How to install OS X 10.9 Mavericks on your PC Hackintosh with myHack

Last week, Apple announced the newest iteration of its Mac OS X operating system, OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While Mavericks is still in development, the first "developer preview" of Mavericks has already been released to members of the Apple developer community. Fortunately, Mavericks is just as Hackintosh-compatible as all previous iterations of Mac OS X; Conti released a Mavericks-compatible version of his myHack installation tool within days of the official Apple announcement. If you have access to a copy of OS X 10.9 Mavericks DP1 ("Developer Preview 1"), then installing it on your PC with myHack is pretty straightforward.

Requirements:

• A compatible computer: Not every computer will work with Mac OS X, even with the help of myHack. Be sure to read the Hackintosh compatibility guide by macbreaker very carefully, to check whether or not your computer qualifies. The hardware requirements for OS X Mavericks are essentially identical to those for OS X Mountain Lion; AMD processors and older 32-bit Intel processors (such as Pentium M) are not supported. If your computer already has OS X Mountain Lion installed, myHack will just update Mountain Lion to Mavericks normally, without deleting any of your apps or files.


• An empty hard drive partition: Mac OS X needs its own hard drive partition (a minimum of 10 GB of space is required, but at least 50 GB of space is recommended). 


• myHack (Free): myHack is a Mac program that modifies the official OS X Mavericks DP1 installer, and writes it onto a USB drive. You can then use this myHack USB drive to run the Mavericks installer on a PC. myHack works with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and newer.


• A Hackintosh with Snow Leopard/Lion/Mountain Lion already installed, a real Mac, or a Mac OS X virtual machine: myHack is a Mac app, so you need a computer with Mac OS X to run it. You could use a real Mac, if you own one. Alternatively, you could install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on your PC, and then follow this guide to install Mavericks (if your computer uses an Ivy Bridge processor, be sure to use iBoot for Ivy Bridge).
  


• OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The method used by this guide requires that you have a copy of the Mavericks installation app. It's available from Apple's Developer Program, which has a membership fee of $99 a year. Of course, you could always download it from bittorrent, too. Make sure that your downloaded copy is either called "Install OS X 10.9 Developer Preview.app" or "InstallESD.dmg" (myHack works with either version).


• An empty USB drive (8 GB or larger): The USB drive used for myHack must be at least 8 GB in size. Since myHack will erase all of the files on your USB drive, make sure to back up its contents first. You can reuse this USB drive for normal stuff after you finish installing Mavericks.


• Multibeast (Free): Multibeast is a collection of kext files that your Hackintosh will need to run properly, after the initial installation. Download it onto a USB drive. Be sure to download the newest version 5 of Multibeast, not the older versions 3 or 4 (which are for Snow Leopard and Lion, respectively).

1. Update your boot loader

Using Mavericks DP1 as your main operating system is not recommended; while almost everything in the developer preview works as expected, at the end of the day, Mavericks is still a beta project. Therefore, it's recommended that you install Mavericks on a separate hard drive or hard drive partition instead, and simply dual-boot between Mavericks and the current Mac OS X installation on your Hackintosh.

In all likeliness, your Hackintosh's current version of Chameleon or Chimera bootloader won't be able to boot OS X Mavericks. To be able to dual-boot between Mavericks and your current installation of Mac OS X, you will have to update your bootloader.

To do this, download myHack and run it. Enter your Mac OS X password when the app begins. When myHack prompts you, select "Install Chameleon".

Select your current hard drive (labeled as "/") as the installation destination, and click "Ok".

This will update your Hackintosh's bootloader to a Mavericks-compatible version. Now you will be able to boot both your Hackintosh's current version of Mac OS X and Mavericks.

2. Run myHack

Start myHack again. Enter your Mac OS X password when the app begins, and the setup process will begin. When myHack prompts you, select "Create OS X Installer" and "Create OS X 10.9 Install Disk".

Select your USB drive as the installation destination (mine is named "Cheesecake").

myHack will ask you for the location of your copy of OS X 10.9 Mavericks. It's usually faster to "Browse Manually" for the Mavericks installation app.

myHack will begin to set up your installer USB drive. Click "Ok" when myHack asks to erase your USB drive, so that it can begin the setup process.

From here, the setup process is pretty automatic. myHack will erase your USB drive, copy the contents of the Mavericks installer app onto it, and then modify those contents to be bootable on a PC. Near the end of the process, myHack will ask you whether you want to apply the MBR patch to the USB drive. Click "No"-- the patch is not yet supported on Mavericks.

This entire process should take about 10-15 minutes, though it may take up to an hour if your USB drive is slow.

3. Install Mavericks!

From here, the installation process is pretty much the same as the process for OS X Mountain Lion. For this, refer to Steps 3-7 of our Mountain Lion installation guide.

Obviously, you won't have to follow Steps 1-2 of the Mountain Lion guide, which are about running Unibeast. You've already made your own installer USB drive, with myHack!

Remember, using Mavericks as your computer's main operating system is a bad idea. Instead of installing Mavericks on top of your current Mac OS X installation, you should install Mavericks on a separate hard disk or hard disk partition. You can create hard disk partitions with Disk Utility (which is located in Applications->Utilities in your main hard drive).

Otherwise, the installation process is mostly the same-- you'll still have to make sure that your computer and BIOS are set up (Step 3-4), and go through the normal installation and post-installation procedures (Steps 5-7). The only other thing that's really different is that the myHack installer USB drive lets you install Hackintosh-specific kexts and configuration files straight from the OS X installer. So when you install OS X Mavericks, myHack will also prompt you to install your own Extra folder. Choose the "Use Generic One" option.

myHack will then ask to remove a couple of unnecessary kext files-- click "Yes" for all of them. After that, the installation will finish.

And that's all there is to it! Thanks to myHack, you should be able to boot OS X Mavericks from your computer's hard drive (without the help of the myHack installer USB drive) immediately after the initial installation. You can set up the rest of your Hackintosh (enable sound, ethernet, etc.) with Multibeast. Now you can check out the cool new features in Mavericks.

NOTE: The current version of Multibeast (5.3.1) does not include a Mavericks-compatible version of Chimera bootloader yet. Therefore, if you want to install UserDSDT or Easybeast on your Hackintosh with Multibeast, you will have to redo Step 1 of this guide afterwards.