Dell Latitude E5540 - First Time Hackintosher

[Bceagles2010]

Hey Folks - First off, this site is great and has been a wealth of knowledge for me trying to figure out how to go about creating a Hackintosh, so thank you for all the content you've provided to date. I will readily admit I am a completely new to this, and as such, will probably ask or say things that don't make sense, or show my inexperience.

I am considering building a Hackintosh, and as a proof of concept, or at least get myself familiar with the process before I go out and buy new hardware, I decided to try to make this work with an old laptop. It's a Dell Latitude E5540 with Intel i5-4310U CPU. I believe the graphics are just integrated Dell, but speccy lists this "2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M (Dell)". I don't have the option to switch between integrated and discrete graphics from BIOS from what I can tell.

I have created a Catalina boot drive from an old late 2012 iMac using the terminal and this guide. I've tried the following in creating the EFI and choosing the right kexts:
1. created EFI from Clover using this guide and dumped a list of kexts I saw in a forum post for what I thought might be an analogous laptop. The laptop booted and after choosing install Catalina, hung at "voodoops2mouse".
2. I wiped the EFI and created a new one, choosing a different set of drivers directly from Clover using this guide. No additional ones were added. Install hung at the apple logo. I've tried a combination of different clover customizers since, and each subsequent one has also hung at the apple logo.
3. I wiped the drive and started fresh, creating install media, and trying new combinations of Clover drivers last night. Still stuck at apple logo. I also tried other USB ports (4) around the computer.

Here's where I stand:
1. I have not messed around with Clover configurator except to mount the EFI and drop in other kexts. I know there is a lot of power in this app to customize how the system boots (by creating a custom config.plist?) but I have no idea what I'm doing and wouldn't even know where to start here.
2. I've placed the kexts in "other" because I read that this would be read by all versions of macOS, not just the one I'm trying to install.

I am guessing the first thing that will be asked of me (if you believe the hardware is adequate and worth actually trying to make this work) will be to upload my EFI. Any guidance you can provide to do this would be great.

Thanks everyone

 

[Edhawk]

According to the good people over at OSX Latitude your Haswell Laptop will run macOS Catalina/Mojave etc.

I have attached a CLOVER folder for a Dell Latitude E5540 laptop, which you should use in place of your current CLOVER folder. Simply replace the whole folder with the one attached.

I think the VGA port is the only component that won't work with this set of drivers, kexts and config.plist.

 

[dvymew]

i'm currently at the same point as the threat starter, i have an esprimo q520 with haswell but it just stucks at the apple logo

if i try the clover from above i just end with a line of "+++++++++++++++++++++++++_"
in verbose mode and i'm kinda helpless at this point, i also did my own thing at the start, build the usb from the tutorial, downloaded all the kexts specific to my hardware and so on

the only thing i didnt try yet is installing an odler version

but i guess that wouldnt go either way due to it failing directly when trying to boot

 

[Edhawk]

That means you have a kernel panic caused by the use of the wrong OsxAptio fix driver.

The Clover folder provided above was for a Laptop, your Esprimo Q520 is not a laptop, so there will be entries in the config and drivers/kexts in the other folders that are not right for your system. Just because the two use Haswell CPU's does not make them compatible regarding their CLOVER folders. The Clover folder was created specifically for that series of Dell laptops.

Start a new thread/post with full details of your system and a copy of the CLOVER folder you were using before you poached the one above in post #2.

You should also confirm how you created your USB installation drive. If you have installed Clover in Legacy or UEFI mode.

 

[Bceagles2010]

Hi Edhawk - Thanks so much for taking the time to help. I'll try this folder this afternoon.

I didn't even know there was an OS X Latitude group. I will check them out as well.

 

[Bceagles2010]

Hi @Edhawk, I replaced the CLOVER folder with your zip, and boot progresses nicely until the screen just goes black. I’ve pasted a screenshot of the last line of the boot before it goes black. Is this something in how the install is reacting with my existing HDD? Or something with the video card?

 

[Edhawk]

@Bceagles2010 I have attached a revised CLOVER folder for you to use. I have made a number of changes to the drivers, kexts and config.plist.

One of the main changes is the deletion of the USBPorts-Exx50.kext for your Dell laptop. It was not set correctly for your system, in that the SMBIOS you are using MacBook Pro 11.1, which best suits your CPU is different to the XHC settings in the kext. The kext has been set to work with a MacBookPro12,1-XHC.

I have therefore added the USB port limit patches for Catalina, the rename patches for the three USB controllers and USBInjectAll.kext.

Give this CLOVER folder a try and see if it fixes the IOConsolUsers kernel panic.

 

[Bceagles2010]

@Edhawk Thanks. I tried this again. Initially I got stuck at the "1683" apfs loading error, but trying a different port fixed that. I'm certainly getting a lot farther now. I get a short blip of the screen on "NVDAStartup", but everything comes back and continues a few more lines before going permanently black at the following step (see attached).

I tried searching forums here and elsewhere for "firewall" "socket" "launchd" etc. with very few results as to what might be causing this. The one solution I did see related to nv_disable = 1, which appears to already be set in my installation based on the log history in the screenshot.

Thanks again for your help and patience. I'm hoping at some point my sleuthing skills will get to a point I don't have to run back here each time something fails.

 

[Edhawk]

I have made a few amendments to the config.plist attached. Try booting with this one, in place of your current config.

Just to confirm, you have selected the Intel GPU as the first graphics device in your bios, yes. As the error after the 'MyListenerSocket' KP is usually related to the Nvidia GPU. Adding nv_disable=1 to the config.plist boot arguments usually fixes this, as this boot argument is already present in your config, I am not too sure what could be causing the KP.

 

[Bceagles2010]

Hi @Edhawk SUCCESS! I've booted through to the setup, and currently going through disk utility. Your prompt about the video card forced me to dig a bit deeper and make sure I was truly using the iGPU.

I found this article, here that shows that the Latitude E5540 can't switch between video cards in BIOS, and the Nvidia control panel needs to be used. Not sure if that was causing the problem, or maybe your new config file did the trick. I selected the integrated card as preferred and then went through and disabled and uninstalled all the drivers for the Nvidia card just to make sure. On reboot, windows could only find the integrated card.

Working my way through a clean install now, as I realized my windows partition was MBR and not GPT. I'll go back and install windows after.

Thanks so much for your help. I hope this thread can help someone else down the road. The guides here are great but do you know of any broader educational tools about what the config list is doing and how the kexts work? It seems like any small deviation in hardware or setup can really change things and it would be great to learn things on a more generic level so I can adapt to roadblocks in the future.

 

[Edhawk]

I am really pleased to hear that you have been successful installing macOS.

The way I discovered the things I know was by setting up different systems. Each throwing up different issues, requiring different Kexts, drivers and config.plist settings. Including a few early AMD hack’s

This is knowledge learned over a number of years, with an awful lot of reading, trial and error tests and a lot of mistakes. it is not something that just happens or is easy to get working.

There are no real tutorials for what you are asking, it is all down to how serious and dedicated you are to getting to know what is really happening when you try to hack a system.

Whatever you do, make a backup of your working macOS drive before you start changing anything!

I can’t tell you the number of times I had to reinstall Snow Leopard and the other versions of OS X, macOS until I got it through my head that having a working backup was essential before making any changes.

I use Carbon Copy Clover to make bootable clones of my macOS drives, for my hack’s and real Macs. Costs around £20 for a full licence!

Best money you will ever spend. I promise you it is so worth the cost.

Best of luck I your Hackintosh journey!