Installing Mac OS X on a Windows PC

When Apple moved over to Intel CPU’s, the Mac OS X was rewritten for the Intel structure. As a result, the OS, with some hacking, could work on a Windows PC.

The main issue with this this is the lack of driver support, since Mac hardware is hand picked.

This is why you couldn’t go out and build your own Mac, easily anyways. Until now that is. There is an enormous community dedicated to getting OS X installed and working on PC’s: Insanely Mac or OSx86 Project. There is A LOT of information there so I’ll make it a bit simpler. This is not a definitive How-To but it will give you an idea of the steps involved and you can judge whether or not you’re up for it.

Note: This isn’t exactly legal or safe for your computer. I did this as an experiment and for fun. While it is extremely cool to see OS X on my Thinkpad, it is not the same as owning a Mac. If you’re curious about OS X or are curious like me, it’s just for the fun of it.

Steps

• 1. Prepare your harddrive by making a Fat32 partition, at least 8GB to be safe but it can be as big as you want.
• 2. Get a hacked OS X DVD. If you are running an Intel PC, make sure to get one patched for Intel. If you are running an AMD PC, make sure to get one patched for AMD. Usually, the hacked DVDs have patched for both on them. Where do you get these DVDs? The same places you get your music, movies, games, etc. You CANNOT use a retail dvd.
• 3. Once you’ve gotten a DVD and have burned it, boot to the DVD. This is done by inserting the DVD and restarting. You may have to hit F12 or another key to get to the boot menu so you can select to boot from the DVD drive. Or you may have to go into the BIOS and set the DVD drive as the first in the boot chain.
• 4. Let it load. It takes a few minutes. You’ll be greeted by a language screen and then you have to wait again.
• 5. Once it’s fully loaded and you see the menu bar at the top of the screen and the installation window, click Utilities on the menu bar and select Disk Utility.
• 6. PERFORM WITH CAUTION: select the new partition you made from the list and click erase as Mac OS Extended and name it Macintosh. It only takes a minute or so.
• 7. Now close the Disk Utitity and proceed with the installation.
• 8. Select the partition you just formatted and click next. Then click the customize button.
• 9. Select what applies to you: if you have an Intel PC, if you have SSE2 or SSE3, the hardware you have, etc.
• 10. When you’re done, click next. A window pops up saying it’s verifying the DVD. I cancel it. Now it’s installing! It takes about 15-20 min. Then it’ll ask you to restart, do it.
• 11. If everything went well, you’ll be greeted with a boot screen that asks you to select your new Mac install to boot into or your other partitions. Select Mac.
• 12. Follow the prompts, setting up username, etc. and enjoy your Hackingtosh.

If You Run into Problems:

Check to see if you your hardware is compatible.
Check the OSx86 Forums.