted drive as the installation destination.
  15. Press the Customize button, deselect any feature(s) you do not need to save space:
    • Additional Fonts – These are only needed for specific languages with special characters.
    • Language Translations – These are to translate the OS into different languages. These take up a LOT of space, and are probably unnecessary for you.
    • Printer Support – Totally pointless, since Snow Leopard will automatically look for the latest driver on the Internet when you connect a printer.
    • X11 – You need this if you are going to use certain software (i.e. GIMP, FreeNX, CrossOver.)
    • Rosetta – Rosetta allows you to run applications that were designed to work on PowerPC-baed Macs (pre-10.4), it’s small so it won’t hurt to install just in case.
    • QuickTime 7 – Useful if you need to watch QuickTime movies that are encoded in older formats.
  16. Press OK, then press Install. Installation can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours.
  17. The machine should automatically restart when installation is finished. (If your Installer is almost to the end and says it has failed, it probably actually finished, just try to continue on with the guide.)
  18. Pull out your USB drive when it reboots and let it boot from the internal drive this time.
    • It may pause on the grey apple screen with the spinning wheel for quite some time. Just let it be.
    • It may also reboot another time and pause on a grey screen with a Hackintosh Netbook logo. Again, just let it do its thing.
  19. Once OSX loads, watch the setup video and create your account! Yay! You now have a fully functioning Hackintosh Mini 10v. :) However, you probably want to go on and update to the latest OSX release.

 

Update to 10.6.7 (do NOT update to 10.6.8)

  1. Don’t use Apple’s Software Update application – in fact, I recommend disabling automatic checking for updates entirely.
  2. Download the 10.6.7 combo update from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1361
  3. Run the Update just like you would run any other application.
    • This update is BIG and will take a while to install.
    • At some point it will reboot, and pause at the Apple/spinning wheel screen again. It may be here for quite some time – mine paused for almost 15 minutes.
    • It will then reboot and display the hackintosh Netbook logo on the loading screen – again, it may pause for a while, just let it sit and think and go make a sammich.
  4. Once it reboots again and loads back into regular OSX, you’re done!

 

UPDATE: Audio fix

The 10.6.7 update will break your audio, but running this here version of NetbookInstaller will get it running again:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/general-mac-os-x-discussion/23298-modified-netbookinstaller-20100616212351-dells-inspiron-mini-1010-a.html

 

I hope these are useful! If anybody tries these instructions and runs into problems, please post them in the comments. Actually, if you try them and they work 100% you should post that too. :)