[Guide] Dell XPS 15 L502X (Early 2011) Snow Leopard Install (possibly L702x too)

[DoiX]

It's correct, however you will loose functionality of the mini display port. It only works on 8.1 SMboardproduct.

[darren cox]

OK, so have Mountain Lion installed to internal secondary drive, have booted couple of times OK, now it just hangs. -v shows some USBF line then nothing. Dunno what went wrong, think theres a kext conflict somewhere as was playing with battery/sleepenabler (as guide said install nullcpupowermanagement i assume this is needed as sleep quite broken without it!)

 

If i can't get it booted again will leave it I think!

 

However can confirm it's booting off my main chameleon (1820) with DoiX v6 DSDT/SSDT etc also seems way smoother than Lion in regards to graphics performance - using Mission Control as an example it just seems smoother/quicker???

[DoiX]

You've installed it to an internal secondary drive? How is that drive connected, it may be related to the USBF error.

 

Try booting with pmVersion=0 this disables sleepenabler.kext

 

I'm 30 minutes away from finishing the download but i doubt i'll have time today to install it since it's already late.. eh maybe this week.

[darren cox]

Yep. I replaced the stock 500gb drive under the keyboard with a 64gb SSD and used a DVD bay HDD caddy to install the 500gb drive for home folder & storage.

 

It's working fine now from internal drive... cant get sleep working sleepenabler causes KP. SSDT not loading, only getting 4700 on geekbench against 6090 on lion with SSDT loaded. If i remove nullcpu.... i get KP right away

 

EDIT

 

Can't duplicate the success I hd last night with this, can't get audio working, sleep is a no go, and the ssdt don't want to play!

 

I will play again tomorrow to see if I can get it going again!

[DoiX]

@darren cox, could you provide me with the AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext from 10.8?

 

Thanks

[darren cox]

@DoiX - Here you go!

 

AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext.zip

[pcwiz13]

Finally solved all my problems, Everything is working great even sleep! (except restart, but thats all of us). I got speed stepping working right, and sleep working by reverting back to A06.

 

I'm getting geek bench scores of ±8800 with i7, all is working well. Time to play with mountain lion.

 

@Darren Cox i also ordered a 64gb SSD to use with OSX over the weekend and a caddy for my cd drive. Is there a reason you swapped the SSD with the existing and used the original in the caddy instead of just putting the SSD in the caddy? and how was tearing into it and replacing the drive? anything too difficult?

[Monkeys]

Hello everyone, its been a little while, good to see lots of activity here still :wink2:

 

For anyone who is interested, I have come up with a solution/workaround for the audio delay or 'lag' that is present on almost all MacBookPro's. You will notice this if you have no sound playing for more than 30 seconds, then press one of the volume buttons. You will notice a delay between pressing, and hearing the sound. This is due to a 'feature' introduced by Apple, which automatically turns off/disables the sound device while it is idle, supposedly to save battery.

 

For me, this delay is quite annoying and make the experience of using OSX less pleasurable than with having the sound occur instantly, for example when trying to enter a key in an app that doesn't accept it. So, I came up with a solution

 

Basically it involves using a program called 'antipop' which I did not develop, which is able to keep the sound device alive by sending a 'silent sound' to the sound device every 10 seconds. Very simple, and is very effective. However, due to the nature of 'antipop' it also breaks the systems ability to go to sleep automatically (as there is activity in the background which is preventing it).

 

So, to workaround that I have utillized another very clever and useful program called 'sleepwatcher' to disable antipop before sleeping, to allow the system to go to sleep, then to reload it upon waking up.

 

This works very effectively and allows the system to sleep and to wake naturally, whilst still keeping antipop running when you need it to

 

I have attached a zip file with step-by-step instructions included to install and configure both apps to perform this function. Simply unzip to the desktop, open the Installations.rtf document, and copy and paste the commands into terminal one-by-one.

 

Enjoy!

 

https://rapidshare.com/files/2168688669/delayfix.zip

[darren cox]

Finally solved all my problems, Everything is working great even sleep! (except restart, but thats all of us). I got speed stepping working right, and sleep working by reverting back to A06.

 

I'm getting geek bench scores of ±8800 with i7, all is working well. Time to play with mountain lion.

 

@Darren Cox i also ordered a 64gb SSD to use with OSX over the weekend and a caddy for my cd drive. Is there a reason you swapped the SSD with the existing and used the original in the caddy instead of just putting the SSD in the caddy? and how was tearing into it and replacing the drive? anything too difficult?

 

Swapping the drives is easy. To get under keyboard there is a screq and two tabs you push out under the battery, then work your way around lifting it up. Watch out as it does attach with a small ribbon cable, don't need to detach it just move the whole keyboard out the way.

 

I don't know if it's just the caddy I have, but I cant get the computer to boot from the drive in the caddy, only the one under the keyboard. Have tried all the boot order settings etc, so in the end was easier to swap them over, but it's well worth it the SSD speeds are awesome!

[drdeviant]

Swapping the drives is easy. To get under keyboard there is a screq and two tabs you push out under the battery, then work your way around lifting it up. Watch out as it does attach with a small ribbon cable, don't need to detach it just move the whole keyboard out the way. I don't know if it's just the caddy I have, but I cant get the computer to boot from the drive in the caddy, only the one under the keyboard. Have tried all the boot order settings etc, so in the end was easier to swap them over, but it's well worth it the SSD speeds are awesome!

 

I replaced the hdd for a sdd using this guide. Unclipping the panel around the keyboard was the trickiest bit but easy once you know how.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/600194-guide-dell-xps-l502x-tear-down-optical-hdd-caddy-installation-cpu-gpu-repasting-56k-warning.html

 

Good tip on replacing the optical drive for a second hdd, didn't know it was possible. I hardly use my optical drive so a giant capacity second drive would be more handy.

[darren cox]

I replaced the hdd for a sdd using this guide. Unclipping the panel around the keyboard was the trickiest bit but easy once you know how.

http://forum.noteboo...6k-warning.html

 

Good tip on replacing the optical drive for a second hdd, didn't know it was possible. I hardly use my optical drive so a giant capacity second drive would be more handy.

 

And of course mac osx makes its easy to move your home folder over, get your OS and apps on the SSD and pics, movies and iTunes etc on the huge drive

 

Plus you can always add partitions to the second drive (using guid as can't boot anyway!) to test out new installs...

 

Just one query though, is Chameleon per drive or per partition - booting straight off my external allows me to tweak the settings in the plist but id rather it was internal for speed (referring to 10.8) but don't want to break my existing lion install...

 

@DoiX - If you'd like me to test any of your edits on 10.8 let me know I have a bit of time next few days!

 

EDIT

 

Theres a 10.8 version of Speedstepper - just google speedstepper mountain lion (it's on this site) and theres a patched 10.8 AICPM kext that lets you get rid of nullcpupowermanagement.kext. Then i have the SSDt posted for the i5 2410 using DropSSDT - and Speedstepping works!

 

Went from Geekbench of just over 4k to 5890 which is just shy of lion (but i was repairing disk permissions at the time lol)

 

Just trying to get battery detection working, then I need to work out which kexts i used to get audio working the other day! Then I have a new daily use OS (Kidding!)

 

EDIT x2

 

Battery now working in Mountain Lion using Kext linked in this post http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=257950&view=findpost&p=1743119

[Rockball73]

Theres a 10.8 version of Speedstepper - just google speedstepper mountain lion (it's on this site) and theres a patched 10.8 AICPM kext that lets you get rid of nullcpupowermanagement.kext. Then i have the SSDt posted for the i5 2410 using DropSSDT - and Speedstepping works!

Hey dude,

When you set DropSSDT in your boot.plist, you do NOT set P- and C-States enabled, am I right?

[darren cox]

Hey dude,

When you set DropSSDT in your boot.plist, you do NOT set P- and C-States enabled, am I right?

 

I've found it doesn't seem to matter on my system! Just can't get the flipping auio working again! ARGHHHHHH!

 

EDIT

 

Have audio working with the 70x kexts from the thread I used before but have lost access to the internal SATA drives?!?!? WTH??? Can anyone shed any light as to why this might be? (Booting off USB external drive - the SATA drives were fine a minute ago!)

 

Thanks

 

UPDATE

 

Seems I can have sound and no access to SATA drives or no sound but access to drives !!! I give up why does AppleHDA.kext (from the 70x thread ) interfere with the darn hard drive!

[maxey]

I do have an i7, the 2720QM.

Dont know if is the exact one used in the MBP.

 

 

EDIT: Just saw it is the one used in the MBP.

 

If I would only have to use EnablePStates=Yes, should i usebit as a bootflag and remove the installed ssdt files?and also the speedstepper (which i anyway didnt really get to run i think and just stays on my desktop)?

 

And what about a i7 2670, should I install ssdt and speedsptepper (which I neigther been able to install)? I don't find it in MBP8 set ups....

 

Any answer to this ?

 

I took MBP8.2 system definition...just dont know what to do with the EnablePstates etc...

 

EnablePStates=Yes and EnablerCStates=Yes (first handles power states second handles power conservation aka sleep)

 

Should i put them into the org.Chameleon.Boot.plist?

 

After

 

<key>GenerateCStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GeneratePStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>

 

So it looks like this?

 

<key>GenerateCStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>EnableCStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GeneratePStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>EnablePStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>

[maxey]

You might want to fully format your HDD, install Lion then Windows, then boot with RBoot to reinstall the bootloader (which gets broken after you install windows). I'm guessing the current problem is caused a hidden partition that came with stock Windows (it did on my machine, i fully erased the hdd in the first hour i had it)

 

We will tackle your USB KP problems after you get the bootloader working (booting with rboot with the kexts from the image instead of what you installed on the hdd can cause them)

 

Still me.

Was away over the weekend so now all the questions which piled up come in

 

So after Lion froze some times and i restarted it, when trying to boot out of the chimera boatloader into windows i got "Mach Kernel not found" . I could though boot into the recovery mode.

Stupidly i used the repair mechanism of the windows cd and fixed my windows system , with the result that the chimera boatload would not show up anymore.

So i put in the iAtkos CD and booted from there. I had the pinkish fuzzy screen from the very beginning and installing the doix package didn't help fixing it. So i used the utilities within the IAtkos boot to restore from a time machines backup. The time machine backup was restored, however i still didn't have any boot loader and starting up also didn't work very well.

Then i decided to do a fresh install of Lion which worked well. The boot loader was showing and i could boot with the GraphicsEnabler=No and Busratio=20. So i tried again to do a time machine backup by using the utilities from the iAtkos CD. The time machine backup worked flawlessly , however now my boot loader seems to be brocken again .

I tried repairing the boot loader by installing the newest version of chimera by tonymac (1.7) out of Lion, but that dint work either.

How can I fix my boot loader?

 

Help would be greatly appreciated!

[Rockball73]

Oh, I really don't know. On which partition did you install Chameleon/Chimera?

[maxey]

the same as before, on my mac partition

[sheyac]

Make sure your mac partition is set to active (as in it boots off of that). Do this using terminal if you can get into os x.

[Rockball73]

Make sure your mac partition is set to active (as in it boots off of that). Do this using terminal if you can get into os x.

You can set it active through the cmd by the Windows installation DVD... Or with the cmd in Win if you can enter in Win7

[sheyac]

True, but you will also know how os x sees your partitions eg hd(1,2) so you can double check in org.chameleon.boot.plist that you've got the right partitions as default, hidden etc.

[Rockball73]

True, but you will also know how os x sees your partitions eg hd(1,2) so you can double check in org.chameleon.boot.plist that you've got the right partitions as default, hidden etc.

In windows too... Diskpart tells you how disks are named (0, 1, 2, ...) and also partitions (0, 1, 2). If you know that hd(0,1) is for disk 0 partition 1, it's easy to know how they are named under OS X. Or, if I'm mistaking, maybe OS X and Windows do not read disks and partitions in the same order, but I don't think.

[sheyac]

Yup, can't see a problem with using diskpart on windows - either one should work equally well.

 

However, speaking from experience I had trouble setting the mac partition as active from the windows Install disk but doing it from OS X fixed my boot problems. Can anyone shed any light on this? Any advantage to diskpart on windows or mac?

[Rockball73]

Yup, can't see a problem with using diskpart on windows - either one should work equally well.

 

However, speaking from experience I had trouble setting the mac partition as active from the windows Install disk but doing it from OS X fixed my boot problems. Can anyone shed any light on this? Any advantage to diskpart on windows or mac?

Oh yes, both should work... Maybe I had luck, but I set my partition as active 3 ou 4 times with the diskpart command (using the install disk of Win7) and it did the job...

But maybe it's better to do this from OS X. I really don't know. He can give it a try if he can't boot on OS X

[maxey]

Oh yes, both should work... Maybe I had luck, but I set my partition as active 3 ou 4 times with the diskpart command (using the install disk of Win7) and it did the job...

But maybe it's better to do this from OS X. I really don't know. He can give it a try if he can't boot on OS X

 

Tried to do it out of the windows cmd, but funnily mac drive (A software to use mac drives within windows) tells me windows cannot change mac partitions?

 

Make sure your mac partition is set to active (as in it boots off of that). Do this using terminal if you can get into os x.

 

How to do this in os x? I mean using which command?

 

Cannot get into mac at all anymore right now...not even rbootle cd boots into it,i used all 3 additional bootflags,like arch=i686 and GraphicsEnabler=No and busratio=20,it tells me "still waiting for root device"and earlier "Cant load kext com.apple.Geforce -failed to resolve library dependencies" and also " Couldnt alloc class NVKernel" and AudioAUUCDriver seems to have a problem too. IAtkos CD also freezes when it asks me to press a key or F8 at the beginning. Also freezes when i just let the timer run out of time so it would automatically start into IAtkos.

 

What the hell happened?

[sheyac]

Have a look here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22844

 

@Rockball73

Tried to do it out of the windows cmd, but funnily mac drive (A software to use mac drives within windows) tells me windows cannot change mac partitions?

 

I think that might have been the problem when I tried doing it so I used fdisk in OS X.

 

Did you try booting with -f and GraphicsEnabler=No? Not sure how much that would help.