Yes, this guide has taken over a month for me to write and I have tried this out every possible combination of hardware setup I could possibly test, and I can assure you that if followed correctly you can easily have Leopard and Vista in a dual boot setup.

Loads of readers have sent me emails, dropped comments on my previous guides on installing Leopard and here is the guide for all you guys who waited so long patiently.

Disclaimer : This Guide is for educational purposes only, I suggest you buy yourself a original Mac. Also please do not post links to the Torrent’s as they will be removed.

Well before we proceed with the guide, here is the stuff that you will need for a successful dual boot setup.

• Vista Already installed on your Primary Hard Disk.
• iATKOS v1.0 DVD. (Do not ask me where you can download this)
• Windows Vista Boot DVD (Just incase something goes wrong)

Well now that you have everything ready, lets get started then. Please note this is going to take sometime so I suggest you have some Music playing near by and grab yourself a cup of coffee while you do this. Sit tight, here we go……….

• Install Vista on the First Partition of your Hard Disk. I am not going to elaborate into How to install Windows, I hope everyone knows it. If you already have it installed then read on..
• Right click on My Computer and Click on Manage. Select Disk Management. Now Create a new Volume for OSX by shrinking an existing volume. You need atleast 5GB of space and the new volume should show up as Unallocated.
• Make sure that the partition shows up as Unallocated, else repeat the previous step.
• Now restart the machine and boot into the Leopard DVD that you burned using the iATKOS v1.0 DVD Image.
• Press F8 as the countdown begins and type -v at the prompt and hit enter.
• You should see scrolling text on the screen now. If it stops anywhere then drop a comment and I’ll try to help you out.
• After a while you should be looking at the Leopard Installer. Follow the instructions on Screen.
• Once the Loading Bar vanishes Select Utilities -> Disk Utility .
• Select the Volume you created previously and format it as MAC OSX Journaled Extended. Once the formatting is done the volume is ready for installation.
• Now Close Disk Utility and Select Utilities -> Darwin Boot. Type Y at the prompt.
• At the prompt when it asks for the Disk Number enter 0. For the Partition Number if your Leopard Partition is 2nd on the disk, then enter 2 and so on.
• Accept the following prompts and you should see a success prompt saying that so many block of data were written successfully.
• Now get back to the Leopard Install Screen. Choose the partition that you made in the beginning and follow the instructions on screen.

  Please don’t select any patches etc during the installation, this is normally the reason for most failed installations. Just the plain install would do.

• Once the Install is done, reboot with the DVD in the drive. Press F8 at Darwin Boot Loader and type -s and press enter.
• Execute the following commands :

  fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
  flag 1
  quit
  reboot

• Now before the PC restarts remove the DVD. At this point you should be able to boot into Vista normally.

  Note: If you are unable to log into windows, because there is an error which says “winload.exe” correupted.! Relax. Just insert the Windows VISTA boot DVD into the drive and restart. Click on “Repair computer” once you are inside the DVD and it will automatically detect if a problem exists and suggest “Repair and Restart”. Press the same, and remove the DVD once the PC is about to restart. You should now be able to log in to vista without any problem.

• Now that we have almost everything running fine, lets proceed with the dual boot setup.
• Boot into Vista. Copy the chain0 file from the Leopard DVD to C:
• Open the “Command prompt” with “Elevated Admin” privileges from the Start Menu.
• Type the following into the prompt

  bcdedit /copy {current} /d “Mac OS X”
  bcdedit /enum active
  bcdedit /set {GUID} PATH \chain0

  In the first command type {current} as it is, literally..nothing else..just {current} with the brackets. In the 3rd command however, replace the {GUID} with the alphanumeric GUID you see in the enumerated list under MAC OS X. You can see this list on your terminal as soon as you type the 2nd command above.

• Close the Command Prompt and Restart Vista.
• You Should now be looking at a screen with two options to boot into Mac OSX or Vista.
• Select Mac OSX to see if you can boot into it. You should see the familiar Darwin boot Loading screen with the timer going down. If you dont do anything, then it counts to zero and again shows the menu screen with Vista and MAC OSX options. Dont panic!

  Again select MAC OS X, and now as the timer counts down, Press F8. You would see a list of partitions on your disk with their names. Select the partition with MAC OSX installed by using up/down arrows and press ENTER.

• Voila!! your Mac should be booting up as you read this..

See it was that simple. No more HFS+ and Blinking Cursor errors. Just follow this guide step by step and you should be able to dual boot Windows Vista and Leopard in no time. If you have any questions just drop in a comment, I’ll reply at the earliest.

For Drivers and Patches I suggest you look at the InsanelyMac Forums. This guide would have been nearly impossible without :

• Uphuck Forums
• InsanelyMac Forums
• OSX86 Wiki.

If you are looking to Install Leopard on an AMD based machine follow the instructions here to patch your iATKOS v1.0 Image. Special Thanks to I Am Nihilist

With its just a week to go for MacWorld ’08, Master Steve decided that he needs to push out all the boring announcements beforehand and give us something exciting on January 15th. Having said that, Apple yesterday upgraded its MacPro lineup making the latest MacPro’s the fastest ever.

Apple bumped the MacPro’s to an 8 Core beast of machine, and host of other upgrades making it twice as fast as its predecessors. Here is the base configuration of the MacPro that retails for $2,799.

• Two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;
• 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• Two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and
• Ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

On an another note, Apple has also updated its XSERVE’s lineup. By pushing these announcements out of the way before the MacWorld, Apple surely has a lot of things lined up its sleeves. Come on January 15th, Come fast!!

/Me Licks in anticipation

Update : If you are looking for a guide to Dual Boot Windows Vista and Mac OSX Leopard, please follow this guide Hack Attack : Dual Boot Leopard and Windows Vista. The Dual Boot Guide is a comprehensive guide and it should work for most of you with a little bit of hard work.

Here is a complete guide to install Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.1 (9B18) on your PC, in just one step that is as easy as it could possibly get. Just pop in the DVD and you are good to go, running Leopard in no time, with all the 300+ features at your fingertips.

Its been nearly two months, since I last  wrote my guide to Install Leopard on your PC in just 3 Steps. Well I wanted to write a better How-To that would answer many questions that people had from my previous How-To.

I am writing this guide for a novice user, who doesn’t know much about the various commands that went into my previous article. This is a one step process that almost anybody in this world would be able to follow.

Here are the basic requirements for you to proceed with the installation of Leopard  :

• A Blank DVD-R to burn the ISO.
• The ISO image to be downloaded from Mininova.

Before I tell you, how to install OSX I would like to tell you why this release by Uphuck and Eskurza is an important milestone in the OSX86 Project.

• This is the first ever Leopard DVD to come out with the amazing PC-EFI built in. If you are wondering what PC-EFI is all about, then let me tell you something about it :

With the EFI patch, the hackintosh can boot off VANILLA UNMODIFIED OS X kernel and use  vanilla kexts, which gives a more clean room and great peace of mind for future system updates.

To Know more about PC-EFI visit the OSX86 Wiki

• iATKOS (as this release is called) supports a variety of Hardware configurations, and many popular Graphic Cards, Network Cards are supported.

Now lets proceed with the installation of Leopard. Before that here are few conditions your CPU must satisfy to use this installation method..

• Non Core Intel Processors, no PC-EFI for you.
• Core Based Processors, for PC-EFI to work.
• AMD processors are not supported at this time.

Ok now, lets proceed with the installation :

Step 1: Installing Leopard

• Download the Installation ISO from Mininova. You can find it by performing a search for iATKOS v1.0i (Its about 2.09 GB).
• Once you are done, with downloading burn the ISO at very slow speeds to the DVD.
• Pop in the DVD and boot into it from BIOS and follow the Onscreen Instructions.
• Select the Appropriate Packages, based on your hardware and then proceed.
• Installation might take about an hour or so, so grab yourself a cup of coffee  while you install Leopard.

Step 2: That is all my, my Friend

• Didn’t I say it was a one step installation process. Yes it really was.. Congratulations you’ve done it.

That’s it for now. I will be updating this post in the future, when the AMD patch is released. If you have any questions, please drop in a comment, or ask your questions in the Uphuck Forums.

A big thanks to Uphuck and Eskurza for this amazing release. A lot of credit for all this hardwork goes to them. And ofcourse to Netkas for the development of PC-EFI. Cheers!

Please seed for atleast a couple of days, once you have finished downloading. This will help other people to get this amazing release faster.

Edit the following file:
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer.plist

Add an entry like this:

  <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
   <dict>
         <key>CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE</key>
         <string>0.62</string>
   </dict>

Save the file and restart your Mac and you should now be seeing the kind of Menu Bar that you have grown used to. The original tip from Steve Miner suggests a setting of “1”; this results in an old-school pure white menu bar, incase you set it as “0″ you get a dark gray Menu Bar. All values in between “0″ and “1″ give you varying shades of gray.

Hope this hack works for you. If you any alternative ways to disable transperancy then drop in a comment. Please note that this hack involves meddling with your System files. Please backup before you proceed.

Via Steve Miner

According to Apple, the update is recommended for all 10.5 users and the 110MB download includes “general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac”.

Most notably the fixed issues include issues with data loss when moving files, some firewall stuff, and some of the Time Machine problems. Actually the update includes quite a few improvements for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Official list is after the jump.

AirPort

• Allows password-protected accounts on AirPort Disks to show up on in the Finder’s Shared Sidebar.
• Resolves an issue with saved passwords for wireless networks.

Back to My Mac

• Improves the reliability of Back to My Mac-enabled Macs appearing in the Finder’s Shared Sidebar.
• Improves compatibility with D-Link NAT gateways.

Disk utilities

• Restores the functionality of the progress bar during permission repairs in Disk Utility.
• Addresses an issue that could produce an alert when creating disk images using Disk Utility or Terminal.
• Improves disk partitioning when multiple RAID sets are created on the same disk.

iCal

• iCal alarms are now more reliably delivered via email.
• Resolves an issue when inviting attendees via a CalDAV account.

Mail

• Improves stability when resizing columns in the message viewer or switching between Stationery templates in email messages.
• Addresses an issue in which attachments enclosed inside an HTML link may not be clickable in email messages.
• Fixes an issue with email accounts added using the “Simple Setup” feature in which messages cannot be sent due to an SMTP connection failure.
• Improves Smart Mailboxes compatibility with .Mac Sync, and addresses an issue with To Do’s disappearing when using Smart Mailboxes.
• Resolves an issue with syncing Mail accounts with .Mac in which multiple On My Mac folders appear in the Mailbox pane.

Networking

• Addresses an issue in which Microsoft Windows shared folders may be read-only when connected via SMB.

Printing

• Resolves an issue in which user-selected values on Paper Feed PDE are reset to default while saving a custom preset.

Security, Firewall

• Addresses a code signing issue; third-party applications can now run when included in the Application Firewall or when whitelisted in Parental Controls.
• In Security preferences’ Firewall tab, the “Block All” option is now called “Allow Only essential services”
• Includes recent Apple security updates.

System and Finder

• Addresses a potential data loss issue when moving files across partitions in the Finder.
• Resolves an issue with login after turning off FileVault for a specific user account.
• Improves compatibility with Adobe Flash-based uploaders used by .Mac Web Gallery and certain other websites and applications.
• Resolves a potential text drawing issue with certain Adobe Flash-based websites and applications.

Time Machine

• Addresses formatting issues with certain drives used with Time Machine (specifically, single-partition MBR drives greater than 512 GB in size as well as NTFS drives of any size and partition scheme).
• Resolves an issue in which files restored in Time Machine may be restored to the backup hierarchy rather than the folders to which they belong.

Check out Apple’s official release announcement for more info.

Apple on Tuesday said that it has sold over 2 Million copies of Mac OSX Leopard in its first week since its launch worldwide on October 26th. The release of Leopard has outpaced not only Mac OSX Tiger which was best selling OS from Apple in its History, but has also outpaced Rival Windows Vista.

Sales included the ones from Apple Retail Stores, Authorised Apple Resellers, copies that came bundled with new Macs. In comparison it took nearly 6 Weeks for Tiger to reach the same milestone. If Steve Jobs has his say, then I am sure Leopard is going to be a huge hit with consumers worldwide, and I am sure Leopard is going to unleash a new generation of Mac Switchers, which potentially includes me myself!

Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is available through the Apple Store, at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 for a single user license and $199 for the five-user license Family Pack.

However, the best deals on Leopard come from online retailer Amazon.com, which does not charge sales tax and is offering an instant $20 off Leopard single license and $10 off the family pack, bringing the costs down to $109, and $189, respectively. Amazon is also offering deals on Leopard Server.

Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 MHz or faster) processor.

Tip 1 : Get Rid of the 3D Dock

Well if you don’t like the 3D Dock and you want to get rid of it altogether then Open Terminal.app and execute the following commands,

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

This will get you the standard Dock that you have got used to. Well here is a screenshot of the dock that you will get after this hack.

Tip 2 : Get those Triangular Indicators back on the Dock

If you are a Mac Oldie, I am sure you have got accustomed to the tiny triangular indicators on the Dock and now that Leopard has done away with them, you want it back. Well this isn’t too hard at all. All you need to do is follow this well written tutorial from Mike.

Read : Leopard Dock with black triangle

Turns out that you need to just replace 3 files in the System, so it isn’t super hard to do..

Tip 3 : Get rid of the Menu Bar Transparency

Well this has to be the easiest of all. Just Download this file and install it on your Mac. When you run it choose Toggle Level to set the transparency to what ever you want. Sweet! isn’t it!

So I hope you enjoyed reading these small but helpful tips. Is there anything else about Leopard that you don’t like. then drop us a comment!

Mac OSX Leopard has definitely been one of the best OS launches we have seen in years, but surely it didn’t come without its share of problems. Leopard users have had one major problem of Blue Screens popping out for some users and now the Java developers are having troubles getting Java to work with Apple’s latest OS.

Following the release of Leopard on Friday the 26th of October, early users of Leopard complained of problems with Java on the system. The problem apparently is with the code that’s been written in Java 1.6 (also known as Java 6) not executing. The problem behind it is because Java Virtual Machine which interprets the Java code and executes it, is of a lower version i.e. Version 1.4. Java 1.6 was officially released in December 2006, but Leopard reportedly supports only Java 1.4 due to Apple’s insistence on developing the JVM themselves, rather than allow Sun to do it.

Users on Apple’s support forums are, to say the least, a bit miffed at the development. "This is a show stopper for me, and I will have to revert to 10.4, since my job as a software engineer for Sun requires Java 6," wrote one user. "This will likely prevent a lot of people from upgrading." Users were further angered when many of the threads about the issue were reportedly deleted from Apple’s support forum without explanation.

I hope Apple Fixes this soon, or this is going to snowball into another big issue. One suggestion is to get back the JVM 1.6 that was released quite a while back on the Apple Website but isn’t available anymore.

Via VnuNet

Things are going pretty fast for Apple ever since Leopard came out 3 days ago. The latest of the  rumors to hit the internet is that, Apple is going to launch new Macbooks pretty soon. If you ask me the reason for this, then its pretty much simple, Apple has bundled the drivers for Intel’s GMA X3100 chipset into Leopard, that clearly suggests that Apple definitely has new Macs in the offing with Intel’s GMA X3100 on it.

Apple has included a full set of recent drivers for Intel’s GMA X3100 integrated graphics chipset, which is only built into the semiconductor firm’s motherboards for notebooks based on the Santa Rosa platform. Apple uses Santa Rosa for its most recent MacBook Pro models but equips them exclusively with dedicated graphics cards from non-Intel providers like NVIDIA, that leaves MacBooks with slower Graphics.

No other driver-related clues as to the MacBook and Mac mini upgrades have been found, but interestingly all the drivers are dated from October 11th which means that Apple finalized the current version of the drivers only days before Leopard was sent to manufacturing. Apple in the past has never included non supported drivers into OS X in the past, but this instance clearly shows that we will be seeing new Macbooks very soon..

Here are some screenshots that suggest the arrival of new Mac’s from Cupertino.. Steve I am dying to look at the new Macbooks!

If the GMA X3100 chipsets are used in the future Macbooks, its going to provide a tremendous boost to Graphics on the Mac. So I would suggest you hold on for sometime if you are planning to buy a Macbook, because Apple might upgrade them pretty soon. (One week if my guess is correct!)

Via MacNN and MacRumors

Update : 2 : If you are looking for a guide to Dual Boot Windows Vista and Mac OSX Leopard, please follow this guide Hack Attack : Dual Boot Leopard and Windows Vista. The Dual Boot Guide is a comprehensive guide and it should work for most of you with a little bit of hard work.

Update : 1 : There is a newer version of this Hack that you might want to check out. Its much more simpler and can be done by almost everyone. The newer hack also includes Mac OSX 10.5.1 so please check out Hack Attack : Install Leopard On your PC in Just One Step.

Well its been only a day since the Mac OSX Leopard was released officially by Apple and the hackers have managed to create a patched DVD that everyone like you and me can use to install Leopard on PC’s without having to buy a Mac. Please note the tutorial that I am going to post is still experimental and things might not work the right way simply because it is still early days in hacking Leopard to work on PC’s. Well if you don’t mind your PC getting screwed then go ahead and try out this tutorial.

Make sure you backup all important data before you proceed. Here are the things that you will need before Install Leopard on your PC…

• The Patched DVD Image
• The zip file containing the patch
• One pen drive or USB Flash Drive formatted as FAT32

Well once you have all these you can go ahead and Install Leopard..

Step 1. Getting things ready  

• Burn the DVD Image onto a Single Layer DVD-R using a software like Nero.
• Format the USB Flash Drive and the drive label should be “Patcher” without the quotes. Please note it has to be “Patcher” only and nothing else for the patch to work when we apply it later.
• Extract the Zip file and put its contents into the USB Flash Drive.
• Now your USB Drive should contain a folder called “files”, if it doesn’t then check to see where you have gone wrong.

Step 2. Installing Leopard

• Now that you have the Patched DVD with you, you can now install Leopard. Pop in the DVD into the drive and boot into it by pressing F12 at the BIOS Prompt.
• Boot into the DVD and the installer should now load. It take a while though, so be patient.
• Select your Language and make sure you select Customize and you need to deselect all the packages that are displayed.
• Leopard will now install. This can take a while, so go grab yourself a coffee.
• It will ask you to Reboot, so go ahead and Reboot. Before rebooting make sure that USB Flash Drive is connected to the PC.

Step 3. Patching Leopard

• Now that you have got Leopard installed, you need to patch it. Before we do that Boot into the Leopard DVD like the way you did before.
• Wait for the Darwin Bootloader to load. Once it loads up press F8. You should now see a prompt. Type -s and hit enter. The DVD will now load in Verbose mode. Watch for any errors. It should load without a problem because you have already installed Leopard.
• Once the setup is loaded select your Language. Once done you should now be seeing the Welcome Screen. Once there navigate to Utilities-Terminal.
• Once the terminal loads up, you now need to browse to your USB Drive, so follow the steps below, typing it exactly as it appears below in the Terminal.

  In the command line type the following as they appear here

  cd ..
  cd ..
  cd Volumes
  cd Patcher
  cd files

  Notice the space between cd and the 2 dots.

• Now its the time to run the patcher to make sure Leopard will work on your PC. Type the following into the Terminal.

  ./9a581PostPatch.sh

• The Patch should now run. You can answer Yes while removing the ACPUPowerManagement.kext
• After the Script is done, you should now be able to Boot into Leopard after you restart.

Step 4. Congratulations! You’ve done the Impossible!

Well that was it. Please note this has not been extensively tested, so most of your Hardware like Sound, Network may not work. If something goes wrong for you or you want to help us, then please join the discussion over at OSX86Scene. If you noticed I haven’t posted the links to the Torrent that contains the DVD image and the zip. Well I haven’t posted them because I am sure the lawyers over at Apple are going to sue the hell out of me. If you wondering where you can find them, then head over to Demonoid and search for it.

Well here are few screenshots by Mac.nub over at the forums who could get Leopard working on his system.

Some Updates and Clarifications :

• This Hack works on Intel PC’s with atleast SSE3
• You need to format your Leopard Partition to HFS+
• Make Sure you install Leopard on MBR and not GUID or it won’t boot.
• More Patched DVD’s from Uphuck, Netkas is in the works so it would be better if you wait for the polished releases to come out.