Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Previews 1 and 2 currently do not install on older Macs with unsupported Core Duo and Core Solo hardware, but by performing a simple hack you can get these machines to boot Lion.

Apparently the only thing preventing Lion from working on these 32-bit Macs is a single file that is easily removed, located here in a Lion installation:

/System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist

The file is hidden, but you can show hidden files with a defaults write command or just the Terminal with “ls -a” command.

All you have to do is install Mac OS X Lion on a Core 2 Duo machine and move the installation to a Core Duo or Core Solo machine, then delete the PlatformSupport.plist file. This at least works with the first Developer Preview, although some MacRumors forum members note problems booting with Dev Preview 2.



If you’re going to attempt this, we’d recommend installing Lion on a separate partition, and be sure to have a recent backup of your Mac hard drive just in case something goes wrong.

It’s not known whether the final release of Mac OS X Lion will support Core Duo and Core Solo CPU’s, but we’ll find out this summer.

This comes via MacRumors Forums, thanks for the submission Eric!