Paul's complete guide to installing OSX Leopard on your MSI Wind / Advent 4211

[Guest Carmelo Ingrao]

I've noticed something : when the battery comes empty, the Wind suddenly stops working.

There's no "information box" to say "plug your computer"

[Guest dween]

Hey, I'm getting an msi wind next month (when i get paid/when it's uk released!) and can't not mod a new laptop that only costs 350 quid! well plus extra ram and hdd. just wanna ask a couple of things?

1) When taking it apart how easy is it to take everything off? is there anything i can't take off? like the screen keyboard etc ( I plan to get the black one and sand all the plastic down and spray it green with a black keyboard!) this is what i did to my last one

2) I am a mac person and want to install osx but does it run well? it's not gonna die on me in a few months or anything? I can use it and not have to worry about data loss?

Cheers

D

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Heh, not taken it apart to THAT extent :D

OSX runs GREAT!

P

[Guest Ian Williams]

I'm sure a number of people viewing this topic followed Pauls link from the forums at msiwind.net. I've noticed that that site appears to be down now.

....anybody know what's happening over there?

[Guest elbenski]

PC World appear to be out of stock all over the SE of the UK. :D

Any spots of units out there?

[Guest ghozd]

Anyone seen this yet?

Paul its is very interesting for you!

[Guest IvanGroznii]

PC World appear to be out of stock all over the SE of the UK. :D

Any spots of units out there?

None, only one unit left on ebay. I think Paul has had the unintended effect of partially inspiring a stampeded of people to get the Advent 4211 and the MSI Wind.

expansys apparently won't have the Wind until the beginning of August.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Anyone seen this yet?

Paul its is very interesting for you!

Woo, fame! :D

(zoom 3 mins in!)

P

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

It does seem to be sold out everywhere!

P

[Guest elbenski]

sad elbenski is sad

[Guest IvanGroznii]

It does seem to be sold out everywhere!

P

Just a suggestion, a tutorial on how to do this for the HP 530 laptop would be much appreciated - it helps those in the cheap notebook market (students) get the benefit from Mac OS X.

The Celeron-M variant of the 530 has a Broadcom wireless chip.

[Guest fishnchips]

Paul, thanks for a great tutorial. I was up an running in around 2 hours yesterday after getting my 4211 delivered from PCWorld. A couple of points/questions which others may find useful:

If you do want to upgrade the RAM/HD/WIFI (all of which I did: Dell 1490, 160GB Samsung + another 1GB), this shows you how to get the case off and change the RAM:

http://netbookmag.com/2008/07/07/tutorial-...grade-msi-wind/

The main changes for the WIFI and drive and the additoinal screw holding the WIFI card in (plus cables and tape) and the single screw holding the HD in place (under the WIFI card). It's very very easy to make the upgrades!

Also, when you boot into OSX post install screen, your WIFI card will need to be switched on manually using the hotkey to be able to automatically join the network (although this is only relevant if you've upgraded the WIFI card to a Dell 1390 or 1490).

The Keyboard map wouldn't take until I rebooted and I have to put the ACPI kext in twice to get it to take and show the battery meter.

I'm going to try and get a codec dump from the card later on and see if I have any luck patching the HDA (although others have tried and failed). If it works, this will finally fix all the remaining problems!

Thanks again Paul!

[Guest elbenski]

How long has the Advent / MSI Wind been around in this configuration?

Is it the first incarnation and are we likely to see another shipment or will they EOL it quickly

and move on? I note from the Reg that Asus appear to be doing that already with the new variants of their EEPC. Thanks for any light you can shed.

The reason for asking is they're sold out now, and I'm wondering if it's already time to wait for the next incarnation of the machine or jump on this particular bandwagon.

[Guest haotong]

Dear Paul, thanks for your great tutorial. I now can run Leopard on my Advent 4211 and very snappy.

There are two problems however, wondering if you can help me out.

I followed the instruction carefully.

1. Now when I try to run Photo Booth, it warns me "Photo Booth cannot open - The graphics card installed in this computer does not support Photo Booth" and of cos the camera does not start.

2. I can not run iWork, each time when I try to run Pages, it does not open a new blank document or the Template Chooser, sometimes a non-responding Untitled page instead. But the Page application does not freeze, I can still open the menus. For iWork, it freezes from start.

I am wondering have you experienced these problems and how you solved them. Thank you very much in advance.

p.s Here are details of the System Profiler:

Graphics/Displays:

Intel GMA950

Display:

Resolution 1024 x 600 @ 60 Hz

Depth: 32-bit Color

Built-In: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No display connected.

[Guest man_bites_dog]

Paul.

Everything works fine until I install the kext's. Then on reboot, it gets stuck on the bluescreen - how do I fix this? I've tried 4 times! I'm going crazy. When I try to boot in safe mode it does the same. How can I boot and remove the kexts to see which one is causing the problems? Please help I'm going mad!

[Guest fishnchips]

1. Now when I try to run Photo Booth, it warns me "Photo Booth cannot open - The graphics card installed in this computer does not support Photo Booth" and of cos the camera does not start.

2. I can not run iWork, each time when I try to run Pages, it does not open a new blank document or the Template Chooser, sometimes a non-responding Untitled page instead. But the Page application does not freeze, I can still open the menus. For iWork, it freezes from start

My system profiler says:

Intel GMA 950:

Chipset Model: GMA 950

Type: Display

Bus: Built-In

VRAM (Total): 64 MB of shared system memory

Vendor: Intel (0x8086)

Device ID: 0x27ae

Revision ID: 0x0003

Displays:

Display:

Resolution: 1024 x 600 @ 60 Hz

Depth: 32-bit Color

Built-In: Yes

Core Image: Hardware Accelerated

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No display connected

I suspect you need to reload the display kexts. Photo Booth works fine for me. Also Pages works fine for me...

[Guest haotong]

My system profiler says:

Intel GMA 950:

Chipset Model: GMA 950

Type: Display

Bus: Built-In

VRAM (Total): 64 MB of shared system memory

Vendor: Intel (0x8086)

Device ID: 0x27ae

Revision ID: 0x0003

Displays:

Display:

Resolution: 1024 x 600 @ 60 Hz

Depth: 32-bit Color

Built-In: Yes

Core Image: Hardware Accelerated

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No display connected

I suspect you need to reload the display kexts. Photo Booth works fine for me. Also Pages works fine for me...

Thanks very much, I reinstalled it all over, don't know what exactly was wrong with the earlier installation, now everything works, and Quartz Extreme says Supported as well.

[Guest goup]

Thank's for the Tuto.

Does anyone know how to reintagrate language. I ask for French installation, but A the End Mac OS is in English.

Or How to change the language

Thank You

[Guest Dogcow]

Well Paul your youtube vid and excellent instructions have given MSI another Wind sale... I'm taking the plunge. Rather ironically the "Wind" will be replacing an "Air", as beautiful as it is I'd rather pocket the £500 I'll get after selling it!

I've already ordered extra RAM, a 160Gb HD, Dell 1490 wireless card and LG GSA-E50N external DVD drive (bus powered!). Now trying to figure out where to buy the Wind, think I'll try play.com. Once I've got it I'll post some side by side pics of the Wind and Air comparing size etc, also my impressions on speed/usability.

Thanks again.

[Guest Peretti]

Hi Paul,

I would like to know if I format my hard disk, then I install Leopard, Windows will be okay if I install it by BootCamp with the original XP of the Wind ?

Sorry for my english, I'm French :D :D

[Guest goup]

Petit mot en français pour Perreti

As tu réussi à installé Leopard en Français ?

Pour ta question je pense que tu devrais plutôt faire un dual boot et installer windows, tout en laissant une partition pour léopard d'abord et ensuite installer Mac

[Guest slaguru]

Received my Advent 4211 today, just waiting for my new wireless card and RAM to arrive and I'll be installing OS X. Being able to intall OS X on the Advent was the main buying point for me as I've been an Apple user since 1989. I miss my 12" Powerbook, should never have sold it. Lost my patience with Apple waiting for them to bring out a Sub notebook.

My initial impressions of the Advent 4211 are great, even with XP LOL, just need a 6 cell battery now and I'll have the perfect machine. Oh, and maybe an Apple sticker to cover up that Advent logo on the lid :-)

Thanks for your efforts with this Paul, it's greatly appreciated! An OSX sub notebook for £300 (incl. ram etc.) Bargin!

You will not regret it.

Fantastic work. One of the guys here with a Mac Book Air is very interested in how well the Advent works next to the 6 times more expensive Air.

(Air is a great machine though)

[Guest WearTheFoxHat]

Just another quick note, always check the collect at store price before going into any PC World or Currys, the amount you can save by simply reserving one can be stupid! I don't think these will get any money knocked off but with anything, always check the website first!!!

I cant believe I'm actually trying to help ppl buy from PC World lol, but then those little Advents are so nice!

M_Taylor40

LOL

I agree with the reserve online thing to get the web price. However I had a HUGE problem with PC World. A couple of weeks back I popped into a store about an hour away as I was passing, and they had stock but it was all reserved for Collect@Store. The assistant suggested I checked the website the following morning to see if there were any that hadn't been collected, and had been put back online. I did this and reserved one. I then took the 1 hour drive over to the store, to be greeted by a sheepish person at the Collect@Store counter who told me that they had tried to call me twice ... which they hadn't. Apparently "two people had booked the same item at the same time". Now I know that being able to do this is complete tosh, and that it had been sold from under my nose! I was really annoyed that Id had to drive for two hours, and that the Collect@Store system doesn't actually reserve the item for you.

I complained to PC World, and got a complete brush off email. To that extent, Im considering getting the medion akoya E1210 instead ... the only difference is that it has a wifi card that works with osx ... but doesn't have bluetooth.

So ... by all means reserve your goods at PC World, but be aware that the Collect@Store system might not actually reserve it for you.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Apparently Sainsburys have the Medion at £299...

P

[Guest angstmann]

Hi Paul, excellent guide and one I intend to follow once I can get hold of one of the compatible machines! No luck with the Advent anywhere near me and the MSI Wind isn't available yet. Regarding the Medion... is it identical to the MSI Wind and if so, what is the name and model number of it, so I know what to look out for.. thinking of a trip to Sainsbury's :D Thanks in advance.