Cannot get Mountain Lion to install on CustoMac 2011 build

[nobodynose]

Cannot get Mountain Lion to install on CustoMac mini 2011 build

I just started a build that is essentially the same components as the CustoMac Mini 2011:

• Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 mobo
• Intel Core i3-2105 CPU
• I will be using the HD 3000 graphics on the CPU
• 8GB Corsair RAM
• 120GB Samsung 840 series SSD
• TP-Link WDN4800 Wifi PCIe adapter (this is from a later buyer's guide, but should work OOB since I'm installing Mountain Lion)

I created the UniBeast installer USB thumb drive (several times, actually, to make sure it wasn't the problem), and when I boot up from it to start the install, it looks like it's starting the install process. 20 seconds later it errors out with the following error screen:



The message says "Install Failed. OS X could not be installed on your computer. The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Click Restart to restart your computer and try installing again." (for the sake of the search engine).

I've tried this install repeatedly and get the error every time. Can someone please help me with this? I've searched all over the forum and can't find an answer that isn't "your USB key is corrupt". I've made several USB keys -- they can't all be corrupt (I even re-downloaded Mountain Lion from the App Store to make sure it wasn't a bad download).

 

[nobodynose]

Just some more information - this thing is really behaving in a crazy way. Computers are supposed to be consistent, you should be able to get repeatable results when you do the same thing over and over. But this one is most definitely not behaving consistently.

I've been attempting to boot from the UniBeast (1.7.0 for Mountain Lion) installer. It always fails in some manner, but it's different every time. As an experiment, I've booted it repeatedly without making ANY changes to kernel flags or anything else (always doing the same thing). I get very differing results each time.

Sometimes (rarely) the installer will start up, but then crash before I can begin installing. It crashes in two ways - either the installer log window pops up, with a few error messages in it (I haven't yet been able to capture the log because it usually KPs while I'm trying to save it). But the errors are varied - All of them are from a program called "LCA" (I can't fathom what that stands for). One says "NSSoftLinking - The Librarian framework's library couldn't be loaded from (null)". Another says "The function 'LBCurrentProcessHasUbiquityContainer' can't be found in the Librarian framework." Then there's usually a message about bootp failing and a message that "DHCP en0: INIT transmit failed".

Sometimes when I boot from the UniBeast USB, I get the gray Apple screen with the spinning circle, which stays up forever (along with the LED on the USB key blinking). Don't know what that's about!

Often I just get the gray "mesh" background and nothing else shows up. Other times I get a KP (the dark gray box that says "You need to restart your computer" in a zillion different languages). This inconsistency doesn't make any sense, unless there's something really wrong with my hardware (but even that, it seems, would cause more consistent failures).

This is my fourth Hackintosh build; I've never run into this kind of problem with any of the other three. I'm at my wit's end here. Does anyone have any clue what's going on?

UPDATE: I am able to get consistent, predictable behavior in one instance: When I boot from the UniBeast USB drive and enter the kernel flag "GraphicsEnabler=no", I always get a kernel panic that looks like the screen attached. Can someone more knowledgeable than I take a look at this KP and tell me if there's anything useful to be learned from it?

 

[datsafail]

Try booting without the graphics card plugged in. Install OS X, then install the graphics card. There have been a number of issues as far as dedicated graphics are concerned during installation.