I need Windows!

December 15, 2009

I need Windows!

I took another technical support call today from my favorite customer, Tyler. He was trying to download an update to his favorite game, WoW. But the computer kept crashing. “Grampa, it keep getting a kernel panic!” I wasn’t sure at eleven, that he knew what a kernel panic was. But this is what happens when a Hackintosh encounters a serious and fatal error and can’t continue. The message is pretty serious. “You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button for several seconds…” in four languages.

Last week, we had the same issue updating WoW. We fixed the problem by modifying the program used to execute the updater to Rosetta, software that dynamically translates PowerPc code to Intel. Tyler had already followed the prescription from last week:

1. Wait for the patch downloader to finish and check the patch integrity.
2. After this finishes, your machine will kernel panic.
3. Reboot.
4. Open “Finder”
5. Navigate to WorldofWarcraft/Patches/WoW-3.2.2-to-3.3.0-enUS-patch/ folder
6. Inside the WoW-3.2.2-to-3.3.0-enUS-patch folder there should be a few files, one of which is “Blizzard Updater”
7. Open the “Get Info” window on the Blizzard Updater file
8. Check the box that says “Open using Rosetta”.
9. Close the “Get Info” window.
10. Double-click the “Blizzard Updater” program, which should now successfully patch your WoW installation to 3.3.0.

… but this time it didn’t work. “Grampa, I really need Windows!”

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