The Joys of Hackintoshing Pt2

In part 1, I explained the what and why of a Hackintosh. Now I will relay my recent horror experience with my computer, which in part prevented me from being active in steemit.

When Hell Breaks Loose

Usually, when there is a security update on OS X, the drivers by nvidia stop working. Of course the solution is a simple driver update which fixes things immediately. About ten days ago though, things were different -and all hell broke loose.

When I booted my computer after a security update, the hackintosh had a kernel panic as soon as the operating system began loading. A kernel panic is the equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death on UNIX. As if that wasn't enough, work demanded too much of my time and I didn't have much free time to waste on looking for a solution.

A couple of days later I decided to check on my computer again. I booted on safe mode and updated the nvidia drivers but the problem persisted. Looking on the Hackintosh forums I saw that many people had a problem with a kernel extension named "lilu" (what kind of a name is that). That name also appeared on the kernel panic report. I updated it to a newer version, along with the bootloader* and the computer booted normally -for one time! The second time the problem appeared again. Once again a frantic search for a solution.

The Solution

As I was searching, I saw someone advising on disabling lilu altogether. I didn't have anything to lose, so I tried it. The first time the Hackintosh booted without graphics drivers (screen resolution 1024x768 on a full HD display) but otherwise it was fully usable. On the second restart the computer booted and worked normally, with lilu disabled. Since everything was apparently working, I left things as they are.

The Aftermath

Five long days, where I didn't know if I would still have a working computer. A few valuable hours, I couldn't really afford to waste, of reading about the inner workings of Mac OS X. I still don't know what exactly lilu.kext is doing. Yet I have it permanently disabled and I am once again a happy Hackintosh user.

• the bootloader loads before the OS and it is the program that fools Mac OS X into thinking that the computer is a Mac.