EP45-UD3P Mavericks Installation Problems

[CAPTBobJ]

Folks,

My old Lifehacker Hackintosh has been running like a champ since I built it in Sep 2009. It started on OSX 10.6, I upgraded it to 10.8 with no problems using the TonyMac Unibeast and Multibeast method (I skipped Lion) and am now running 10.8.5. I thought I'd upgrade to OSX 10.9 so my wife would be running the same OS and Apple Apps on this box as on her MacBook Air. I downloaded Mavericks from the App Store and followed the TonyMac instructions to make a bootable USB drive with OSX 10.9.1 using UniBeast. Unfortunately, when I point the computer to the USB drive to boot, I get one flash of the screen and then it restarts and boots into my existing OSX 10.8 build. Here are the pertinent specs on what I've got:

Motherboard - Gigabyte EP45-UD3P (v. 1.6)
CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Boot Drive - Crucial M4 256GB SSD
Video Card - EVGA GTS 250

After my first failures I did some additional research and have tried a number of boot scripts that have been recommended for older Nvidia graphics cards. So far I've tried:

GraphicsEnabler=Yes NPCI=0x2000 PCIRootUID=1
and
GraphicsEnabler=Yes NPCI=0x3000 PCIRootUID=1
and
-x -v -f GraphicsEnabler=Yes NPCI=0x2000
and
-x -v -f BuiltInEthernet=Yes GraphicsEnabler=Yes
and
IGPEnabler=No

I also pulled everything from my USB ports except for the keyboard/mouse and USB jump drive I built with UniBeast. I've rebuilt the USB three times now with 3 different USB drives so I don't think that's the problem.

My guess is that the problem probably is the video card. I've not adverse to getting a new GTX 650 if I have to but obviously don't want to drop $125 if I don't have to.

Anybody got an idea on how to upgrade the old girl? It won't be the end of the world if it stays on 10.8.5 but now it's a matter of pride. I've been using Macs since I bought my 8 MHZ dual floppy Mac SE in 1989 and this has me stumped.

 

[CAPTBobJ]

EP45-UD3P Mavericks Installation Problems (Success)

Decided that the problem lay in the Nvidia EVGA GTS 250 graphics card. No combination of GraphicsEnabler and PCIRootUID would get me beyond the install screen. Since the machine isn't used for games, I decided to get an inexpensive (~ $50) EVGA Nvidia GT 620 card that reports indicated worked with Mavericks. At the Unibeast USB install I entered "GraphicsEnabler=Yes PCIRootUID=1". From then on it was smooth sailing with just a couple of adjustments. From another post on this same board I used the following MultiBeast settings:

MultiBeast
Quick Start: DTST Free
Drivers:
3rd Party SATA
FakeSMC v5.3.820
AppleRTC Patch for CMOS Reset

Bootloader Chimera v2.2.1

Boot options:
Basic Boot Options
Generate CPU States
GraphicsEnabler=Yes
Hibernate Mode - Desktop
PCI Root ID Fix
Use Kernel Cache

Drivers:
Audio: Without DSDT - ALC885/889a
Misc: FakeSMS, plugin and HWMonitor
Misc: NullCPUPowerManagement (HPET KP error and/or BIOS reset)
Network: Realtek - AppleRTL8169Ethernet 2.0.6

I guess the old girl lives for another day.

 

[pistooli]

Glad to hear it!

I was using yestarday my oldish Core2Quad platform with Maverick for browsing and could not really see any difference compared to my main computer.

 

[CAPTBobJ]

I concur that the feel and user experience of this old Core2 Quad w/SSD in normal office/web use is virtually undetectable from my office i7 iMac or my late-2013 MacBook Pro.

To put an interesting finish on this Mavericks installation sage, now that I had the old girl running fine with Mac OSX 10.9.1 with the new Nvidia EVGA GT 620 video card I decided to see what happened if I reinstalled the old Nvidia EVGA GTS 250 video card. Even though it is older the GTS 250 is a much more capable video card than the GT 620. Well I slapped the GTS 250 in and the machine started up and ran great. The GTS 250 is correctly recognized in System Information and QE/CI are enabled. So I guess I'll keep the inexpensive GT 620 video card around in case I need to the reinstall 10.9.

Ain't Hacks fun?

 

[alias337]

Thanks so much for these concise instructions CAPTBobJ. I had to use the QE CI Exotic Patch for 10.9.2 to get my ATI HD 4870x2 to work properly and the Localtime-Toggle pkg for dual boot with windows 7. Once done, everything was good - except I can not sign into the App Store because "Your device or computer could not be verified." There is a lot of information regarding this problem but I can't seem to find anything specific to Mavericks. Are you able to sign into the App Store? Any suggestions or guidance would be appreciated.

 

[CAPTBobJ]

I have no problem signing in and using the App Store. I don't think I did anything to make it happen. I vaguely recall some posts a couple of years ago that had you delete some file in ~/Library to make it work if you had problems. I did have a problem with using DVD Player. It kept saying that my DVD drive wasn't compatible (a Samsung SH 223). After a lot of searching in the forums I ended up getting a Liteon (~$20) CD/DVD player/burner and using a patched DVD Frameworks (found on TonyMac forums). To be frank I almost never play DVDs on the Hack but it bothered me that a piece of functionality was broken.

 

[alias337]

Thank you for your reply. I went thru most of those older threads looking for the simplest solutions (among those I'd not already tried) and came upon the suggestion to generate a new random serial number (which I did with Chameleon Wizard). This seems to have solved the problem.

I seldom use this build to play DVD and installed VLC as a work around. But, I have 2 Liteon Blu-ray/DVD and would really like to have them use the native DVD player. I'll check into the DVD Frameworks patch.

With everthing I've gained from your participation in the forums here and with the great probook threads I feel it's not said often enough - YOU ARE APPRECIATED!

 

[CAPTBobJ]

Thanks for the kind words. Here is the DVD Frameworks Patch from marioesantana:

 

[alias337]

After the lead you provided, I'd found marioesantanas thread, followed his instructions and used the patch given by marco909090 (reply#77) in that same thread. Now everything is 100%

Again thanks to you and all the contributors here at tonymacx86 !

 

[prefix27]

(SOLVED) EP45-UD3P Mavericks Installation Problems

Right on, this worked absolutely perfectly for me as well! I have the same board and an 8800 GTS card, but was getting hangups after unibeast when trying to load into Mavericks for the first time and set up some multibeast. Swapping out the video card for the GT 620 worked like a charm instantly, although I did have to wipe my HD clean beforehand. I am imagining there were some Snow Leopard relics it didn't care for or something. No big deal, had a Carbon Clone made before install. Now it's really just a simple Migration Assistant away from being back to normal.

And, after install, I popped my 8800 back in just to see, and without a hitch, it recognized it right away! Sweet deal. The only strange thing I see is that OSX thinks my 3.16ghz CPU is really 4.3ghz...? Not overclocking or anything, but hey if that what Mavericks wants to think for it to run smooth as silk, fine by me.

Now, to rebuild this sweet music making machine! Thanks so much for the info!