Gaming Dual Booting OSX/Win 7 on a Dell Laptop

[Dangy]

I have a Dell laptop, with these specs:

SYSTEM Inspiron 17R
PROCESSOR 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM processor 2.00 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz
MEMORY 8GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
HARD DRIVE 640GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M (128-bit) 2GB
FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE Integrated 1.0 mega pixel widescreen HD Webcam
DISPLAY 17.3" HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Display with TrueLife™

I've been looking into dual booting lately. I would like to boot Lion if possible, but if Snow Leopard has more compatibility, that would be fine too. I have no idea on how to go about doing this. So some general insight would be awesome.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Assuming you'll be able to install OSX on your laptop.

 

[Dangy]

Assuming you'll be able to install OSX on your laptop.

What do you mean by that?

 

[kaz_abdin]

It is possible to run OSX and dual boot your Windows 7 on a pc. I have that setup running at the moment. Your system does look pretty good and I am sure i7s are natively supported by Mac OSX Lion (running an AMD combo so I am not entirely sure). One problem you may face when installing OSX is that your RAM is over 4GB. When Installing OSX, you must have 4GB for less RAM, but you can add more later on once installation is complete. So you must take out 4GBs of RAM temporarily since you have 8GB. For more information on installing OSX on a pc, I suggest visitng InsanelyMac as it contains wealth of knowledge on installing OSX on a pc with the loads of tutorials.

 

[YayMii]

Assuming you'll be able to install OSX on your laptop.

It's completely possible. Not only does something like Hackintosh exist, but the laptop in question has the same CPU as the base model early 2011 Macbook Pro.

@OP: Yeah, it's completely possible, and both versions are equally as compatible with your hardware. But the only reason that you'd install Snow Leopard instead of Lion is if you want to use legacy PowerPC apps, but you'll probably not have any issues with that if you're going to run your old programs on Windows anyway.
Here's a good tutorial to help you, it works with legit discs too. But it involves installing Snow Leopard then updating Lion. You could skip steps and just use a pirated copy of Lion, but I don't know how the process of that would go.

 

[BORTZ]

There are only certain motherboards that allow for OSX to be installed on them correctly.

 

[Deleted User]

I highly doubt that you'll not be able to install OSX, My last laptop was a Dell and was able to dual boot Linux/Windows. I suspect Dell would get quite a bit of flame if this were in fact, true (that OSX was blocked).

 

[YayMii]

Alternatively, you could try the new UniBeast, which makes installing Lion nearly effortless.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Assuming you'll be able to install OSX on your laptop.

It's completely possible. Not only does something like Hackintosh exist, but the laptop in question has the same CPU as the base model early 2011 Macbook Pro.

@OP: Yeah, it's completely possible, and both versions are equally as compatible with your hardware. But the only reason that you'd install Snow Leopard instead of Lion is if you want to use legacy PowerPC apps, but you'll probably not have any issues with that if you're going to run your old programs on Windows anyway.
Here's a good tutorial to help you, it works with legit discs too. But it involves installing Snow Leopard then updating Lion. You could skip steps and just use a pirated copy of Lion, but I don't know how the process of that would go.

BortzANATOR explained my point quite nicely.

In other words, not every computer can have Mac OS installed on them.

 

[air2004]

I know nothing about apple OS's but shouldn't boot camp help you ? here is a link I googled about boot camp and win 7 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3986

 

[Dangy]

Awesome information so far. I will probably start doing this tomorrow, the only problem would be having more than 4GB of RAM. Is RAM hard to remove from a laptop?

 

[wchill]

Most laptops I've had just require you to unscrew a panel on the bottom. If you have more than 4GB of RAM, your laptop probably has two sticks of it. Just pull one out and you're done (note that this will probably reduce performance because you lose dual channel capability)

 

[YayMii]

I know nothing about apple OS's but shouldn't boot camp help you ? here is a link I googled about boot camp and win 7 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3986

Boot Camp has nothing to do with running Hackintosh (aka OS X on a PC). That's for Windows 7 on a Mac.

BortzANATOR explained my point quite nicely.

In other words, not every computer can have Mac OS installed on them.

But the fact alone that he has an Intel CPU greatly increases his chances of having a successful Hackintosh, and that's kinda what I was pointing at.

 

[dilav]

But the fact alone that he has an Intel CPU greatly increases his chances of having a successful Hackintosh, and that's kinda what I was pointing at.

True, but there may be compatibility issues with other devices such as wireless cards, network cards, sleep, and video cards. Good luck with your OS X install.

 

[Dangy]

So I never really got a clear answer on the RAM thing. Should I take some out? The guide doesn't say anything about it...

 

[SifJar]

So I never really got a clear answer on the RAM thing. Should I take some out? The guide doesn't say anything about it...

I don't see why you think there is a problem with having >4GB RAM, the Lifehacker guide advises a custom build with 8GB, which is based on a guide at tonymacx86's site (dev behind UniBeast and other hackintosh related stuff). I think you should be fine with 4GB.

EDIT: Here's details of the build at tonymacx86: http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/09/building-sandy-bridge-customac-customac.html

 

[Hakoda]

Oy vey.

Currently typing from OS X Lion on my HP Probook 4530s.

Installing OS X Lion is much simpler than before however, there is a small flaw in the installation process: you need to have access to Mac/already working Hackintosh due to the need for Disk Utility.app. If you look hard enough in the right place, you might be able to find a Snow Leopard distro (OS X install ISO that has drivers and patches for PC hardware, no need for extra Mac, just burn and reboot) and if you install that, then you can use the current guides to create a Lion Install USB.

The reason someone complained that you had over 4GB RAM is that some people when initially installing OS X Lion, had problems whenever their RAM was over 2GB. This has been patched and coupled with an MBR patch so you can keep your Windows installation without wiping it clean. Nawcom's MBR patch for 10.7.0 should do the trick. If you're going the Snow Leopard Distro then Vanilla Lion route, the SL Distro will already be prepatched for things like memory capacity, board-id bypass and MBR partition tables.

I would suggest searching more on InsanelyMac or TonyMacOSx86 for guides on your specific Inspiron 17R.

 

[Dangy]

Oy vey.

Currently typing from OS X Lion on my HP Probook 4530s.

Installing OS X Lion is much simpler than before however, there is a small flaw in the installation process: you need to have access to Mac/already working Hackintosh due to the need for Disk Utility.app. If you look hard enough in the right place, you might be able to find a Snow Leopard distro (OS X install ISO that has drivers and patches for PC hardware, no need for extra Mac, just burn and reboot) and if you install that, then you can use the current guides to create a Lion Install USB.

The reason someone complained that you had over 4GB RAM is that some people when initially installing OS X Lion, had problems whenever their RAM was over 2GB. This has been patched and coupled with an MBR patch so you can keep your Windows installation without wiping it clean. Nawcom's MBR patch for 10.7.0 should do the trick. If you're going the Snow Leopard Distro then Vanilla Lion route, the SL Distro will already be prepatched for things like memory capacity, board-id bypass and MBR partition tables.

I would suggest searching more on InsanelyMac or TonyMacOSx86 for guides on your specific Inspiron 17R.

First off, I'm mad jelly that you're dual booting. I searched around InsanelyMac and TonyMacOSx, and found a few things about the Inspiron N7110. They said that installed correctly (one guy got a grey screen), but the wireless didn't work, and the touchpad didn't have multitouch.

From what I understand you can install "kexts" which are like drivers for hackintosh's, is there a list of kexts somewhere?

Also, what are the chances that I will fuck up my existing Win 7 install and/or lose data from my HDD while installing OSX?

 

[SifJar]

First off, I'm mad jelly that you're dual booting. I searched around InsanelyMac and TonyMacOSx, and found a few things about the Inspiron N7110. They said that installed correctly (one guy got a grey screen), but the wireless didn't work, and the touchpad didn't have multitouch.

From what I understand you can install "kexts" which are like drivers for hackintosh's, is there a list of kexts somewhere?

Also, what are the chances that I will fuck up my existing Win 7 install and/or lose data from my HDD while installing OSX?

You should lose nothing provided you don't format or install to the wrong partition on your HDD. (Obviously you will need to partition your drive unless you happen to have two - this will involve shrinking the current Windows partition, making a new partition with the newly freed space, formatting the new partition in whatever format for Mac OS, then installing Mac OS to that partition - provided you are careful, you'll lose nothing)