Description:

Instructions on how to get the "Bootable Utilities Image" (minimal bootable version of OS X, meant for real macs) working on a PC

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The Bootable Utilities Image, for those who don't know about it, is a minimal system of OS X that can be booted from external hard drive, flash drive, iPod, or even a DVD disc. The image is meant for real macs, but here is how to get it working with your OSx86 PC. This procedure requires an already working OSx86 install, or a real mac to configure everything:

Requirements:

• 2GB or larger capacity USB flash drive
• Intel Core 2 Series processor
• Working installation of OS X Tiger or Leopard
• Motherboard with BIOS that supports booting USB devices

• Obtain the Bootable Utilities Image (comes in several parts sometimes), and use the Split&Concat program for OS X if you need to combine the parts together.
• Extract the Bootable Utilties Image DMG
• Sometimes, there will be another DMG inside that first DMG, the second DMG is the one you want. Anyways, the point is to extract the DMG and then mount it to check if its the right one. Once you mount it, open the Bootable Utilities mounted volume and there should be folders like Applications, System, Library inside it. Once you have checked that, unmount the volume
• Go into Disk Utility, choose your USB flash drive device from the left pane, and click on the "Partition" tab. Set it up with the volume scheme set to 1 partition, and format set to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) like this:

• Then, click on the Options button and from the partition map list select Master Boot Record, as shown here and click OK:

• Click the Apply button and wait for it to finish (should be very quick)
• Now, drag your Bootable Utilities DMG file to the lower part of the left pane in Disk Utility to add it to the list
• Click on the Bootable Utilities DMG from the left pane and click the Restore tab
• Drag the Bootable Utilities DMG file from the left pane into the Source field and drag your USB volume from the volume list into the Destination field. This is all shown here:

• Click the Restore button and wait for it to finish. It may take a long time depending on the speed of your hardware
• Once its done, make sure the USB drive is mounted. In the volume you should see all the contents of the Bootable Utilities DMG (Applications, System, Library folders)
• In the USB drive, navigate to /System/Library/Extensions
• In that folder, there is a file called "AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext". Delete this file and empty the Trash
• Next, you need a copy of dsmos.kext. This file can be found in the /System/Library/Extensions folder of most full OSx86 installations. If you can't find it, download dsmos.kext here .
• Now, download the OSx86 Tools program from here . Unzip it and open the program. Click the "Install Kexts" button to start the kext installer wizard. Follow the prompts until you get to the part where it tells you to select the kext(s) to install

• Just select your "dsmos.kext" file and click Choose.

• Next it will ask you where to install the kext to as seen here:

• Choose your USB drive and click OK. Click Install at the confirmation prompt, and your kext will be installed. It will prompt you to reboot by clicking the Restart button, but just click Cancel for now.
• Now, again in OSx86 Tools, click the Install EFI/Run FDISK button. The first time you use this button it will prompt you to install some installation source files, accept the installation and within seconds it will install the files for you (it only happens once). In the FDISK/EFI dialog box, click "Run Script". Terminal will open and ask you to enter your password. Enter your password and hit enter to start the script
• It will now ask you to enter an option. Type in 4 for Chameleon EFI and hit Enter/Return
• It will now ask you what device to install Chameleon to. Find the device in the list that is your USB drive. For example, if your USB device was "/dev/disk2" then you would type in 2 and hit Enter/Return
• Now, it asks you the partition to install to. If you followed the above steps properly, the partition number should be 1, so enter 1 and hit Enter. This entire process is shown here:

• Now is the last step to do before boot. Copy any applications that you want to be able to use to the "Applications" folder on the USB hard drive. It is also recommended that you delete the copyrighted unlicensed tools that are there by default, and to only put utilities in there that are free or that you own.
• You are now done! Restart, set your BIOS to boot from the USB drive and it should boot.
• If it does not boot, tap F8 to get into the boot prompt, type in -v to get into verbose mode and boot the drive to see where it panics/stalls.

• Sometimes stalls at "BSD root" or "ERROR: unable to determine FireWire security-mode". The fix for this is to boot with -v -x at the F8 boot prompt.
• No video/audio/LAN support unless it works out of the box with your system. Just install the necessary kexts into the Extensions folder of the USB drive to fix this
• AppleScript and AppleScript Studio apps do not seem to run properly. There seems to be some sort of missing framework or something. The OSX86Tools AppleScript Studio app loaded once the Frameworks, PrivateFrameworks, and CoreServices folders from a full install were copied over, but none of the buttons work
• None of the Apple menu items (Shutdown, restart, etc.) work when booted in. I'm pretty sure that this is due to the lack of a loginwindow.app. Copying over loginwindow.app doesn't work, this is probably because loginwindow.app is not set to initialize at startup.

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