[Solved] Random bootup crashes G31T-M E7200 9400GT

Hey there, I'm having some problems trying to hack0 one of my computers. It's a custom build with the following specs.

ECS Elitegroup G31T-M motherboard w/ E7200 C2D
4GB (2x2gb) Corsair XMS2 DDR2
PNY nVidia GeForce 9400 GT PCIe
Samsung OEM SATA DVD+/-RW
Western Digital 320gb 7200rpm SATA HDD
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200rpm SATA HDD

I've tried many distros with varying degrees of success, I'll focus on iATKOS 5i because I've had the most success with that one so far. I have flashed the BIOS and installed with the options provided on the 10.5.5 HCL under my mobo.

Quote:

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Works flawless with the following bios! RapidShare: Easy Filehosting.

Installed with iATKOS v5 and selected only;
base, dsmos, PCEFI 9, SMBIOS- EFI, vanilla kernel (select none), removed thermal kexts and Disabler.Kext.

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The only things that I select in addition to the above options are the nvidia natit and remove nvresman. By process of elimination, I've figured out that this is the only combination that will actually get me to the setup assistant after the install. Every other nvidia driver option hangs at the boot screen with rather odd behavior. The process will freeze randomly. If I go into verbose mode and try to isolate the last line before the freeze, it changes every time. Sometimes its after the ntfs driver, other times its an mdnsresponder issue, occasionally it doesn't even get to the loginwindow application starting. This is the same thing that happens with most other distros.

OK, so after i get a good install, I go to install the 9400 gt kexts (search google for 9400 gt leopard, one of the first results is the thread with a link to them), repair permissions, etc.. After a reboot, the graphics are in full resolution, but there is an extreme amount of lag in everything but the mouse pointer, and there are many artifacts in the menus.

Any help is appreciated.

Okay, after a bit of fiddling, I think I have gotten everything working. Just for future reference or if anyone is having the same problem, I'll go over what I did.

-iATKOS install as mentioned above.
-Using OSX86 tools, I installed the three 9400gt kexts, repaired permissions, and set up the custom EFI strings. After all that, I rebooted, and was greeted with a blank screen instead of the login prompt.
-I booted up in single user mode. I used nano to swap the display-A and display-B references in the info.plist of NVinject.kext. This is all detailed in the thread where I got the 9400gt drivers, so check there.
-When I booted up with -f (as is instructed in the driver thread), it hanged at the loading screen, however...
-when I did a normal boot, the desktop came up at full res with no lag (finally!!) and a quick check in sys profiler confirmed that full QE/CI was enabled. :)

Right now my system is working 100%, so nobody breathe too hard :)

EDIT: OK, fast forward two months and I'm in the same tangle once again. This time, following the steps I outlined above didn't work at all :rolleyes:. However, a proper update to 10.5.6 from the stock iATKOS 5i install detailed above makes pretty much everything work 100%, the drivers for the 9400gt are evidently included in the 10.5.6 update due to the fact that Apple now uses the 9400 chip for all of its computers :D.

Good to know thecompid :D I read this too late :P thx for the info, surely will help other users

Heh, I may actually sell my aging macbook. My new hackintosh boots up in literally 20 or 25 seconds to a fully usable desktop. The entire OS screams, and its not even a very high spec machine. A++++ WOULD DEFINITELY HACK AGAIN ;)

You can gift me :D kekeke

lol, i would, but i'm a starving college student in training.

I have a similar problem with my PNY 9400GT. I can't get the machine to boot with NVDAResman.kext in the extensions folder. I get random kernel panics without infomation displayed in the verbose mode on whats crashing. Seems to be right before it changes from grey screen to the blue screen that things crash.

I've updated the device IDs, the NVCAP, everything. Even loaded the GFx strings with OSx86. I can load NVinject.kext and other drivers to show the device RAM and such in system profiler, but I can't change resolutions on the fly, or support QE, etc. The last piece, NVDAResman.kext crashes the whole deal.

This is with 10.5.6

With a fresh 10.5.7 I get redraw errors (windows do not disappear when closed, and scrolling doesn't refresh the window). No support for the card either. I haven't wanted to tackle this yet, but after upating the NVCAP and the device ID the machine kernel panics like 10.5.6


Has anyone gotten a PNY 9400GT 512MB working with 10.5.6???? (or 10.5.7)

If so, can you post your kexts?

OK Fellas, thanks to Hagar|Away on #osx86, All that's necessary is to use STOCK kexts from 10.5.6

Then just load NVinject, properly updated with the NVCAP and Device ID for the PNY GeForce 9400 GT 512MB

100% working.

NVinject file uploaded here:
Board Message

I get the same problem with GeForce Go 7600

What utility did you use to flash your BIOS? I'm stuck there, sorry noobish :woz: