Change the background of your login screen with Loginox

If you feel that the default login screen for your Hackintosh is too boring, you can easily replace the background image of the login screen by using Loginox (Free). Loginox is a free app that allows you to change the background and logo of the login screen in Mac OS X. This isn't a Hackintosh-specific tip; Loginox will work on any Mac running either Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Lion, and it can use any JPG or PNG image of your choice.

How to edit your own DSDT with DSDT Editor

DSDTs are configuration files that tell Mac OS X how to use your Hackintosh's motherboard, without the need for extra kexts and drivers. A DSDT will make it a lot easier to enable sleep mode on your Hackintosh, and it will also fix any bootup problems related to your CPU. The newest Gigabyte motherboards no longer require DSDT files. And older Gigabyte motherboards have DSDT files available in tonymacx86's DSDT database. However, if you own a non-Gigabyte motherboard, you usually have to make your own DSDT. Editing DSDTs is extremely complicated, but you can automate this editing process by applying a patch with DSDT Editor instead.

Antipop stops your speakers from popping when they turn on

On your Hackintosh, your audio speakers might make a loud popping sound whenever you turn them on. Mac OS X automatically powers off external speakers to save electricity, and powering them back on causes these popping sounds. This usually happens when you boot your Hackintosh, or when you start playing music/videos after a period of inactivity.

How to extract icons from Mac apps

Another quick tip today: if you need a high-quality image of an application's icon, you can actually extract the icon from the application itself. Unlike in Windows, extracting app icons from Mac OS X is very easy. This isn't a Hackintosh-specific tip, but it's something that everybody should know how to do.

Showdown: The Best Chameleon Helper

Champlist, Chameleon Wizard, and Chameleon Prefpane are helper apps designed to offer a graphical user interface (GUI) for the settings of Chameleon bootloader, the program that Hackintoshes use to boot Mac OS X. On some Hackintoshes, the default settings for Chameleon bootloader work perfectly, but most of the time, you have to fiddle with Chameleon's settings to get everything running. You can change the settings for Chameleon bootloader by manually editing preference files within your computer, but if you prefer point-and-click, then you may want to use a helper instead. In this post, we compare the three most popular Chameleon helpers to see which one offers the most seamless Hackintoshing experience.

New NVIDIA drivers for Mac OS X Lion: results are in!

On Monday, the graphics card maker NVIDIA released new video drivers for Mac OS X Lion. These drivers enable Mac support for NVIDIA's newest GTX 500 cards, and also improve support for Hackintoshes that have two graphics cards.

You can download the drivers from here. They require Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3, though they will probably work with a faked system version. While these drivers were only designed for a few specific graphics cards, they should really work with just about any NVIDIA card. Interestingly, these drivers have a lower product number than the old NVIDIA Quadro drivers for Mac OS X, which will likely cause some confusion.

How to install Mac OS X Lion on a MBR partition

When you install Windows on a hard drive, it automatically sets the partition scheme of your hard disk to MBR (Master Boot Record). Mac OS X doesn't support this partition scheme, but you can still install Mac OS X Lion on a hard disk with the MBR partition scheme by modifying "OSInstall.mpkg" and "OSInstall", two installation files inside your Unibeast USB drive.

Rename partitions on your Hackintosh bootscreen

We've previously covered how to hide hard disks on your Hackintosh bootscreen, but what if you want to rename your hard disks instead? Maybe you just want to make your Hackintosh bootscreen look a little more polished-- after all, "System Reserved" isn't exactly a self-explanatory name for your Windows hard disk. Luckily, Chameleon and Chimera, the standard bootloaders for Hackintoshes, have the ability to change the names of the hard disk partitions that show up on your bootscreen.

Location of Mac OS X system icons

Just a quick tip today: if you often browse Apple-related forums, you'll notice that a lot of people have system icons from Mac OS X as their forum avatars. Luckily for you, you can actually get these system icons from Mac OS X itself. (Of course, you could always just download these icons from a website like IconArchive, but where's the fun in that?)

Check the BIOS version of a Gigabyte motherboard

Running UserDSDT in Multibeast is one of the easiest ways to set up your Hackintosh, but the DSDT files used by UserDSDT only work with specific BIOS versions of your motherboard. Motherboards display their BIOS version on the POST screen (the black screen that you see when you start your computer), but newer Gigabyte motherboards cover the POST screen with the Gigabyte logo. However, it is still possible to find the BIOS version of your Gigabyte motherboard without Windows, by utilizing a rather obscure option in the BIOS itself.