Install Mountain Lion on HP EliteBook 8740w

Hello everyone.

I've been trying to install OS X on my HP EliteBook 8740w.
A quick run-down of the hardware:
CPU: Core i5 540M
RAM: 4GB DDR3
Motherboard: HP 1520, Intel QM57 Rev.06
BIOS: HP 68CAD Ver. F.21 12/05/2011
Graphics: ATI FirePro M7820 (about the same as ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, but with fancier drivers available for Windows)
Audio: IDT 92HD75B3X5 and (not sure if relevant, but reported by Windows) ATI Radeon HDMI
Keyboard: PS/2 with HP QLB
TouchPad: PS/2 Synaptics
Ethernet: Intel 82577LM
WiFi: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
Modem: Agere Systems HDA
FireWire: Ricoh RL5C832
USB3: NEC uPD720200
WebCam: USB HP 2MP

I tried following the installation guide here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/43-simplest-mac-os-x-installation-guide.html
The Snow Leopard DVD didn't start the installer, but to my surprise worked under the latest VirtualBox under Windows 7.
So I used that to prepare the UniBeast Mountain Lion USB.

Now I'm stuck at trying to reach the Mountain Lion installer.
After booting from USB, it loads kexts for a couple of minutes and then automatically reboots.
I've tried several combinations of boot flags, but ended up with the same result.

What should I try next?

I had lion running in an elitebook about a year ago. I could not get it running w/o a DSDT. If yo can run OS X under virtual box, I would use it to install the OS on a hard drive. I would also try to get a DSDT compiled cleanly under windows.
The audio card works with voodoohda but I am unsure about the video card.

Good luck.

neuroman said:

I had lion running in an elitebook about a year ago. I could not get it running w/o a DSDT. If yo can run OS X under virtual box, I would use it to install the OS on a hard drive. I would also try to get a DSDT compiled cleanly under windows.
The audio card works with voodoohda but I am unsure about the video card.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

That's quite interesting.
Can you recall what you did to prepare the DSDT?

I've looked into this myself and found different tools for extracting DSDT yield different outputs, none of which were error-free.
The patches that I've tried to use on top of extracted DSDT seemed to increase the number of errors.

Assuming that I could somehow migrate the VirtualBox installation onto the hard drive, is it really more likely for that to boot than for the installer to start?

windwalker said:

That's quite interesting.
Can you recall what you did to prepare the DSDT?

I've looked into this myself and found different tools for extracting DSDT yield different outputs, none of which were error-free.
The patches that I've tried to use on top of extracted DSDT seemed to increase the number of errors.

Assuming that I could somehow migrate the VirtualBox installation onto the hard drive, is it really more likely for that to boot than for the installer to start?

Click to expand...

It was really hard to get the Lion installer going with my 8450p. The main issue was the need for ps2 drivers (easily fixable with the laptop support) and there was an HPET conflict with the USB ports making them useless - therefore unable to run the installer. The only way to get around it was to use a DSDT.

The person who helped me with the DSDT was Maldon over at insanelymac. You can probably still find the files in the forum.

Let me know how it goes. I love the elite books, they are wonderful machines and a pleasure to work on. I've been thinking about getting another one for a long time.

Good luck

Try recreate USB Unibeast again, with Laptop support checked. Remember to plug it into a USB2.0 port.
VirtualBox uses virtual devices, so I'm afraid you can't migrate it to real machine. I also got a lot of errors with the original DSDT. What I did is using DSDT Fixer to automatically extract DSDT and fix compile errors.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, I had included the laptop support from the beginning.
There's been some progress.
It runs some of the start-up sequence and crashes at the point show in the attached photo.

I've tried using DSDT Fixer, but it couldn't help with the errors.
After some research, I was able to make some changes to the .dsl to fix the errors (correctly, I hope).
I would really appreciate if someone more experienced could have a quick look at the attached archive to sanity check the couple of small changes I've made.

neuroman said:

It was really hard to get the Lion installer going with my 8450p. The main issue was the need for ps2 drivers (easily fixable with the laptop support) and there was an HPET conflict with the USB ports making them useless - therefore unable to run the installer. The only way to get around it was to use a DSDT.

The person who helped me with the DSDT was Maldon over at insanelymac. You can probably still find the files in the forum.

Let me know how it goes. I love the elite books, they are wonderful machines and a pleasure to work on. I've been thinking about getting another one for a long time.

Good luck

Click to expand...

I'm very interested in knowing what DSDT changes you made to fix the HPET conflict as that may be the same problem I'm experiencing.
Mald0n is very active at insanelymac, so it's not easy to find where and how he helped you. Could you please help me with locating this information?

The computer does have an eSATA port.
I guess I could try a virtual installation to real storage, but I'd like first to give a good try doing the installation the usual way.
Won't I be facing some similar and some different types of problems getting the virtual installation to start on the real hardware?

Here you go. Here's the link for the dsdt file:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/259676-dsdt-for-elitebook-8440p/

This DSDT worked like a charm for my 8440p.

The only problem was the VoodooHDA kernel panics. I am almost certain this will work as is for your laptop.

Check out my old posts for a guide on how I did it on the 8440p.

I am moving and won't have a working system until mid next week but I'll try to help you as much as I can.

neuroman said:

Here you go. Here's the link for the dsdt file:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/259676-dsdt-for-elitebook-8440p/

This DSDT worked like a charm for my 8440p.

The only problem was the VoodooHDA kernel panics. I am almost certain this will work as is for your laptop.

Check out my old posts for a guide on how I did it on the 8440p.

I am moving and won't have a working system until mid next week but I'll try to help you as much as I can.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link.
I used both the original and modified DSDTs to extract the patches used and applied them to the DSDT I extracted from my laptop and put the new DSDT.aml in the /Extra/ directory on the UniBeast USB.

It did have an effect because I noticed an improvement: it doesn't corrupt the CMOS any more.
But it still crashes with the same kernel extensions (IOHIDFamily and PS2Mouse) in the backtrace.

I've attached the original and patched DSDT again for sanity check.
Could the problem be somewhere else, outside of the DSDT?

I managed to get it installed using

GraphicsEnabler=No -x -v

and connecting an external display.
That is still the only way I can get it to start even after installing EasyBeast.
At least MultiBeast helped enable the wired Ethernet so I can keep researching the issues while using OS X.

Now that I have it installed, what's the best way to identify and fix the remaining issues?
I'd especially like to get the graphics to work well.

I think you sent me the PM.

We have the same laptop except mine is Nvidia graphics. I had no issues doing the install with unibeast. But I never did the second step, easybeast part. When I did do that back then, i never booted. So I ended up just leaving the unibeast partition of about 7 gigs as the first partition of my harddrive and let it be my boot loader. That could be a way you can do it as it works for 10.8.1 for me fine with no issues except I had to do a thumb wireless dongle and use voodoo for sound.

Only when I tried to upgraded to 10.8.2 last night did I get the exact same error message you got in your screen attachment. But I did that on a test partition so I am up and running still.

I attached a screen shot of my partition.

I also have a 8440w and that is a 15 inch and it has nvidia graphics too. I can interchange the hard drives. they both will boot on my Lion and mountain lion builds.

thedon said:

I think you sent me the PM.

We have the same laptop except mine is Nvidia graphics. I had no issues doing the install with unibeast. But I never did the second step, easybeast part. When I did do that back then, i never booted. So I ended up just leaving the unibeast partition of about 7 gigs as the first partition of my harddrive and let it be my boot loader. That could be a way you can do it as it works for 10.8.1 for me fine with no issues except I had to do a thumb wireless dongle and use voodoo for sound.

Only when I tried to upgraded to 10.8.2 last night did I get the exact same error message you got in your screen attachment. But I did that on a test partition so I am up and running still.

I attached a screen shot of my partition.

I also have a 8440w and that is a 15 inch and it has nvidia graphics too. I can interchange the hard drives. they both will boot on my Lion and mountain lion builds.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.
I had to revert to a 10.8.0 install and managed to install using GraphicsEnabler=No.
Eventually I managed to get most of the hardware working.
The graphics and internal display were particularly challenging to debug and fix.

The trackpad, trackpad buttons and nub are the only ones that don't work yet.
Do you have any tips on how to get those working?