Warning: Please follow these instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage or information loss that could result from following this guide. Also, note that installing OS X on PC is illegal. Please buy a real Mac if you're satisfied with your Hackintosh. This guide is for evaluation purposes only.
Requirements
- If upgrading from macOS Sierra or later, your Mac needs 35.5GB of available storage to upgrade. If upgrading from an earlier release, your Mac needs up to 44.5GB of available storage. To upgrade from OS X Mountain Lion, first upgrade to OS X El Capitan, then upgrade to macOS Big Sur.
- Can't install OSX el capitan, stuck on installation screen Hello! Was trying to instal el capitan on my macbook, the installation starts and after a few minutes stops and a messaging saying the os x could'nt be install on the computer, please contact the software editor to get help.
- An Intel-based PC with UEFI bios
- A USB flash drive with at least 16GB capacity
- A dedicated hard drive (SSD highly recommended)
- A computer running OS X (10.9 or later) for preparing the installation USB flash drive
I chose to avoid the UniBeast installer (by Tonymacx86) because of its commercialized nature, as described here. Here is a vanilla guide to installing El Capitan on your PC!
Preparing the USB Installation Drive
OS X No Packages were eligible for install repaired. “No packages were eligible for install” is a message that appears when attempting to install OS X El Capitan on older macs. MacBooks are a very popular purchase in Melbourne and around Australia so it is important to understand the reasoning behind why this message appears. Please watch version 2 of this video here: the 'install failed' and 'No packages were eligible for install'.
First things first. We need to prepare a USB thumb drive that will contain the installation files as well as the bootloader and custom kexts for our specific Hackintosh build.
Download El Capitan from the Mac App Store
Head over to your existing OS X environment running 10.9 or later and open the Mac App Store.
Search for 'El Capitan' and click Download. The download is completely free if you're running OS X 10.9+.
Wait for the download to finish (this could take some time).
Format the USB Drive
Open Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities and locate your USB device. Make sure you've backed up anything important on that drive as it will be erased forever.
Select it, and then on the right, click the partition tab.
- Click Curent Layout and change it to 1 Partition.
- Set the Name to USB.
- Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
- Click Options and select GUID Partition Table.
Click Apply to format the drive.
Copy the Installation Files to the USB Drive
Now that we've downloaded the installation files from the Mac App Store and formatted our USB drive, let's copy the installation files to it.
Run the following command in the Terminal (Applications/Utilities):
The command will run a script inside the Install OS X El Capitan application that will copy the installation files to the USB drive.
This process takes about 15 minutes. Go out for a quick run, or a hamburger, or both. When you come back, it should have finished.
Installing a Bootloader
If you tried to boot from the USB drive as is after the previous step on a PC, it wouldn't work. We need a bootloader that makes it possible to boot OS X on x86 and x86_64 PCs.
There are 3 popular bootloaders to choose from.
- Clover
- Chameleon
- Chimera
I went with Clover as it seems to be the most popular choice among other El Capitan installers, mostly for the following reasons:
Clover is an open-source EFI-based bootloader created on Apr 4, 2011. It has a totally different approach from Chameleon and Chimera. It can emulate the EFI portion present on real Macs and boot the OS from there instead of using the regular legacy BIOS approach used by Chameleon and Chimera. For many, Clover is considered the next-gen bootloader and soon it will become the only choice since BIOS in being replaced by UEFI in every new motherboard. One big feature of Clover is that iMessage, iCloud, the Mac App Store works along with Find My Mac, Back To My Mac and FileVault since Clover can use the EFI partition. (Read more)
Install Clover on Your USB Drive
Installing Clover on your USB drive is relatively easy. It involves running an installation wizard and selecting some options.
Download the latest Clover installer from here.
- Run the installer.
- Click Continue twice.
- Click Change Install Location and set it to your formatted USB drive.
- Click Customize and check the following options:
- [x] Install for UEFI booting only
- [x] Install Clover in the ESP
- [ ] Drivers64UEFI
- [x] OsxAptioFixDrv-64 - fixes memory map created by AMI Aptio EFI. Booting OS X is impossible otherwise.
- Click Install and wait for the installation to finish. It shouldn't take more than a minute.
Copy Essential Kexts to the USB Drive
Download El Capitan Installer
Next, we'll need to copy some kexts (kernal extensions, similar to drivers on Windows) to the USB drive.
- FakeSMC.kext - open source SMC device driver/emulator developed by netkas. Tricks OS X into thinking it's installed on Apple hardware. Absolutely required for Hackintosh installation.
- NullCPUPowerManagement.kext - disables AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext which may cause kernel panics when you try to boot from the USB drive. It's optional, copy it only if you get an AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement-related kernel panic.
- ApplePS2Controller.kext and AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext - adds support for PS2 devices (such as PS2 keyboard/mouse). They're optional, copy them only if you still use PS2 devices.
Download these files from here and copy them to the EFI mounted volume at /EFI/Clover/kexts/10.11/.
Now that the installation USB drive is ready, let's install OS X El Capitan!
Boot from the USB Drive
Restart your computer and boot from the USB drive (Press Esc/F8/Del to access the boot selection menu).
Use the arrow keys to select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan (It should be selected by default). Press the spacebar and select Boot Mac OS X in verbose mode. Verbose mode means that you'll be able to see exactly what's going on under the hood as OS X attempts to boot up its installer. You'll be able to see the exact error message if booting fails.
Press Enter and cross your fingers. Clover will now boot the installer from your USB drive. This could take some time, in my case, it takes around 5 minutes (Don't worry -- the startup time is around 5 seconds after installing on an SSD).
Did it fail?
It's more than likely that the boot will fail. Don't panic (ha-ha), as kernel panics usually mean that you forgot to copy an essential kext to the EFI partition. Look up the exact error you're getting before the boot log comes to an end and search Google for a solution.
Once you find an additional kext that your system needs, you'd attempt to copy it to the EFI volume, only to discover that it's gone! Not to worry, it's just unmounted and hidden. Follow this guide to mount the hidden partition, and then, follow the Copy Essential Kexts section above to copy it to the USB drive's EFI partition.
Format the Target Hard Drive
Once the installation wizard boots, the next step is to prepare the hard drive that you want to install OS X on.
Click Continue, followed by Disk Utility.
Select the target drive to install to (not the USB drive!) and click the Erase button. Make sure to back up anything important on that drive, as it will be deleted forever.
- Set the Name to El Capitan.
- Set the Format to OS X Extended (Journaled).
- Set the Scheme to GUID Partition Map.
Click Erase to format the drive.
Install OS X to the Target Drive
Exit the Disk Utility and click Install OS X.
Click Show All Disks and select the drive you just formatted to install OS X on it. Finally, click Install.
The process takes about 25 minutes. Be patient. For me, it hung at the end ('1 second remaining') for around 5 minutes. Don't be tempted to reset or cancel the installation.
When that's done, the system will reboot. Make sure to boot from the USB device again, and select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan once again, in verbose mode. The installation is a two-part process that continues once you re-boot into the USB drive.
Finally, after about 25 more minutes, OS X El Capitan should be successfully installed on the target drive.
Boot into El Capitan via the USB Device
After the second reboot, boot from the USB device once again, but this time, select Boot OS X from El Capitan, and select verbose mode.
Press Enter and cross your fingers again. If all goes well, you'll be presented with the setup wizard:
Take a minute to set up your new Hackintosh. Once you're done, there are a few things you need to do to finish off the installation.
Reinstall Clover on the Hackintosh Drive
In the previous step, we used Clover on our USB drive to boot our Hackintosh. This is fine, but most of us aren't going to keep that USB drive plugged in forever. Let's make it possible to boot El Capitan independently by reinstalling Clover on it.
Go back up to the Install Clover on Your USB Drive section and follow the steps again, but this time, select your El Capitan volume instead of the USB drive.
Once again, copy the essential kexts to the EFI partition that shows up after installing Clover.
Finally, make sure to add Clover EFI boot options which is possible by pressing Clover Boot Options in the Clover boot window (if there are 2 boot options -- find the one for your SATA drive). I literally spent 3 hours figuring out why Clover would not boot when I disconnected the USB drive before I figured out that I need to manually add the EFI boot options.
Now you'll be able to boot directly from the El Capitan hard drive, as it should be!
Audio and Networking
If you're lucky, audio and networking will work right out of the box. If not, you're on your own from here. You'll need to research your exact hardware (by using System Information in Applications/Utilities) and searching Google to find the right kext or installer to make it work on El Capitan.
Clover Themes
The default Clover theme is pretty ugly (no offense). Check out this theme database to improve Clover's appearance.
This is YosemiteLogin by xenatt:
El Capitan Reinstall
Enjoy!
That's it! Enjoy your new Hackintosh, and if you absolutely love it, consider buying a Mac!
Oct 24, 2019 I was able to install El Captain on another USB Drive (64GB) connected GIGABYTE PC. This went absolutely fine and I now have a fully indepentent USB Drive which i can simple connect to the PC and the El Captain OS boots up. Case 2: I next tried to use the same bootable USB to install El. Simply fill in the fields below and we'll call you back to confirm your booking. This link points to the 10.11.1 update and not the base 10.11. Have you been able to do a install of El Capitan from this link or are you just updating an existing El Cap install? – fsb Sep 22 '16 at 14:52.
As with prior versions of OS X, the new version 10.11 “El Capitan” is available as a free purchase from the App Store, and should then download and run to allow you to upgrade your system. If all goes well, you should see the OS X installation window that instructs you to begin the upgrade process, but there may be instances where this does not appear, or does not work when you attempt the install.
OS X El Capitan remains available for Mac computers that can't upgrade to macOS Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra or Sierra, or that need to upgrade to El Capitan first. Then double-click the file named Install OS X El Capitan. Click Continue and follow the on-screen instructions. My problem is that my Mac starts up to the 'El Capitan' installer. After restarting several times, OS X is still on screen telling me that 'no packages were eligible for install'.
First, the OS X installer should run automatically, but if not then you can try running it manually:
- Go to the Applications folder
- Open the program called “Install OS X El Capitan”
- Follow the on-screen instructions.
An alternative approach is to create a dedicated installation drive from the El Capitan installer, and use that to install the upgrade. For this, you will need a spare external drive (USB drive, or hard drive) that is at least 8GB in size, and then perform the following steps:
- Attach the drive to your Mac
- Use Disk Utility to format it to HFS+ with a GUID partition scheme, naming it INSTALLER
- Open the OS X Terminal and run the following command (copy and paste all 5 lines):
Press Enter to run the pasted command, and supply your password when prompted (it will not show when typed). Note that if you get any errors, be sure your USB drive is formatted and named “INSTALLER” so the command will properly target it. You will also need to have first downloaded the OS X El Capitan installer from the App Store, and have this present in your Applications folder.
The Terminal may take a while to complete this step, but when done you can reboot your Mac and hold the Option key to show the boot menu, and then select the El Capitan installation drive you just created to run the installer and upgrade your Mac’s internal hard drive.
/mac-os-catalina-iso-download-for-vmware/. If the procedure still fails with an error, then hopefully you have a full system backup ready, which you can restore to your Mac using the option to restore from a Time Machine backup in the OS X Recovery partition, or whatever cloning software you use. When done, attempt the above procedures to try again.
Check compatibility
You can upgrade to OS X El Capitan from OS X Snow Leopard or later on any of the following Mac models. Your Mac also needs at least 2GB of memory and 8.8GB of available storage space.
El Capitan Not Eligible For Install Data
MacBook introduced in 2009 or later, plus MacBook (13-inch, Aluminium, Late 2008)
MacBook Air introduced in late 2008 or later
MacBook Pro introduced in mid 2007 or later
Mac mini introduced in early 2009 or later
iMac introduced in mid 2007 or later
Mac Pro introduced in early 2008 or later
Xserve models introduced in early 2009
To find your Mac model, memory, storage space and macOS version, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu . If your Mac isn't compatible with OS X El Capitan, the installer will let you know.
Make a back-up
Before installing any upgrade, it’s a good idea to back up your Mac. Time Machine makes it simple, and other back-up methods are also available. Learn how to back up your Mac.
Get connected
It takes time to download and install OS X, so make sure that you have a reliable Internet connection. If you’re using a Mac notebook computer, plug it into AC power.
Download OS X El Capitan
Os X El Capitan Not Installing
For the strongest security and latest features, find out whether you can upgrade to macOS Catalina, the latest version of macOS.
El Capitan Install Loop
If you still need OS X El Capitan, use this link: Download OS X El Capitan. A file named InstallMacOSX.dmg will download to your Mac.
Install the macOS installer
Double-click the downloaded file to open a window showing its contents. Then double-click the file within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg.
Follow the on-screen instructions, which will guide you through the steps necessary to install.
Begin installation
After installation of the installer is complete, open the Applications folder on your Mac, then double-click the file named Install OS X El Capitan.
Click Continue and follow the on-screen instructions. You may find it easiest to begin installation in the evening so that it can complete overnight, if needed.
Allow installation to complete
Please allow installation to complete without putting your Mac to sleep or closing its lid. Your Mac may restart, show a progress bar or show a blank screen several times as it installs both OS X and related updates to your Mac firmware.
Learn more
- OS X El Capitan won't install on top of a later version of macOS, but you can erase your disc first or install on another disc.
- You can use macOS Recovery to reinstall macOS.