Chameleon Bootloader For El Capitan



Chameleon is THE boot loader when it comes to Hackintosh. Hameleon is a perfect bootloader for multibooting Windows, Linux, Mac OS X OSx86 Chameleon RC3. Home Download, Install Chameleon RC4 Bootloader. How To Manually Install Chameleon Bootloader This is a Guide to install Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan on PC / Hackintosh. Install Latest Chameleon Bootloader To Usb Windows Make Clover&Chameleon bootable USB Flash DiskScreenshot. 0 reviews Chameleon Boot-loader for OS X El Capitan (2725) Add more fixScreenshot. Posts about Chameleon Bootloader written by insanelydeepak. Now to install Chameleon on the USB Installer, download the latest.

  1. Chameleon Bootloader For El Capitan
  2. Chameleon Bootloader Usb

Warning: Please follow these instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage or information loss that could result from following this guide. Also, note that installing OS X on PC is illegal. Please buy a real Mac if you're satisfied with your Hackintosh. This guide is for evaluation purposes only.

Requirements

  • An Intel-based PC with UEFI bios
  • A USB flash drive with at least 16GB capacity
  • A dedicated hard drive (SSD highly recommended)
  • A computer running OS X (10.9 or later) for preparing the installation USB flash drive

I chose to avoid the UniBeast installer (by Tonymacx86) because of its commercialized nature, as described here. Here is a vanilla guide to installing El Capitan on your PC!

Preparing the USB Installation Drive

Chameleon Bootloader For El capitan

First things first. We need to prepare a USB thumb drive that will contain the installation files as well as the bootloader and custom kexts for our specific Hackintosh build.

Download El Capitan from the Mac App Store
Chameleon bootloader usb

Head over to your existing OS X environment running 10.9 or later and open the Mac App Store.

Search for 'El Capitan' and click Download. The download is completely free if you're running OS X 10.9+.

Wait for the download to finish (this could take some time).

Format the USB Drive

Open Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities and locate your USB device. Make sure you've backed up anything important on that drive as it will be erased forever.

Select it, and then on the right, click the partition tab.

  1. Click Curent Layout and change it to 1 Partition.
  2. Set the Name to USB.
  3. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
  4. Click Options and select GUID Partition Table.

Click Apply to format the drive.

Copy the Installation Files to the USB Drive

Now that we've downloaded the installation files from the Mac App Store and formatted our USB drive, let's copy the installation files to it.

Run the following command in the Terminal (Applications/Utilities):

The command will run a script inside the Install OS X El Capitan application that will copy the installation files to the USB drive.

This process takes about 15 minutes. Go out for a quick run, or a hamburger, or both. When you come back, it should have finished.

Installing a Bootloader

If you tried to boot from the USB drive as is after the previous step on a PC, it wouldn't work. We need a bootloader that makes it possible to boot OS X on x86 and x86_64 PCs.

There are 3 popular bootloaders to choose from.

  • Clover
  • Chameleon
  • Chimera

I went with Clover as it seems to be the most popular choice among other El Capitan installers, mostly for the following reasons:

Clover is an open-source EFI-based bootloader created on Apr 4, 2011. It has a totally different approach from Chameleon and Chimera. It can emulate the EFI portion present on real Macs and boot the OS from there instead of using the regular legacy BIOS approach used by Chameleon and Chimera. For many, Clover is considered the next-gen bootloader and soon it will become the only choice since BIOS in being replaced by UEFI in every new motherboard. One big feature of Clover is that iMessage, iCloud, the Mac App Store works along with Find My Mac, Back To My Mac and FileVault since Clover can use the EFI partition. (Read more)

Install Clover on Your USB Drive

Installing Clover on your USB drive is relatively easy. It involves running an installation wizard and selecting some options.

Download the latest Clover installer from here.

  1. Run the installer.
  2. Click Continue twice.
  3. Click Change Install Location and set it to your formatted USB drive.
  4. Click Customize and check the following options:
    • [x] Install for UEFI booting only
    • [x] Install Clover in the ESP
    • [ ] Drivers64UEFI
      • [x] OsxAptioFixDrv-64 - fixes memory map created by AMI Aptio EFI. Booting OS X is impossible otherwise.
  1. Click Install and wait for the installation to finish. It shouldn't take more than a minute.
Copy Essential Kexts to the USB Drive

Next, we'll need to copy some kexts (kernal extensions, similar to drivers on Windows) to the USB drive.

  • FakeSMC.kext - open source SMC device driver/emulator developed by netkas. Tricks OS X into thinking it's installed on Apple hardware. Absolutely required for Hackintosh installation.
  • NullCPUPowerManagement.kext - disables AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext which may cause kernel panics when you try to boot from the USB drive. It's optional, copy it only if you get an AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement-related kernel panic.
  • ApplePS2Controller.kext and AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext - adds support for PS2 devices (such as PS2 keyboard/mouse). They're optional, copy them only if you still use PS2 devices.

Download these files from here and copy them to the EFI mounted volume at /EFI/Clover/kexts/10.11/.

Now that the installation USB drive is ready, let's install OS X El Capitan!

Boot from the USB Drive

Restart your computer and boot from the USB drive (Press Esc/F8/Del to access the boot selection menu).

Use the arrow keys to select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan (It should be selected by default). Press the spacebar and select Boot Mac OS X in verbose mode. Verbose mode means that you'll be able to see exactly what's going on under the hood as OS X attempts to boot up its installer. You'll be able to see the exact error message if booting fails.

Press Enter and cross your fingers. Clover will now boot the installer from your USB drive. This could take some time, in my case, it takes around 5 minutes (Don't worry -- the startup time is around 5 seconds after installing on an SSD).

Did it fail?

It's more than likely that the boot will fail. Don't panic (ha-ha), as kernel panics usually mean that you forgot to copy an essential kext to the EFI partition. Look up the exact error you're getting before the boot log comes to an end and search Google for a solution.

Once you find an additional kext that your system needs, you'd attempt to copy it to the EFI volume, only to discover that it's gone! Not to worry, it's just unmounted and hidden. Follow this guide to mount the hidden partition, and then, follow the Copy Essential Kexts section above to copy it to the USB drive's EFI partition.

Format the Target Hard Drive

Once the installation wizard boots, the next step is to prepare the hard drive that you want to install OS X on. Trading software for mac.

Chameleon Bootloader For El Capitan

Chameleon Bootloader For El Capitan

Click Continue, followed by Disk Utility.

Select the target drive to install to (not the USB drive!) and click the Erase button. Make sure to back up anything important on that drive, as it will be deleted forever.

  1. Set the Name to El Capitan.
  2. Set the Format to OS X Extended (Journaled).
  3. Set the Scheme to GUID Partition Map.

Click Erase to format the drive.

Install OS X to the Target Drive

Exit the Disk Utility and click Install OS X.

Click Show All Disks and select the drive you just formatted to install OS X on it. Finally, click Install.

The process takes about 25 minutes. Be patient. For me, it hung at the end ('1 second remaining') for around 5 minutes. Don't be tempted to reset or cancel the installation.

When that's done, the system will reboot. Make sure to boot from the USB device again, and select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan once again, in verbose mode. The installation is a two-part process that continues once you re-boot into the USB drive.

Finally, after about 25 more minutes, OS X El Capitan should be successfully installed on the target drive.

Boot into El Capitan via the USB Device

After the second reboot, boot from the USB device once again, but this time, select Boot OS X from El Capitan, and select verbose mode.

Chameleon Bootloader Usb

Press Enter and cross your fingers again. Bittitan migrationwiz. If all goes well, you'll be presented with the setup wizard:

Take a minute to set up your new Hackintosh. Once you're done, there are a few things you need to do to finish off the installation.

Reinstall Clover on the Hackintosh Drive

In the previous step, we used Clover on our USB drive to boot our Hackintosh. This is fine, but most of us aren't going to keep that USB drive plugged in forever. Let's make it possible to boot El Capitan independently by reinstalling Clover on it.

Go back up to the Install Clover on Your USB Drive section and follow the steps again, but this time, select your El Capitan volume instead of the USB drive.

Once again, copy the essential kexts to the EFI partition that shows up after installing Clover.

Finally, make sure to add Clover EFI boot options which is possible by pressing Clover Boot Options in the Clover boot window (if there are 2 boot options -- find the one for your SATA drive). I literally spent 3 hours figuring out why Clover would not boot when I disconnected the USB drive before I figured out that I need to manually add the EFI boot options.

Now you'll be able to boot directly from the El Capitan hard drive, as it should be!

Audio and Networking

If you're lucky, audio and networking will work right out of the box. If not, you're on your own from here. You'll need to research your exact hardware (by using System Information in Applications/Utilities) and searching Google to find the right kext or installer to make it work on El Capitan.

Clover Themes

The default Clover theme is pretty ugly (no offense). Check out this theme database to improve Clover's appearance.

This is YosemiteLogin by xenatt:

Enjoy!

That's it! Enjoy your new Hackintosh, and if you absolutely love it, consider buying a Mac!

Setting up Mac OS X on a PC carries its own inherent risks; despite the fact that Hackintoshes are generally very stable, there's always a chance that your computer will fail to start, for whatever reason. In these cases, your best option may be to temporarily boot Mac OS X with the help of a boot USB drive. From there, you can fix whatever problem your Hackintosh is experiencing. Your Mac OS X installer USB drive can act as backup boot USB drive, but if you don't have yours anymore, you're not out of luck-- you can still create a makeshift boot USB drive on Windows instead.
Requirements
Hackintoshes generally use Chameleon or Chimera bootloader (they're really the same thing) to boot Mac OS X. If you own a real Mac, you can just download the PKG installer for Chameleon bootloader and install it onto a USB drive in a single click. However, on Windows, the process is more complicated. In this guide, we will be manually writing the necessarily bootloader files from Chameleon onto a USB drive through a series of command-line tools in Windows. Here's what you'll need:
  • An empty USB drive - This USB drive can be any size; it doesn't really matter, since the Hackintosh bootloader will only take up a few megabytes. We'll be erasing this drive, so make sure you back up any files that you have on it.

  • Chameleon boot sector files - A collection of command-line tools that you'll need to create a boot USB drive in Windows.

  • 'boot' file - The main boot file that Chameleon bootloader will need to start Mac OS X. This file was extracted from the newest version of Chameleon bootloader (as of July 1st, 2013), and can boot any version of Mac OS X, including OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

  • 'Extra' folder - A collection of additional kexts and configuration files necessary to get Chameleon bootloader working properly with Mac OS X. This folder should allow most standard Hackintosh setups to boot properly, though you can add your own specific kext files if you wish.

This step is technically optional, but doing it reduces your chances of errors. Start Windows and plug your USB drive into your computer. Open Windows Explorer (a.k.a. 'My Computer'), and check the letter of your USB drive. Remember this for later-- in the screenshot below, my USB drive (named 'Whatever') has the letter 'O'.
Next, type 'partition' into the Start Menu. Click on the first result, which should open Window's built-in 'Disk Management' program. From here, find the letter of your USB drive, right-click on it, and click 'Format' to erase it.
When asked, format the USB drive with the 'FAT32' file system. This should only take a few seconds.
2. Run the command-line program
Now we're going to set up the boot USB drive from the Windows Command Prompt. For this, you'll need several 'boot-sector' files, downloadable below:
DOWNLOAD: Chameleon boot sector files
The Chameleon boot sector files will be stored inside a single ZIP file. Double-click on the ZIP file to open it. Click the 'Extract all files' button in Windows Explorer, extract all of the files onto the Windows desktop (or some other random place where you can find the files later). The files should be extracted in a folder called 'Chameleon_BS'.
Next, type 'Command Prompt' into the Start Menu. Right click on the first result, and click 'Run as administrator'-- doing this should open the Windows Command Prompt.
In the Command Prompt, enter the following command:

Don't forget to include the space between cd and Users.

Replace 'Username' with your Windows username (include the quotation marks). In the screenshot below, I've replaced my Windows username with a blank line. This command changes the folder that the Command Prompt is working on (cd stands for 'change directory'). Now, everything you type into the Command Prompt will apply to the files in the Chameleon_BS folder. This assumes that you put the Chameleon_BS folder on the desktop-- if you put it somewhere else, you may edit the command appropriately. Next, enter the following command:
makeusb Letter:

Replace 'Letter' with the actual letter of your USB drive (don't include the quotation marks). In the screenshot below, the letter of my USB drive is 'O'. This command sets up the USB drive so that it'll be ready to boot Mac OS X.
Once the Command Prompt finishes working (it'll probably only take a few seconds), eject your USB drive from your computer. Then, plug the USB drive in again; this is necessary to get Windows to recognize your newly set-up USB drive properly.
3. Copy the boot files onto the USB drive
Finally, you'll need to copy several extra boot files onto the USB drive. Download the 'boot' file and 'Extra' folder; these are necessary files for the Mac OS X startup process.
DOWNLOAD: 'boot' file
DOWNLOAD: 'Extra' folder
The 'Extra' folder will be stored inside a ZIP file. Double-click on the ZIP file to open it. Copy the 'Extra' folder into your USB drive. Next, download and copy the 'boot' file onto your USB drive as well.
This completes the setup process. Now you should have a working Chameleon boot USB drive that can help start Mac OS X on most PCs. Congratulations!
NOTE: When attempting to boot Mac OS X with the help of a boot USB drive, make sure that USB drives are set to first priority in your computer's BIOS (Step 4 of our standard Mountain Lion installation guide).
SOURCE: [GUIDE]Creating a Chameleon Bootable USB from Windows