High Sierra Upgrade Install Issues

[Kinkade73]

I have had a functional Customac working with Clover and Sierra for the past year, and aside from the odd little issue, it's been great. I thought it was finally time to upgrade to High Sierra, so I went through the process of creating a new Unibeast USB boot drive, and booting from that to install High Sierra.

However, after doing that, I couldn't get it to boot at all from the USB or the SSD. I've tried messing with SMBIOS and bios settings, booting in Safe mode; nothing worked.

Then I tried to use an external USB 3 SSD with High Sierra installed on it from a different computer, with multibeast on it, and boot the computer to that. I even used Clover Configurator to edit a few things to help, but to no avail...

So my question is: Does anybody have any ideas to try or things that I'm not doing correctly? Should I just blank everything and start from the beginning again?

Comp Specs: Intel i7 4790k, Nvidia GTX 760, 250GB Samsung 840 EVO, Gigabyte Z97x-UD7 TH, Crucial Ballistics 32GB RAM.

 

[cmn699]

I have had a functional Customac working with Clover and Sierra for the past year, and aside from the odd little issue, it's been great. I thought it was finally time to upgrade to High Sierra, so I went through the process of creating a new Unibeast USB boot drive, and booting from that to install High Sierra.

However, after doing that, I couldn't get it to boot at all from the USB or the SSD. I've tried messing with SMBIOS and bios settings, booting in Safe mode; nothing worked.

Then I tried to use an external USB 3 SSD with High Sierra installed on it from a different computer, with multibeast on it, and boot the computer to that. I even used Clover Configurator to edit a few things to help, but to no avail...

So my question is: Does anybody have any ideas to try or things that I'm not doing correctly? Should I just blank everything and start from the beginning again?

Comp Specs: Intel i7 4790k, Nvidia GTX 760, 250GB Samsung 840 EVO, Gigabyte Z97x-UD7 TH, Crucial Ballistics 32GB RAM.

I have had a functional Customac working with Clover and Sierra for the past year----- so I went through the process of creating a new Unibeast USB boot drive, and booting from that to install High Sierra.

• So, you wanted to perform a clean installation of macOS High Sierra ( what version?) on the existing macOS Sierra SSD by erasing that disk rather than an in-place upgrade with the latest macOS High Sierra 10.13.3; Is that correct?

However, after doing that, I couldn't get it to boot at all from the USB or the SSD. I've tried messing with SMBIOS and bios settings, booting in Safe mode; nothing worked.

• the above part of your post is getting a lot more fuzzy.
  • Did you mean that the Unibeast created USB installer failed to reach Clover Boot Manager(CBM) screen?
  • Did you mean the Unibeast installer reached CBM screen but failed to reach the Disk Utility screen to start Erasing the SSD with old macOS Sierra System?
  • Did you mean to say that the previously booting macOS Sierra SSD stopped booting even though nothing was done on that disk by the USB installer?
  • Did you mean too say you initiated installation on the old SSD after erasing it ( in what format APFS or HFS+J?) but after reboot you could neither boot it or the USB installer used to create it?
• You can reduce the amount of message posted if only you would supplement the text you write by uploaded screen shots of what you are actually seeing on your Monitor screen before you were making keyboard and mouse inputs in the form of troubleshoots. that will make the post a lot more easy to follow.
• What can you do at this stage:
  • Boot with the USB installer disk.
  • If you find a problem screen before it reaches Clover Boot Manager (CBM) screen , take a picture to upload stating when in the boot you took it.
  • If the USB installer reaches CBM screen, take a photo of CBM screen to show all icons there to upload to the Forum
  • Press Spacebar >[√] Verbose(-v)
  • Return to CBM screen
  • Boot the USB installer icon
  • Take picture(s)of any screen(s) that looks suspicious to you to upload and also the photo of the the screen that freezes.
  • Upload the screen shot of BIOS >Peripherals to show your Graphics and USB choices for the boot.

 

[Kinkade73]

• So, you wanted to perform a clean installation of macOS High Sierra ( what version?) on the existing macOS Sierra SSD by erasing that disk rather than an in-place upgrade with the latest macOS High Sierra 10.13.3; Is that correct?

• the above part of your post is getting a lot more fuzzy.
  • Did you mean that the Unibeast created USB installer failed to reach Clover Boot Manager(CBM) screen?
  • Did you mean the Unibeast installer reached CBM screen but failed to reach the Disk Utility screen to start Erasing the SSD with old macOS Sierra System?
  • Did you mean to say that the previously booting macOS Sierra SSD stopped booting even though nothing was done on that disk by the USB installer?
  • Did you mean too say you initiated installation on the old SSD after erasing it ( in what format APFS or HFS+J?) but after reboot you could neither boot it or the USB installer used to create it?
• You can reduce the amount of message posted if only you would supplement the text you write by uploaded screen shots of what you are actually seeing on your Monitor screen before you were making keyboard and mouse inputs in the form of troubleshoots. that will make the post a lot more easy to follow.
• What can you do at this stage:
  • Boot with the USB installer disk.
  • If you find a problem screen before it reaches Clover Boot Manager (CBM) screen , take a picture to upload stating when in the boot you took it.
  • If the USB installer reaches CBM screen, take a photo of CBM screen to show all icons there to upload to the Forum
  • Press Spacebar >[√] Verbose(-v)
  • Return to CBM screen
  • Boot the USB installer icon
  • Take picture(s)of any screen(s) that looks suspicious to you to upload and also the photo of the the screen that freezes.
  • Upload the screen shot of BIOS >Peripherals to show your Graphics and USB choices for the boot.

I wanted to use the Unibeast USB to perform an install on the SSD, without blanking it, so that my information is still in place. This worked when going from El Capitan to Sierra previously.

The first time I tried, I was able to reach the CBM screen, after picking the USB as the boot drive. There were two choices in boot options for the USB, one was just the name of the USB stick, and the other had UEFI in front of it. This is the one that worked to boot from since I have a UEFI board.

That opened the installer, after a while it restarted and it seemed like it was done, however, now I can't boot to the SSD drive successfully. I tried to boot from the USB again, and the UEFI option is gone from the list completely. Therefore I have no viable boot option.

I've tried in Verbose mode and safe mode. Doesn't help.

As a side note, I tried booting from a USB with windows on it, and that works perfectly, so it's not a broken hardware issue.

I don't have time right now, but I'll try to take some photos of screens later.

 

[cmn699]

I wanted to use the Unibeast USB to perform an install on the SSD, without blanking it, so that my information is still in place. This worked when going from El Capitan to Sierra previously.

The first time I tried, I was able to reach the CBM screen, after picking the USB as the boot drive. There were two choices in boot options for the USB, one was just the name of the USB stick, and the other had UEFI in front of it. This is the one that worked to boot from since I have a UEFI board.

That opened the installer, after a while it restarted and it seemed like it was done, however, now I can't boot to the SSD drive successfully. I tried to boot from the USB again, and the UEFI option is gone from the list completely. Therefore I have no viable boot option.

I've tried in Verbose mode and safe mode. Doesn't help.

As a side note, I tried booting from a USB with windows on it, and that works perfectly, so it's not a broken hardware issue.

I don't have time right now, but I'll try to take some photos of screens later.

I wanted to use the Unibeast USB to perform an install on the SSD, without blanking it, so that my information is still in place. This worked when going from El Capitan to Sierra previously.

• High Sierra has a different approach to "direct upgrade" method : https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/update-directly-to-macos-high-sierra.232707/
  • This does not involve creating a Unibeast USB installer disk with the download macOS High Sierra Installer file in Applications Folder of macOS Sierra.
  • As you can see in the above guide, direct upgrade needs several Preinstall modifications to CLOVER .
• The steps you started was like you wanted to perform a clean installation by reformatting the old SSD containing MacOS Sierra but then you side stepped and started to install the new HS on top of the Old macOS corrupting it but without creating a clean HS installation.
• I cannot explain why the USB installer lost its ability to boot. Unless....
  • You might have done some editing on the USB Installer disk and corrupting it.
  • You might have changed BIOS options from booting from UEFI to Legacy in your choices under BIOS Features.
• If you have done any change to your USB installer, your only option is to create a new High Sierra USB installer with a new download of High Sierra Installer file to another working Hack or Mac system.
  • In that case don't waste your time if you have done any editing on the current USB installer.
• If you have not changed any files on the USB Installer, the reason you cannot boot that disk to reach CBM, is because you might have changed your BIOS.
  • If that is the case, I suggest you to reboot, press Del key> to enter BIOS Setup> Press F7 to load optimized default BIOS
  • Go to each BIOS menu and edit it to make it suitable for UEFI USB Installer disk booting to install OS X/MacOS and
  • Make your UEFI USB Installer USB as First boot device in Boot Option Priorities
  • Then reboot and see what happens to the disk icons in CBM screen.>Take pictures to upload.