Install macOS Sequoia 15 on Dell Latitude 5410 laptop using OpenCore bootloader

Even when I already have a Mac Mini M2 Pro, I still play with Hackintosh. I love the ability to dual boot Windows and Linux together with macOS, without having to resort to virtualization using Parallels or UTM, as well as the ability to extend the RAM and storage without having to pay Apple a premium. Although I have previously successfully installed macOS Sonoma with xCode on VMware using a Ubuntu host, the performance was only acceptable, and I recently decided to install macOS Sequoia on my Dell Latitude 5410, a great candidate for Hackintosh, for a better macOS experience.

For some background, Apple introduced the M1 architecture in 2020 and the Intel 10th generation CPU, also introduced in 2020, is the last Intel CPU officially supported by macOS. There are no support for recent NVIDIA GPUs in macOS Sequoia, and only selected AMD GPU models are supported. My Dell 5410 is great for Hackintosh as it uses an i5-10310U CPU with Intel UHD integrated graphics, both of which are officially supported by macOS. Ethernet (which uses Intel I219) and audio (which uses Realtek ALC3204) are also supported. For wireless and Bluetooth communication, my unit uses the Intel AX200 module which can also be made to work with the Heliport macOS client which uses the itwlm kext.

To start, use this tool (or any similar tool from github) to download a local installer for macOS Sequoia, then follow this tutorial to create a bootable USB thumbdrive from the installer you just downloaded using the following command, which should preferably be run from another machine running macOS:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sequoia.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

After this step, your Sequoia installer thumbdrive should be bootable on an Apple device such as a Macbook. However, because createinstallmedia doesn’t generate any files on the EFI partition (which is not required to boot into macOS by Apple devices), the generated thumbdrive will not be bootable on your PC. To make it bootable, download the EFI files needed for the Dell 5410 (and similar models), and put all downloaded files and directories into a subfolder named EFI on the EFI partition. This can be done from a Ubuntu live USB. It should be noted that the hardest part of any Hackintosh installation is the compilation of files (kext, config.plist, etc.) on the EFI partition to make it compatible with your hardware. In this case, as I already have a precompiled EFI folder for my Dell 5410, this step is straight forward.

Next, on your PC, disable Secure Boot, and choose to boot from the USB thumbdrive and you should boot straight into the installer interface. If you get into a boot loop, edit the OpenCore config file at OC/config.plist on the EFI partition and set Disabled for SecureBootModel. Add -v to boot-args to get to see the actual verbose boot messages instead of a loading progress bar. If the installer shows Russian (or another language), look for prev-lang:kbd and set value to 656e2d5553a3 to change to English.

With this, the installer should start up successfully and you should be able to use Disk Utility to create a new partition (at least 256GB) for Sequoia. The installation process should take around 30 minutes and you will be greeted with the macOS welcome screen. If the system hangs at VoodooI2C during startup after installation, edit config.plist and disable the loading of VoodooI2C.kext:

<dict>
	<key>Arch</key>
	<string>x86_64</string>
	<key>BundlePath</key>
	<string>VoodooI2C.kext/Contents/PlugIns/VoodooI2CServices.kext</string>
	<key>Comment</key>
	<string>V1</string>
	<key>Enabled</key>
	<false/>
	<key>ExecutablePath</key>
	<string>Contents/MacOS/VoodooI2CServices</string>
	<key>MaxKernel</key>
	<string></string>
	<key>MinKernel</key>
	<string></string>
	<key>PlistPath</key>
	<string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
</dict>

In my case, I did not have this issue at first but encountered it after an automatic BIOS upgrade. The touch screen controller is on the I2C bus, and my model does not have a touch screen (which is optional for the Dell 5410), so I believe the BIOS upgrade must have enabled some properties which caused VoodooI2C to detect something on the I2C bus and freeze while loading. To prevent similar occurrences in the future, I go to BIOS Setup, open Security and disable UEFI Capsule Firmware Updates.

With these fixes, after the installation, macOS should boot normally, with the correct screen resolution (1920×1080) as well as support for audio and Ethernet. I also want to add that if you are purchasing a second hand Dell 5410 for Hackintosh, make sure that you purchase the Full HD (1920×1080) version, not the HD (1366×768) version. Although both will work, the latter has a lower LCD resolution and is not great for many tasks.

To make wireless work, download and run OCAuxiliaryTools, then choose Edit > Mount ESP to edit config.plist. Click Kernel on the left menu, and use the “-” and “+” icon on the right to remove all wireless kext such as Airportitlwm and add the itlwm kext downloaded from the OpenIntelWireless repository:

Reboot and run Heliport and you should be able to connect to your wireless network normally using the Heliport icon on the top toolbar. To hide Apple’s default Wireless icon (which doesn’t work with ilwlm), go to Settings > Control Center and select Don’t show in menu bar for Wifi.

With this, my Dell Latitude 5410 is now a great Hackintosh with 32GB of RAM and 4TB NVMe installed and performs much better than my other macOS installation on VMware, and even better than my Macbook Pro 2020. xCode works well and is great for iOS development. With Tuxera NTFS, macOS Sequoia can also mount NTFS partitions read/write, which is great for dual booting with Windows.

One thing to note is that although OpenCore supports booting to other OSes such as Windows or Ubuntu, my EFI configuration has performed several DSDT injections to improve macOS compatibility, which may cause issues with Windows, although Ubuntu typically has no issues. In my case, I experienced ACPI_BIOS_ERROR and INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD messages during booting. Several websites suggest building a separate section in config.plist which does not perform DSDT to make Windows bootable. This is far too complicated and I didn’t bother. I resorted to hiding Windows and Linux from OpenCore by setting 2687747 for ScanPolicy and use rEFInd, which is a far more user friendly bootloader, for OS selection instead. With this, I can boot to Windows or Ubuntu using rEFInd, and if the macOS partition is selected, rEFInd will then load OpenCore, which will then boot macOS Sequoia. The OpenCore menu is set to display in text mode, unlike rEFInd, which uses graphics mode. Having two nested graphical bootloaders looks quite ugly to me.

On the Windows 11 installation, I also disable the SysMain service (known as SuperFetch in previous versions of Windows). Officially, this service will optimize your system performance, however, on my laptop, SysMain often consumes 100% CPU, wasting battery and slowing down the system. After disabling this service and with a new battery, the laptop can run for around 5 hours on Windows 11 and around 6-7 hours on macOS and Ubuntu with average usage.

If the system hangs while booting to macOS after a Windows update has been installed, switch OpenCore to text mode and run CleanNvram.efi, then reboot. The text mode interface of OpenCore (which can be set in Misc> Boot > PickerVariant) offers far more options than the graphics mode and is useful for troubleshooting.

You can download a ZIP file (MacOS15_Hackintosh_Win11_Ubu_OpenCore_rEFInd_Dell_5410_EFI_Backup.zip) containing the original EFI folder (downloaded from msbence’s repository) as well as my modified EFI folder here.

See also
Running macOS Sonoma 14 on VMware