How to Install Snow leopard on PC With Rebel EFI

23 October 2009 by Vinay 30 Comments

Psystar released Rebel EFI a new and easy way to install Snow Leopard on Custom built PC/ Notebooks. If you don’t know it’s not a new method, David Elliot released BOOT-132 sometime around June 2008 which allows you to boot retail DVDs, Use Mac OS X Retail DVD on hackintoshes. The principle behind Rebel EFI is as same as Boot 132 “ Rebel EFI preloads an environment on the system from which OS X can boot and operate. The boot loader stores the necessary files (kext files) in a .img collection or simply a folder. The luxury of this new installation method includes the ability to boot and install from a retail Leopard DVD and update straight from Apple.”

Rebel EFI will cost you 50$ but if you are a little adventurous then you can do it at your own and free of cost. We have guides to install OS X on your PC.

This is how it’s done, you burn a Rebel EFI ISO (which has the bootloader on it) to a CD. As computer boots up select, Boot Options or Boot Menu Key. When prompted, Eject the CD and it will ask for the Snow Leopard DVD, swap the BOOT CD with the Snow LEO Retail DVD and Snow Leo starts to load. The procedure isn’t simple as it looks you need to take care of some basic rules which are described below.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

< Prepare your System for Rebel EFI >

_____________________________________________________________________________________

1). Which Configuration is Supported :

AMD system aren’t supported >> To use Mac OS X Vanilla DVD it needs a Intel "Mac" closer system, like a Intel Core processor and Intel Chipset. This is only combination supported by "Vanilla Installation", other processors and chipsets aren’t supported by "Mac OS X Vanilla system"
Intel system are supported >> Rebel EFI allows machines with Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem CPUs to install any modern operating system. Please note Core Solo, Pentium processors aren’t supported by Snow Leopard.

2). Essential BIOS Settings :

If when booting OS X your computer hangs at a screen with the Apple logo and a "no smoking" sign, you may have an issue with a BIOS Setting. To rectify this, follow these procedures

Advanced BIOS Features :
- HDD S.M.A.R.T. Capability [Enabled]
- CPU Enhanced Halt [Disabled]
- CPU Thermal Monitor [Disabled]
- CPU EIST Function [Disabled]
Integrated Pereprhals :
- USB Keyboard Function [Enabled]
- USB Mouse Function [Enabled]
- SATA RAID/AHCI Mode [AHCI]
- Onboard SATA/IDE Device [AHCI]
Power Management Setup :
- HPET Mode [64-bit Mode]

_____________________________________________________________________________________

< If you satisfies above said conditions then you can proceed further >

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Step 1. Download the Rebel EFI(Download Here) file and Burn the file to a CD. Insert the Rebel EFI disc into your CD drive and start or restart your computer.

Step 2. Once Rebel EFI CD loads press enter to run the CD, When prompted, Eject the CD and it will ask for the Snow Leopard DVD. Now replace the Rebel EFI CD with Snow Leopard Retail DVD.

Step 3. If every thing goes fine after 5-10 minutes the installation screen will appear. Hold your breath we are not quit yet here.

Step 4. Select Main Language, Click Continue, if you want to continue with the installation of Snow Leopard. Select the disk that you want to install Snow Leopard on. If no disk shows, Click on Utilities on the tool bar, then select Disk Utilities and follow the following steps.

On the left you should see your hard drive.
If not, a disk is not connected or cannot be read by your computer.
After selecting your hard drive click on Partition.
Under Volume Scheme, click current and select 1 partition.
Under Volume Information, name your hard drive.
Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
At the bottom of the window Click on the Options Button.
Select the GUID Partition Table
Click OK
Click Apply
Click Partition
Quit Disk Utilities

Step 5. Now you should be able to select the destination drive where you want to install Mac OSX.

Step 6. Now your disk will be checked for consistency than installation begins. It will take 30-45 minute’s as your hardware.

Step 7. When Installation completes restart the computer. As the computer starts up, insert and boot from the Rebel EFI CD. Once CD loads you will see both the Hard Disk and the Rebel EFI CD. Use the arrow keys to highlight the Hard Drive. Press Enter to boot Hard drive.

Step 8. Launch the Rebel EFI application from the CD and Follow the on-screen authentication procedure. That’s it.

We’ll continue to update you all with more details with new on psystar as they release. Till then stick with us on Twitter @ihackinjosh or subscribe our free daily e-mail newsletter CLICK HERE to keep yourself updated on every news about Hackintosh and iPhone.

Random Posts

30 Comments »

Sagar said:

thanks..
I’ve already started the download and surely let you know if I come across any issues….:)

# 23 October 2009 at 8:58 pm

Yonnie420 said:

Nice.. Can we get list of supported GPUs?

# 23 October 2009 at 9:05 pm

Vinay (author) said:

@Yonnie420 Nope, i just mailed to psystar for publishing supported hardware list. So far i have tested with ATI 48XX and it fails.

# 23 October 2009 at 9:32 pm

thedbp said:

Tried it on G31M-ES2L / Q8200 / Radeon HD 2600 XT – Booted to Apple w/ spinning gear, hangs after initiating the WiFi PCI card (verified in verbose mode)

Will remove the WiFi card and try again tonight. Also, I understand that radeon 2600 is not working fully under 10.6. considering that Psystar uses NVIDIA I doubt I’ll see support for this card coming from them.

Looks like this is a way we can use the retail unmodded DVD to install, then use myHack as the bootloader and tweak extensions as necessary. Sweet!

# 23 October 2009 at 9:50 pm

John said:

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 is this the same as a core 2 duo?

# 23 October 2009 at 10:09 pm

kpx said:

what are the benefits of using it vs open source alternative ones (chameleon/pc efi)?

# 23 October 2009 at 10:29 pm

Core Builder said:

That is really helping nice work !

but 1 questions
1. Rebel EFI activation free? i dont have onliny payment capability
2. How to get Snow Leopard Retail DVD
3. will it run on my Compaq CQ 40 with 3gb ram and 150 hdd ?

mail me or twit me plz

love u

# 23 October 2009 at 11:03 pm

Lucky said:

When I try to install Snow Leopard appear “no smoking” sign.
I have got motherboard Asus P6T deluxe v2 but in the bios I can’t find the settings of this guide.
Can you tell me the exact position of this settings in BIOS setting of this motherboard.

# 24 October 2009 at 12:25 am

jonnery said:

Help me!

Tried this a lot times, but I always end with a normal reboot.
I see the Boot Manager, a 5 sec countdown in the top right corner but no asking to insert snow leopard disc. I can do what I want. Won’t work…

Any advice?

Thank you…

# 24 October 2009 at 3:07 am

konteudos said:

Hi,

Here a video of Rebel Efi Booting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRyC0VY2tOw

# 24 October 2009 at 5:12 am

raj said:

can i install it from usb flash drive using this rebel efi?????replyyy
pls..thnx

# 24 October 2009 at 4:22 pm

Koa said:

@jonnery, I get the same thing!

I see no boot icons (CDROM, Windows, etc) – I only see a boot screen with a five second timer in the upper-right corner and “1 boot volumes detected” in the lower-left. When the five second timer is up, Windows boots.

So frustrating!

# 24 October 2009 at 10:31 pm

bob said:

Everything worked for me except sound doesn’t work. What should I do?

# 25 October 2009 at 12:12 am

Adam said:

Will this leave your main OS intact or is it a replacement? i.e can you dual boot?

# 25 October 2009 at 12:15 am

victor said:

does it support nvidia chipsets for the core2duo

# 25 October 2009 at 12:17 am

Paradox said:

similar to raj, does this mean i can install it on a portable hard drive?

# 26 October 2009 at 6:58 am

Slow said:

Is it so that Intel Atom won’t work? I would like to install it on my eee 901.

# 27 October 2009 at 3:06 am

hiltate said:

Theys spoil all open sources projects whitout mentions about authors. It’s a shame.
Just take a look on this bootloader:
http://chameleon.osx86.hu/articles/introducing-new-features-added-to-next-version-of-chameleon-part-1

# 27 October 2009 at 4:59 am

utomi said:

Similar to bob. Everything works fine except the sound. ALC889a(Realtek!). And it is very strange because the Rebel EFI app says the HD Audio works. Anyone else?

# 27 October 2009 at 5:31 pm

Bob Dobolino said:

Hi everybody,

i tried this solution, i don’t have any authentification code, it works, i just had to find kext/installers by myself to fix graphic card and sound, but now my question is how to boot the computer without the rebel EFI CD inside… ?

thx

# 28 October 2009 at 8:16 pm

Jay Lee said:

Mine worked perfectly with the exception of the sound card.
The OSX works fine, but i am not currently able to boot into windows…

choosing windows to boot results in grub loading : error 22.

and choosing the other hard drives does not seem to boot(tried this because i read somewhere it seems to show windows for any ntfs drive or something)

# 29 October 2009 at 3:19 pm

ckmaes said:

Koa / jonnery – In answer to the users getting to the Rebel EFI boot selection screen, but only getting “1 boot volume” with no icons in the middle of the screen. I was getting this for a while, swapped out my IDE optical drive for a SATA one and it worked fine.

A couple of other notes…

If you change the resolution once booted into Mac OS and the screen just goes blue, try swapping the video cable to the other port on the graphics card, worked for me.

Booting into Mac OS works automatically for me without the Rebel EFI disk in the optical drive. I believe this is how it is meant to work. I’m not dual booting though.

Hardware compatibility list – http://wiki.psystar.com/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility_List

# 29 October 2009 at 5:44 pm

Koa said:

@ckmaes, appreciate the response! I am using both an IDE drive and a SATA drive. I’ll try removing the IDE drive completely and see if that helps.

Thank you!

# 29 October 2009 at 10:30 pm

mickay said:

@jonnery

I am getting the same problem also!!
I get the countdown (which i can cancel using ESC) but no icons
It also says 3 boot volumes detected which sounds about right as I am already dual booting windows 7 and ubuntu…

Any idea what is going on here???

# 30 October 2009 at 8:50 am

Koa said:

@ckmaes, nothing’s changed. (It turns out that I have two SATA drives anyway, not one IDE drive like I thought.)

I tried unplugging one of the SATA drives, switching SATA ports, etc. Nothing works. I just get the same, non-gui boot screen.

It looks like @mickay is also having this problem.

# 31 October 2009 at 7:14 am

Andy said:

I am a relatively computer-savvy guy, but I could not for the life of me follow along on some of the hackintosh websites with the “step-by-step” newbie guides for doing this. So, I spent $50 on Psystar’s solution, which works like an absolute charm. I know a lot of folks are complaining about Psystar re-packaging open-source solutions and selling them, but I am exactly their target customer: somebody who is willing to pay for a one-step, click-and-go solution. /end rant

All of that having been said, I have a problem I am unable to resolve. I would like to be able to dual-boot a windows installation and OS X. I can install OS X, and I can install Windows 7, but I cannot get the Win7 installation to boot. I can’t remember the exact error code, though.

Anybody have any ideas?

# 4 November 2009 at 1:06 am

Rick said:

Tried using the REbelEFI. Didn’t work with my HP mini. Been trying to get support from REbelEFI. They have the worst support for the REbel EFI software. Don’t buy this software if you are not sure if is going to work on your computer. Psystar don’t give refund on software. Please don’t give them any money.

# 18 November 2009 at 4:14 am

Marc said:

Hi,

I have both Mac and PCs. I believe that if you really want to use a Mac, save your time and energy and buy any Mac notebook or desktop.

Fiddling is just a waste of time. How many time each of you have tried and tried and there is always that little thing that was unplanned and screw everything up?

Why having a “Half Working Mac” because some of the hardware is not recognized? No Wifi on your laptop? Damn, I always use Wifi and I can’t use my laptop out of my own wired LAN! Sounds familiar? What about that nice graphic controller with 1GB DDR5 RAM? Not working either? bugger…

C’mon, be real and get the real Mac instead of trying to play God…

If you check all the hours/days/weeks wasted trying to get this working because your ego is badly hurt and you read all those nice stories of people having the right thing working… depressing, isn’t it? At $25/hr, you have wasted easily the price of a nice 17″ macbook pro 8GB! Too bad.

Thanks.

# 19 December 2009 at 2:58 am

Nassro_36 said:

THNX brother for these beautiFul Object & these googd markes
But I have a problemes…
In Step 3 … I don’t have these…
because when he boot from the snow DVD he restart The PC
what is the problem here …
& how I can change my bios setting …
I have:
Phoenix Bios
Foxcon i945 Series
1 Gb ram
1Gb _ Nvidia 9400 Gt
Proc: 3.40 GhZ
Can any one help me please
ThnX All
My E-M: nassro36@gmail.com
I’m waiting for the solutions
TNX

# 18 February 2010 at 2:22 am

Marcus said:

Hi, I have an Advent ERT2250 with a Toshiba MK8037GSX-(S1) hard drive, and my bios settings don’t show any of the options mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial.
I have tried using my downloaded rebel efi disk and it works up to just after booting from the snow leopard disk but then it freezes and tells me to hold down the power button to restart the computer, there is no problem with the disk as I have used it on another computer (Acer Aspire One netbook) and it boots just fine.

Can anyone help me get past this error on the snow leopard boot for my system?

Thanks.

# 19 March 2010 at 10:53 pm