Update: Following Wolfer’s guide will give you a fully functional system running 10.6.8.
I started writing this post within minutes of 10.6.8 being released to the public (before actually installing it). I was going to start by explaining how 10.6.8 was a simple update, as had been the case with all previous Snow Leopard updates. Unfortunately, had I continued with that post, I would have mislead everyone.
Once I completed a backup- always necessary before any update or system change- I removed SleepEnabler.kext, installed the update, and rebooted. Though this process worked countless times before, this was not the case with 10.6.8; it wouldn’t boot past Chameleon. After hours of testing and a ton of help from Nathan in the comments, I was able to boot 10.6.8.
Had everything gone according to plan, you’d be reading an update guide right now. Unfortunately, 10.6.8 was- and still is- proving to be quite troublesome. 10.6.8 is running very slowly and my WLAN card (for Wi-Fi) is no longer recognized. If you recall, I upgraded my WLAN card to the Broadcom 94321 for native OS X kext support. Both this card and my original Dell 1395 aren’t recognized in 10.6.8, even with the correct IO80211Family.kext installed.
Given these reasons, I currently do not recommend updating to 10.6.8. Nevertheless, should you choose to update anyway, you can follow either Nathan’s guide in the comments.
March 21st, 2012 at 4:46 PM
Hey,
All of the 1525 hackintoshers need a lion guide. I found one at nozyczek but it didnt work for me and if tried things out of the comments here and at macyourpc. Help!
September 1st, 2011 at 8:34 AM
Hi,
Any news of 10.7 on inspiron 1525?
Thanks
August 24th, 2011 at 6:42 PM
Hello everyone,
Well 10.6.8 and lion 10.7.1 works perfect on my dell inspiron 1525. Everything works just like the previous versions of snow leopard. Reasons for problem’s arising from 10.6.8 is apple changed code similar to lion. so u need to take care of few things before installing 10.6.8 or even 10.7.0.
1. firstly u need to modify the DSDT to stop freezing while installing lion, place DSDT.aml in usb boot drive and then install lion.
2. I modified DSDT to support 10.6.8 and 10.7.0 try it and check whether it serves u better
http://www.kexts.com/view/1670-dell_inspiron_1525_dsdt_v0.3.html
with this DSDT there is no need to replace iopcifamily.kext and acpiplatform.kext (which were causing freezes on dell laptops not just 1525) from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8 and 10.7.0.
just backup ur apple hda.kext, legacy hda and io802family.kext and use latest chameleon bootloader thats all u need to get on with 10.6.8 or 10.7.0.
if u have any queries feel free to ask.
Cheers,
Mahesh Kondraju
August 19th, 2011 at 6:03 PM
Wolfer’s guide is perfect for an upgrade. Everything works as expected, except the mouse is too fast and I do not know how to fix that. I already changed the tracking setting to the lowest but no change
July 28th, 2011 at 6:07 AM
Hi Thomas,
Can you guide me for installation of 10.6.x on my hp dv7q i7 2630, 8GB RAM , 1 GB Graphics Card?
Thanks
July 28th, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Sorry, I don’t support that laptop. Check http://insanelymac.com for instructions for your specific laptop.
July 25th, 2011 at 4:26 PM
I have a question I haven’t used one of your guides in over a year, back when snow leopard came out my hard drive crashed and i gave up on hackintosh.
But i want to rejoin if I wanted to install to the latest version you have available would i have to start off from 10.6 and upgrade all the way up? or is there a faster way to do it?
July 25th, 2011 at 5:43 PM
Though I haven’t tried it, you’d probably be able to install 10.6 and then update straight to 10.6.7 following the 10.6.7 guide.
July 20th, 2011 at 6:43 PM
Are we reaching the end of life for our HackBooks? With Lion out of its cage and the problematic 10.6.8 Snow Leopard update, what does the future hold for our laptops? Are we going to see Lion running as smooth as previous versions of Snow Leopard on our Dell Inspirons?
July 21st, 2011 at 2:08 PM
Though the 10.6.8 update is admittedly more difficult to install than previous Snow Leopard updates, it’s no more challenging than what we faced in the Leopard days. Wolfer has successfully installed Lion on his Inspiron 1525, so not all hope is lost. In fact, it appears the Inspiron 1525, though aging, is still worthy of running the latest and greatest.
July 13th, 2011 at 4:21 PM
Thomas, et al, feel free to check out a small guide I put together for 10.6.8, compiled from a bunch of different sources, however, it’s consolidated, detailed, and should allow anyone at BIOS A17 (explains how to get there even) and is at SL 10.6.7 already to get to 10.6.8, and WITH MANY, MANY benefits. All hardware is working and speed, boot times, etc. seem better than ever! Needed kexts are reduced. Good stuff all around… Share this back with everyone you can.
http://www.davewolf.net/2011/07/update-snow-leopard-to-10-6-8-on-a-dell-1525
Feel free to copy this, and put it in your own works, add your own graphics, etc. and post it to your site. I don’t have the time to field the support like you do. And, frankly this is place this post better belongs anyway.
Thanks for the understanding. Hope it gets you a good, solid, guide up all the quicker!
— Wolfer
July 13th, 2011 at 4:48 PM
Great to hear from you, Wolfer! How have you been?
I’ll definitely try out your guide and see where it leads me. The improvements seems impressive so I hope it all works out. Thanks!
July 13th, 2011 at 5:14 PM
Okay… Try it out. If and when it leads you to where you want to be — and, you see all the improvements made, please feel free to take the guide for yourself and post it here where it will more easily be found and the community can help each other out, including the pointer from the site admin, i.e. yourself. Again, I really don’t have the time to field all the queries, so it’s much better put in the limelight here.
— Wolfer
July 14th, 2011 at 8:19 AM
Thought I would point out that this guide appears to have worked perfectly for me. One question, is the trackpad kext necessary? My trackpad seems to be working fine, I failed to backup the kext, but I can get it off my cloned backup if really necessary. Wifi came back with the io80211family kext and everything else seems normal.
July 15th, 2011 at 3:07 PM
After rebooting, it freezes towards the end of booting. I’m guessing there’s something funky with my install, so I may just have to reinstall Snow Leopard and see if I can’t get 10.6.8 working.
July 16th, 2011 at 1:15 PM
Hi Thomas,
You say it freezes? What happens when you boot using -v? Can you tell what is happening and what might be the culprit? It really wasn’t a terribly difficult update once reading up and learning what was required. Are you sure you didn’t have some low-level kexts hanging out in S/L/E? No doubt some of those might cause issues. Let me know where it hangs up when booting with -v…
— Wolfer
July 16th, 2011 at 2:06 PM
Upon further inspection of my partition, the script doesn’t seem to have worked. I renamed my Extra folder to OLDExtra, but after running the script, a new Extra folder was never created. While running the script it spit out a ton of errors regarding the log, though I’m assuming those aren’t important.
Right now I’m restoring 10.6.7 from my backup so that I can reattempt the update.
July 16th, 2011 at 2:23 PM
Sounds like you weren’t superuser. Make sure that you ‘sudo su’ or ‘sudo -s’ before running the script. Take a look at nozyczek’s page for how to run it. If it doesn’t run as you “think” it should, don’t reboot as the machine will be in a hosed state.
July 16th, 2011 at 2:32 PM
I could swear I ran the command as a superuser, though I could be wrong. I’m retrying it now.
July 16th, 2011 at 3:09 PM
Looks like I was wrong! I (successfully) ran the script as root this time and am now booted into 10.6.8. Once I’ve verified everything works, I’ll update the post with the instructions, giving both you and nozyczek credit.
July 16th, 2011 at 1:19 PM
Can you access your Trackpad prefs from System Preferences still?
MANY of the system files were replaced with the 10.6.8 combo update. I’m not trying to tweak out the trackpad to handle multi-touch or scrolling, but in the past I’ve had issues with my modded Pane getting overwritten, so I replaced it with the former version.
Guess if you don’t have issues, don’t fix what ain’t broke.
July 20th, 2011 at 9:53 AM
Yeah, no trackpad in prefs, but it works, I will mess with it when I have time, but I think for now I will let it ride.
July 13th, 2011 at 10:19 AM
title is misleading. not appreciated.
July 13th, 2011 at 11:28 AM
I understand, though I feel this is the only way to get people to read this. Besides, the end of the post does include a link to Nathan’s installation instructions.
July 13th, 2011 at 9:21 AM
Doesn’t give me much hope for Lion if 10.6.8 has issues… This is my main hack too.
July 13th, 2011 at 11:27 AM
We’ll just have to wait and see, though the hackintosh community is working diligently to create new tools that allow for easy installations.
July 13th, 2011 at 6:53 AM
Do you think this is a sign of things to come when attempting to make the leap into the Lion’s den with our Dell laptops? Previous updates have been a walk in the park. I wonder what gives…
July 13th, 2011 at 11:20 AM
I believe installing Lion will be much more difficult, though the hackintosh community is creating tools to overcome this. For example. Chameleon RC5 simplifies the installation process and removes the need for many Extra kexts. Unfortunately, I think we’ll just have to wait and see.
July 16th, 2011 at 2:28 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLcCmwHT2qg
Seeing is believing. Lion and 10.6.8 are pretty similar. Hence, Apple’s preparation for it by issuing 10.6.8. Many of the same steps to get to 10.6.8, get you to Lion.
Very pretty and functional OS, Lion is. And, on the 1525, everything functions with the exception of FireWire, but I’ll figure that one out. Probably just need to regress back to a former version (i.e. 10.6.8’s version) of the kext(s). Haven’t had time to play with it further.
But, no doubt, Lion will be a staple on the 1525 in no time at all.
July 12th, 2011 at 5:44 PM
HA… Thanks for the credit, Thomas, but no one would be very far with the 1525 if not for your blog.
Also, I was having the same issues with wifi and i tried this old Broadcom script which worked great. After I ran the script, I install IO80211Family.kext from 10.6.7 and was able to enabler AirPort once again.
Broadcom script: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=51725
July 13th, 2011 at 11:15 AM
I’ll give it a shot. Thanks again for all your help.