Installing Mac OS X 10.5 on a Lenovo S10e (using a retail DVD)

This content is 15 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Hackintosh Finder Icon by ~3ncI enjoy installing things that shouldn’t work together and making them work. I’m not clever enough to write the hacks but I’m OK at putting together the constituent pieces of the puzzle (with a little help from Google!). This time, the project was installing Mac OS X on my Lenovo S10e – at around 1.25kg and with a 10-inch display, this could be thought of as the ultimate Mac Mini!

Since I was given permission to install Windows 7 on the notebook PC that I use for work, my netbook (which was purchased for Windows 7 testing… at least until my son inherits it when he needs a PC for school) has been a little under-utilised. But with the MacBook now tethered to a monitor and acting to all intents and purposes as if it’s a desktop PC, the netbook would be a great little web-surfing Mac for use when I’m on the move.

There are plenty of guides for installing OS X on netbooks, but most of them involve downloading cracked distributions of the operating system. The difference here is that I didn’t do that – I used a retail OS X 10.5 (Leopard) DVD instead – and, although it may technically be a breach of Apple’s EULA (I’m no lawyer and, like most normal people, cannot comprehend pages and pages of “small print”), because the software was bought and paid for, I figure it’s at least morally acceptable and my karma should be OK.

I have installed OS X on a non-Apple PC before but the experience wasn’t great. Meanwhile the Hackintosh community has made significant progress, and Boing Boing’s Mac OS X netbook compatibility chart suggested that I should be able to get most of the devices in my S10e working. So, this is my guide to building a small, lightweight, “Mac” notebook , for around £400. Or, to put it another way, about half what you’d pay for an entry-level Apple laptop (MacBook) that’s not as well built.

To do this, you will need:

These are the steps that worked for me (based on John Mahoney’s post linked above – which was itself based on a tutorial on the MyDellMini forum by bmaitais but sadly taken down by Dell – combined with funkobongrip‘s retail install guide for the Lenovo S10e – also linked above):

  1. Prepare the USB Drive:
    • On a Mac, use Disk Utility to create two partitions on the drive – a 200MB FAT32 partition labelled TYPE11 and a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) partition labelled OSXDVD (and make sure that a GUID partition table is in use).
    • On a Windows PC, run syslinux -ma driveletter: from the win32 folder in the SysLinux download to make the TYPE11 partition bootable (there is no confirmation of success).
    • Extract the contents of the DellMiniBoot123 toolset to the TYPE11 partition, taking care not to overwrite the ldlinux.sys file.
    • Back on a Mac, insert the OS X install DVD and, using Disk Utility, create a new image, saved as live.dmg on the OSXDVD partition (it should be compressed and unencrypted).
    • Extract the System and Library folders from the OSXDVD.zip file (linked above) to the OSXDVD partition (to make OS X think that the USB stick is an actual installation DVD).
    • Copy the kernel from the Mac to the OSXDVD partition using sudo cp /mach_kernel /Volumes/OSXDVD.
    • Extract the OS X drivers for the Lenovo S10e (linked above) to a folder (e.g. Drivers) on the OSXDVD partition.
  2. Boot the S10 from the USB drive and press Fn+F3 until the display appears on the external monitor (only).
  3. Select the OSXDVD boot option (I have a feeling that DellMiniBoot123 should have given me a menu option to do something with the TYPE11 partition but it didn’t seem to, which I put down to the fact that I wasn’t running it on a Dell Mini – and v8.02beta produced a kernel panic, so getting anything working with v8.01 was a huge step forward – I’ve since read that 8.01 is for OS X 10.5.5 and earlier DVDs, 8.02 is for 10.5.6).
  4. The OS X Installer should run and, on the welcome screen, select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
  5. Partition the hard disk (I created a single Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) partition called Macintosh HD and exit Disk Utility.
  6. Continue the installation as normal and when it completes, allow the system to boot from the USB drive.
  7. At the boot: prompt, press the Esc key, then type 81 (for the second hard disk – I spent ages trying to work out why 80 wouldn’t work for me – but my USB drive was showing up as the first hard disk in the system so 81 was the internal hard drive).
  8. Back at the boot: prompt, press Fn+F3 until the display appears on the external monitor (only) and type -f -s -v to bring the system up in single user (verbose) mode, loading all kernel extensions (.kexts).
  9. Enter the following commands:
      /sbin/fsck -fy (and look for the volume name Macintosh HD – if it’s something like OS X Installation DVD then you are working on the USB drive!)
      /sbin/mount -uw /
      cd /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext/Contents
      nano Info.plist
  10. Insert <string>pci14e4,4315</string>
  11. (in sequence with the similar PCI device IDs) then save and exit Info.plist.

  12. Enter the following commands:
      cd /System/Library
      rm Extensions.mkext
      exit
  13. At this point, the OS X installer should continue, setting up the regional and keyboard settings, before presenting the option to transfer information from another Mac. I chose not to transfer information and was unable to connect to my wireless network (it eventually failed). The installer then moved on to allow me to complete registration details (not submitted), take a picture with the camera (for my account details) and set the timezone.
  14. Mount and run Chameleon_DFE_for_Hard_Disk.dmg from the /bootloader folder (in the S10e drivers archive).
  15. Run Kext Helper from the /tools folder (in the S10e drivers archive) and install the kernel extensions found in the /driver/system folder (AppleACPIBatteryManager.kext; AppleACPIPlatform.kext; AppleDecrypt.kext; ApplePS2Controller.kext; AppleSMBIOS.kext; and Disabler.kext).
  16. Restart the system and boot from the internal hard disk (on my system that was hd (0,2) Macintosh HD), then press the return key at the boot: prompt.
  17. Run Network Diagnostics to join a WiFi network.
  18. Run Software Update to upgrade to OS X 10.5.6.
  19. After rebooting there will be no WiFi, so enter -s -v at the boot: prompt and repeat steps 9-11. As the machine boots up you should see a message about the link being up on en0 (even link down shows that the device has been found!).
  20. Apply other software updates (for me that was Airport Utility v5.3.2; Airport Utility Software Update v5.41; QuickTime v7.6; iTunes v8.0.2; iLife Support v9.0.1; Airport Client Updater 2009-001 v1.0; Jave for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 2 v1.0; Safari v3.2.1; and Security Update 2009-001 v1.0) – if the downloads appear to have stuck, nudge the trackpad and the screen should refresh!
  21. After restarting there will be no WiFi, so enter -s -v at the boot: prompt and repeat steps 9-11.
  22. Using Kext Helper, install one of the sets of kernel extensions found in the /driver/display folder (in the S10e drivers archive) – I used the option with brightness controls but no mirroring (AppleIntelGMA950.kext and AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext) and copy the com.apple.Boot.plist file to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.
  23. Restart the system and it should should start up with no requirement to select a boot option, running at 1024x576px with 32-bit colour depth.
  24. Using Kext Helper, install one of the sets of kernel extensions found in the /driver/fan folder (in the S10e drivers archive) (AppleACPIPowerSource.kext and AppleACPIThermal.kext), then copy the DSDT Patcher utility to a temporary folder, run it (selecting 0 for Darwin when prompted) and copy the resulting dsdt.aml file to the root folder on the internal hard disk.
  25. Restart the computer and, using Kext Helper, install one of the sets of kernel extensions found in the /driver/sleep folder (in the S10e drivers archive) (ClamshellDisplay.kext and EHCISleepEnabler.kext).
  26. Edit /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEHCI.kext/Contents/ to include:
      <key>OSBundleCompatibleVersion</key>
      <string>1.0</string>

    under:
      <key>CFBundleVersion</key>
      <string>3.1.5</string>
  27. Replace the depency in AppleACPIThermal.kext by editing /System/Library/Extensions/AppleACPIPlatform.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleACPIThermal.kext/Contents/Info.plist to change the depency version below the key com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform to 1.2.4 (from 1.2.1).
  28. Restart the computer and install CHUD.pkg and AzaliaAudio.pkg from the /driver/sound folder (in the S10e drivers archive).
  29. Restart the computer and run Audieee from the /driver/sound folder (in the S10e drivers archive).
  30. Run OSX86Tools from the /tools folder (in the S10e drivers archive) to modify the CPU information in About This Mac (e.g. 1.6GHz Intel Atom).
  31. Finally, restart the computer – and hopefully, you now have a Hackintosh!
  32. About This Mac - on a netbook

Notes

  • This post is based on the work of a lot of clever people to whom I’m very grateful for sharing their experiences – I hope I’ve credited them all!
  • I’ve been running this for just over a week now and it seems pretty solid but your mileage may vary.
  • There seems to be a game of cat and mouse going on whereby posts are added to the MyDellMini Forums (this advice can be adapted for the Lenovo S10), then taken down (like this one), then new ones appear. Since I got my system running I found this comprehensive thread.
  • I still have to get some things working: if I let the machine go to sleep without switching off Bluetooth (using the button above the keyboard), it may not come back; and I have no wired Ethernet connection (only WiFi). There may be other items too that I have not noticed but I do have the following working: TrackPad; keyboard (although some of the key mappings are incorrect on a UK keyboard – Apple keyboards have the @ and the ” in the wrong places – even on the UK variants); display (1024×576); WiFi; Bluetooth; audio; camera; SD card reader; and ExpressCard slot.
  • Some dialogue boxes have buttons that appear off screen – this trick to scale the resolution may help (I haven’t tried it yet).
  • The Kitch has also written about installing Mac OS X on a Lenovo S10 or a Dell Mini 9 and the everyday Mac netbook. The menooB Hackintosh tutorial for installing a Mac Leopard OS X Retail DVD on a PC might also be useful.

64 thoughts on “Installing Mac OS X 10.5 on a Lenovo S10e (using a retail DVD)

  1. Your sleep issue may be fixed by disabling “Legacy USB support” in the BIOS. Works for the Dell :)

  2. @Mike – thanks, I’ll try that. I hope to write a follow-up post soon which looks at some of the outstanding items (as I get them working). This is one of the more enjoyable projects that I have on the go right now!

  3. This is extremely tempting.

    Is the Lenovo s10e the best netbook for the job? I am tentatively looking for a netbook, and its ability to run OS X well could be a deciding factor.

  4. To fix the problem of the UK keyboard “Apple keyboards have the @ and the ” in the wrong places – even on the UK variants” you need to download the “Logitech Control Centre” and then in the System Prefs pane / International / Input Menu you can select Logitech U.K. intl for the keyboard input and this fixes the keys.

    I also physically removed the windows key and the alt key and swapped them around so they now more closely resemble the apple (command) and option keys on my MacBook

  5. Hi Mark,
    I’ve Hackintosh’ed my S10e, following amru’s guide. That guide didn’t provide instructions for installing a kext to enable OS X to controle the fans though. So I found a kext for this purpose floating around the internet. But since I installed that extension I lost the use og trackpad and mouse.

    Can you help me out?

  6. @Kresten, Amru’s guide is based on using a hacked copy of OS X, this one uses the retail DVD. I haven’t really got the technical knowledge to advise on kexts but the ones I linked to here seems to have done the job for me (with no loss of trackpad).

  7. Yeah, I figured it out this morning. I did som more googling and found a forum thread that linked to a couple of kexts that resolved my problem. But thanks anyway!

    Btw, if I should decide to hack my Lenovo again at some point (e.g. if the installation for some reason should becom unstable), I think I would prefer your solution since it uses the retail DVD instead of, as you pointed out, a hacked version. It’s just way more elegant, imo.

  8. Contrary to my normal habits i didn’t drop a bookmark and I’m now unfortunately unable to find it…

  9. Thanks a lot – I’ve now got a working Hackintosh s10e and everything seems fine so far.

    One of the first things I did after finishing the instructions above was enable DVD/CD sharing (Like on the MacBook Air) – I found the instructions here.

    I got stuck on your instructions a few times – these are what they were:

    1. I had to use MFT rather than GUID on the USB Stick. Also Instead of creating the disk image on the USB drive, I simply used Disk Utility to “Restore” my Leopard DVD to the OSXDVD partition.

    5. Here I HAD to use a GUID partition table to enable the install.

    Items 9, 25 & 26 – I don’t know if it’s just my browser (Safari 4) but the long paths to the Info.plists does not wrap and displays truncated (I had to look at the source HTML to read the info)

    I also enabled Quartz GL using OSX86Tools – this seems to have speeded things up.

    I have installed iLife09 and that seems to work OK

    My biggest concern in installing OS X was performance and I can report that it turns out to be excellent (at least as responsive as Windows XP was – possibly faster.

  10. Sounds fab. I’ve seen the S10e – it’s the one our educationalist in BSF school bids recommends for students. The hack seems beyond me… I’m a Mac user since beige, but I have my own OS10 Family pack installed on iMac G5 and iBook G4. If I buy an S10e, would you mod it for me (at what price), please?

  11. Thanks Mark. This is wonderful. I have my S10 switched. It took about 2 hours to complete the operation. All the link and packages work great.

    Couple points learned –
    * After the installation step 6, my S10 actually froze after the Lenovo screen; I hard restarted it by holding the power button for 4 secs; it works after the second reboot
    * I was using the 10.5.6 retail DVD. Please remember to follow Mark’s comment to use the DellMiniBoot123 v.8.02beta

    By the way, I got the same information about 2.5G of memory in my S10, wasn’t it just 2G, as stated in the BIOS? I understand that there was 500MB got mounted on the motherboard. However, does that mean OS X can use all 2.5G of memory now?

  12. Thanks to everyone who has added comments with their experience – it really helps to know where the issues are. I have a follow-up post half written that picks up on some of the changes I’ve made since but I still have a few things to work on.

    @David, much as I’d like to help, I’m unable to as experience tells me that you will need some support afterwards and this is really a technical project – if you’re used to Apple reliability, you may be disappointed.

  13. Hi,
    thanks so far for the tutorial. I stuck between point 11 and 12. After typing exit, the system boots the internal drive and presents a login screen for a User called “Administrator od Macbook Air 1.1”. So there is nothing like setting up the system. And i cannot login into the system. When booting the external USB drive the normal installer comes up for a new clean installation of mac os x …

    what is wrong? can anybody help me out?
    Thanks

  14. Hi, Awesome guide. I have a problem though. I couldn’t use software update to update to 10.5.6 because 10.5.7 has been released, so I downloaded and used the 10.5.6 combo update image. I couldn’t update the rest of the packages because I couldn’t accept the License Agreements (the accept buttons were off the screen and I couldn’t click them), so I jumped ahead and installed the video kexts, hoping to boot into a higher resolution. It gets stuck on the blue screen without a mouse pointer just before logging me in. Any ideas ?

  15. @qmann – the offscreen part is why I recommended the use of an external monitor (so the higher resolution allows the dialogs to be fully visible).

    I haven’t tried 10.5.7 yet… even on my real Macs! No idea re: your stuck blue screen though :-(

  16. It is possible to scale windows in OS X. Just fire up a terminal window and type the following: defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.8
    The next program you launch will be scaled to a factor of .8.

    This probably won’t help qmann, but I’ve found it useful from time to time.

  17. Someone put together a nice little script for scaling your apps here.

    It gives you a dialog box to choose the application and then prompts you for the scale factor.

  18. This really is a very comprehensive guide… thanks for putting it together!

    I started working on making the 8GB Boot USB yesterday and followed the instructions to the letter, however, I’m still a bit stuck.

    The S10 boots ok, offers to switch to the OSXDVD partition, and calls the mach_kernel file and it appears to begin booting ok. It gets to a place in the boot sequence where it reports the uptime in nanoseconds, but then just hangs there… it doesn’t respond to jeyboard input and it doesn’t proceed.

    Not being very good with this level of stuff, I’m at a bit of a loss. Any suggestions?

    Also, what is the thing with the live.dmg file? I copied lime.dmg onto the OSXDVD partition, but I’m unclear as to how that dmg image file gets opened and runs…. where is the script that calls that image?

    Really hoping someone might have a suggestion to help me solve this…

  19. Hi,
    i took the journey through your superb installation guide till point 21. After installing the kext “without mirroring with brightness” my system hang up right before the Desktop or Login.

    Any ideas for further actions to safe my installation or i have to start from beginning again?

    btw. i took the combo update from 10.5 to 10.5.7 and all went well …

  20. @ Matze I was having the same problem as you this is how I fixed it.

    Download http://eba420.com/files/10.5.6_upgrade_pack_v2.zip

    in the zip there is a folder called display>>>>frist and Second
    open kext helper and install the 3 kexts it the 1st folder but before you reboot install the .pkg fill in the 2nd folder reboot you lenovo and there you go..

    im not to sure wtf is up with the files he gave here but I was racking my head for days and about 10+ installs thinkin is was some thing I was doing. Let me know if this worked

  21. @Goose: thanks a lot!
    I think it was the 10.5.7 Combo Update that doesn’t work correctly with this guide, after i used only the combo 10.5.6 and Files from “your” zip the display now works fine – but i didn’t test the files of this guide.

    Has anyone updated to 10.5.7?

  22. @Matze

    Im going to install a new 320gb HDD ill update to 10.5.7 and let you know what I come up with…I know ppl have done it, I have seen some one talkin about it…

  23. Thanks for this great article….its been really helpful.
    After 4 attempts I’m pleased to say OSX is up and running pretty well on my S10e.
    I used the display kexts posted by Goose.
    However, mine will not boot automatically, I have to hit return to select the startup volume. Also I don’t have any sound.
    Can anyone advise what may be wrong with my setup, and how to possibly fix it?
    I’m a noob, and would love to be able to fix it without going through the whole install process again!
    Thanks
    Adam

  24. @ Chris Betcher

    I had the same problem with the hang on the “system uptime in nanoseconds” we fixed it by downloading the bootloader 8.01 instead of 8.02 everything worked after that! Good luck

  25. Hi,

    Thank you for this nice blog entry! I’ll be trying this with my S10e.

    Could you send more information about the 2GB ram module you used ?

    I was looking at the kingston&corsair webpages but ‘officially’ there are only 1GB modules available for Lenovo ideapad S10e computers.

    http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/modelsinfo.asp?SysID=53659&mfr=Lenovo&model=IdeaPad+S10e&search_type=&root=us&LinkBack=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kingston.com&Sys=53659-Lenovo-IdeaPad+S10e&distributor=0&submit1=Search

    http://www.corsair.com/configurator/system_results.aspx?id=10176343

  26. Thanks Mark for the great tutorial! I bought the S10e yesterday, and just got it up and running tonight. A few notes from my experience:
    1. I had the same problem as some others with the video freezing after installing the video kext files and rebooting with the blue screen. I tried Goose’s fix and that worked. Thanks Goose!
    2. Since OS X is currently at 10.5.7, I downloaded the 10.5.6 combined update from the apple website and installed that.
    3. In the last steps when editing files I had to use the memory stick boot to get back to nano and complete those steps (I was unable to complete from the terminal due to permissions.

    Cheers!

  27. Mark, I am having a problem with step 7. After the installation, when the computer boots, I hit escape and the only volume available to boot from is the OSXDVD volume. It is noted with device number (0,3). When I type anything at the boot prompt (80 or 81 or 82, etc.) it ALWAYS boots the initial install. Any ideas why this didn’t work or what I am doing wrong? Thanks again for a great guide so far!

  28. Has anyone been able to figure out how to upgrade Mark’s version to 10.5.7 and get past the blue screen where the computer freezes after the upgrade? I tried using the Kitch version and that turned out to be a mess. Mark’s install is much better!

  29. Hi! I used this awesome guide to install 10.5.6 on my s10e. The fan seems to work intermittently and at seemingly random times. The CPU does not seem to be overheating, but I am wondering if this is normal behavior for the fan. Thanks you for your help!

  30. New S10e today. Immediately hacked it to 10.5.6.

    Comments/variations from Mark’s instructions:

    Step 1 (instant problem, not a good start!):

    Like Kevin, GUID didn’t work here because my Windows XP Pro laptoip couldn’t open the drive. Used Disk Utility to repartition using MFT which worked fine.

    Also, couldn’t see howmto get Disk Utility to use FAT32 instead of FAT16 but the latter works fine.

    Step 8:

    the -f -s -v options ended in a hang for me so I re-booted and entered single user mode using -s -v only. Then I ran /sbin/fsck -fy. I re-booted and tried -f -s -v again and all worked.

    Step 14:

    Kext Helper didn’t like the fact that I had no password set. Couldn’t figure that one out, so I opened the Accounts pane in System Prefs and gave myself a password.

    Step 25:

    Edit /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEHCI.kext/Contents/info.plist surely?

    Step 25:

    I copied Audieee into my OSX Applications folder and ran it from there.

    All working, many thanks Mark. That’ll do … until Snow Leopard! :-)

  31. If you want a refresher on dealing with .dmg file extensions for Mac OS, I can recommend the following: DMG Program Error
    It has some useful information on opening this type of files in a Windows environment as well.

  32. First off THANKS!
    I got an S10e for $250, or 50 less then the kindle I had been eyeing for TTS book reading… I used iATKOS v5 and short of the double partition that didn’t get picked up by the installer, everything went pretty well. I have a working OSX netbook that I’ll be sure to travel with! everything works so well, and FAST. I used your page as a crib sheet for the post install part…like getting AE to work by editing the plist, and kext. BTW, for iATKOS, kext helper wouldn’t work and I ended up using OSX86 tools app to install my kext files. Even tho I setup the root account, kext helper just couldn’t get past that…oh well. I’m typing from my netOSX, which I’m starting to call “Neetox” I’m a girl, what can I say? hehe

    I’m going to go try the screen resolution hack now…it would be nice if we had some sort of trackpad prefs…perhaps my distro doesn’t? the lenovos have a multitouch trackpad and I miss double-fingered scrolling :(

  33. I am having an impossible time with the display. I followed the install instructions and the screen becomes garbage as in comment 22. I tried the instructions in comment 23 and get the same results.

    If anyone has any advice it would be appreciated.

  34. Condemnky try this,

    press the space bar when it’s asking you to press any key…
    then type : -v -f -s
    it’ll scroll a bunch of stuff finally you’ll get to a prompt type this:
    /sbin/fsck -fy (this checks your HD for fragmentation and some other stuff)
    once it’s done type:
    /sbin/mount -uw / (don’t forget the -uw I often forget it ;) )
    now it’ll mount your system’s volume, so then type:
    cd /System/Library/Extensions (hit enter)
    rm -rf AppleIntelGMA950.kext (hit enter)
    cd .. (go up a directory, hit enter)
    rm -rf Extensions.mkext (hit enter)
    exit (hit enter)

    what you just did is remove the 950 driver from the folder. Upon bootup, Extensions will rewrite itself. You should have a screen showing now with a legacy type driver. you’ll need to play with this by finding other 950 drivers that seem to work with the lenovo. they one that worked for me was in a folder named no-natit-sometimes-fragments-no-brightnes-control (even though I have perfectly working brightness control …go figure.)

    I just played with a new kernel and I lost my mouse pref and my trackpad touch click and it’s a speedy gonzales mouse now…ugh. So lost the trackpad pref in my lenovo S10 bummer…

  35. I see that the Apple Store is down which probably signifies the imminent arrival of Snow Leopard.

    Mark, do you have any plans to install it?

    I also see that Lenovo has a S10-2 now with a 1024×600 display…

  36. @CharlieW… yep, Snow Leopard is imminent but it’s just a bunch of minor improvements really (and, despite the marketing, Leopard wasn’t a huge step forward from Tiger either) – I guess that’s what happens when you have a mature OS.

    My Hackintosh is back to running Windows (7) now, so no, I won’t be installing Snow Leopard on the S10. I looked at the S10-2 before I bought a second S10e a few weeks back but I didn’t like the look of it and I also read on Gizmodo that it’s not as good for running OS X as the original S10:

    “As far as Hackintoshing is concerned, [the S10-2 is] a major step backwards.”

  37. @Mark Wilson … thanks for the update. I’ll look for more on S10e and Snow Leopard. If I find good instructions I’ll post a link.

    Oh, and many thanks again. This has been good fun!

  38. Thanks a lot for this ace how-to, it works fine on my shiny new S10e! I installed from a 10.5.6 Retail DVD — is there any detailed guide on updating a system installed with this how-to to 10.5.8?

  39. @Ari – you will need to be running with sufficient priviledges in order to save the plist file. You might need to su or sudo for that (I think I used pico/nano instead of TextEdit too).

  40. I ended up experimenting with the 10.5.8 combo update on my S10e using a retail 10.5.6 install disk and have it working just fine. This post annotates what I did differently to the original how-to. Note that I did a first install of the graphics driver as described in step 21 before step 17 so I could accept the license agreements in Software Update (see 17a and 17b below). After applying 10.5.8, you will have to reapply two of the three kexts (see below).

    1. As already mentioned, I had to use MBR for the USB stick to boot.
    4. OS X installer forced me to use GUID partition table or it wouldn’t install.

    17(a)/21. I had to install the no-natit-sometimes-fragments-no-brightness-control driver, because the one suggested here gave a blank blue screen only.

    17(b). I applied all available updates in one shot, i.e. 10.5.8 combo update, various Airport Stuff, iLife support, iTunes and Quicktime, so I didn’t have to keep enabling the wireless support.

    19./20. skip (applied in 17b already)

    21. 10.5.8 won’t work with the AppleIntelGMA950.kext located in the drivers folder. In fact, I first applied all of the 3 kexts in the display/no-natit-sometimes-fragments-no-brightness-control folder, and then removed the AppleIntelGMA950.kext folder from /S/L/E and deleted Extensions.mkext in single-user mode, because only grey boxes turned up on reboot. After removing this kext, it seems the stock GMA950 kext is used which seems just fine, as noted on the link from comment 40.

  41. @Ari: Please try explaining your problem in more detail. Check that you perform the fsck and mount steps as described in step 9, or you will only have read-only access to the hard disk, which means you won’t be able to save the altered file to disk.

  42. Sorry for all the noobness. I installed mac os x and then I had trouble with do you own a mac loophole but managed to skip that too but then at software updates it said 10.5.8.Should I upgrade?

  43. Some more for 10.5.8 (maybe Admin can do merge?):
    – Apparently, the included battery status widget on the menu bar does not work anymore and displays only “Battery not charging” on battery. Select and drag the widget to the Trash, then install SlimBatteryMonitor instead which works just fine.

    – Sleep sometimes causes warnings about not properly unmounted USB disks. Use the hint at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080329201951648 to unmount before sleep and mount any attached devices after waking up

    – There is a different audio driver which now even has support for the integrated microphone on the left bottom of the keyboard. I replaced Azalia/Audiee with it and it works!! See the thread at http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3249 for more.

    Note that you will also need to install some Sleepwatcher scripts (see previous hint) for it to come back properly from sleep without crackling sound. Download the ZIP http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=07ac31240525ce0dd0d290dca69ceb5ce04e75f6e8ebb871 Move the two rc.* scripts and the toggleMenuBarVolumeControl.scpt Applescript to /etc/ (sudo mv filename /etc) and give them execute permissions (sudo chmod +x filename) and set owner to root:wheel (sudo chown root:wheel filename). [The rc.sleep script unloads the VoodooHDA kext on sleep, the rc.wakeup script reloads the kext and runs my toggleMenuBarVolumeControl.scpt AppleScript to show the volume control in the menu bar. Note that this AppleScript only works on Mac OS X with English language; you have to adapt some strings (e.g. “Sound”) in the file for support of different languages] Also, be sure to turn on “Enable support for assistive devices” in the “Universal Access” system preference pane, and click “Enable GUI scripting” in the “Applescript Utility” application for the Applescript to work.

    – “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screensaver” does not work for me; instead, I turned on fast user switching in the “Login options” in the “Accounts” preference pane und use the menu bar item’s “Login item” to lock the computer before going away or sleeping.

    Sorry to spam with comments, but I would like to share my experience as a Hackintosh newbie. Next miniproject will be two-finger scrolling.. ;)

  44. @hansi – your comment is not spam. Comments like this are what keeps this site alive – thanks for your input – it really is appreciated.

    …right, off to remove some blog spam from another post ;-)

  45. Let me go on then ;) –> Woohoo, I have working two-finger scrolling resp. one finger-scrolling using the coloured bar at the right of the trackpad. Get the kext at http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=07ac31240525ce0dd0d290dca69ceb5ce04e75f6e8ebb871 which includes changes for the size of the S10e trackpad in the VoodooPS2Trackpad plugin – thanks to the Voodoo team for the controller work and elk over at s10lenovo.com for the S10e modifications!

    You will need to remove some stock kexts for this to work — be careful as you can easily get a kernel panic on boot otherwise! Remove the kexts listed at http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2341#p16940 in the /System/Library/Extensions *and* /Extra/Extensions folder. If you don’t know how, just change to the directory in the Terminal (cd /S/L/E) and search for the kext, e.g. “find . -type d -name ApplePS2Controller.kext” and the search results is printed. Remove each of the directories with “rm -rf directoryName”.

    Then, install the VoodooPS2Controller.kext you just downloaded using Kext Helper. Reboot, and you should have a “Trackpad” system preferences pane, in which you can reenable “Clicking” and set speed options. The “VoodooPS2” pref pane at the end of System Preferences lets you fine tune scrolling.

  46. When I try to update to 10.5.7 it works.But then after installing Natit i have a login screen with apple logos.Then I tryied deleting the kexts using -f -s -v but I have a blue screen.I removed ApplicationEnchaner as well but I still have a blue screen.
    Please help!

  47. Another one in the 10.5.8 section: When checking “About this Mac” > “More info”, I noticed that “Core Image” under the “Graphics/Display” section was set to “Software”, which means that the display driver I was using did not support hardware acceleration.

    I found a very helpful post at http://www.s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3187#p21835 which changed the setting to “Hardware accelerated” and now e.g. YouTube videos run much smoother. So if your setting also says “Software”, I recommend to try this solution.

    For the people having problems with using an external monitor as an extended (not mirrored, unfortunately) second display, check the post at http://www.s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1920#p14413 for a hint on how to get it working. However, I did not have any problems with mirroring after installing the driver from the post listed above. Heck, even full HD resolution works on my external monitor!

    Basically, this only leaves Bluetooth (no sleep when turned on) and the Ethernet adapter not working. I need to take a look at baking my own DSDT file to get the combination of Bluetooth and sleep to work.. :)

  48. Hi,
    all i need is a nice theme to install on my lenovo s10e, aside the macosx, isn’t there any other themes like vista and other nice ones that can be installed on a machine with resolution 1024×576?. if there are, please link me and kindly teach me the steps to follow to do that. i would be very grateful, this lenovo machine is junk without them

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