[Guide] Install High Sierra or Mojave on the Dell Optiplex 7010 / 9010 Desktop PC - Revision II

[craighazan]

As Grizz said a weak CMOS battery can cause this. It reverts back to legacy boot, all your drives are set to UEFI booting only.
Did you do anything right before this or did it just "happen" when trying to boot ? Did you have the Mobo unplugged from power for awhile ?

So every time I attempted to Boot I would go into BIOS 1st and check everything, and I mean everything!. I followed your guide for installing High Sierra onto a USB stick to the letter. nothing would change in the BIOS each time I started up and I checked it each time. No legacy boot, UEFI boot only. I haven't unplugged anything from inside. I would leave it off overnight before attempting to install again, but nothing, same problem. USB installer will not load. There are three disks inside, An 250GB SSD with Mojave, a 128GB NVMe drive with Mojave and a 500GB WD HDD with High Sierra. As of three days ago all this was working. I could load into each of the drives and not have any problems.
I will admit that I attempted to create a fusion drive with the NVMe and HDD, Having done this before on a 2014 Mac mini with out any problems. But the Mojave SSD wasn't involved with the Fusion process. And if anything went wrong with the Fusion, I could still get into Mojave from the SSD. Then I broke the Fusion drive to get everything back to three drives. Thats when problems started occurring.

 

[Grizz]

So every time I attempted to Boot I would go into BIOS 1st and check everything, and I mean everything!. I followed your guide for installing High Sierra onto a USB stick to the letter. nothing would change in the BIOS each time I started up and I checked it each time. No legacy boot, UEFI boot only. I haven't unplugged anything from inside. I would leave it off overnight before attempting to install again, but nothing, same problem. USB installer will not load. There are three disks inside, An 250GB SSD with Mojave, a 128GB NVMe drive with Mojave and a 500GB WD HDD with High Sierra. As of three days ago all this was working. I could load into each of the drives and not have any problems.
I will admit that I attempted to create a fusion drive with the NVMe and HDD, Having done this before on a 2014 Mac mini with out any problems. But the Mojave SSD wasn't involved with the Fusion process. And if anything went wrong with the Fusion, I could still get into Mojave from the SSD. Then I broke the Fusion drive to get everything back to three drives. Thats when problems started occurring.

Have you tried running the DELL DIAGNOSTICS? You can get this menu when you BOOT and press <F12>

Does it find anything?

It sounds as if, perhaps your MB may be having a problem. How do you have an NVMe drive attached? There are no motherboard connectors for these (to my knowledge), are you using an adapter card?

Strip the machine down to the bare minimum (ONE HDD), RESET BIOS to DEFAULTS - and then reboot and re-set to the CONFIG DOC settings.

Grizz

 

[trs96]

every time I attempted to Boot I would go into BIOS 1st and check everything

One approach you could try, disconnect all drives, while powered down. Unplug power cord from the wall. Take out the CMOS battery for a few minutes. Replace it again, with a new one ideally. Then try F2 and boot into BIOS and see if it reset back to legacy boot. If so, then make all the suggested changes again as per the guide and shut down again.

[Guide] Install High Sierra or Mojave on the Dell Optiplex 7010 / 9010 Desktop PC - Revision II

The Dell Optiplex CustoMac Mini Desktop Comments This guide for the Dell Optiplex 7010/9010 is a complete description of 7 steps necessary to get your system working with macOS High Sierra or Mojave. These business desktops are Ivy Bridge based and have the Intel Q77 Express chipset. Dell...

www.tonymacx86.com

Now connect up your Mojave SSD and boot to BIOS again.
If there is anything check marked in Boot Sequence other than your SSD, uncheck it. Save, now try to boot.

 

[craighazan]

Have you tried running the DELL DIAGNOSTICS? You can get this menu when you BOOT and press <F12>

Yes I have run Diagnostics. No it doesn't find anything wrong.

It sounds as if, perhaps your MB may be having a problem. How do you have an NVMe drive attached? There are no motherboard connectors for these (to my knowledge), are you using an adapter card?

Consider your knowledge increased. Super-cheap NVMe fusion drive using Dell 7010 Q77 motherboard

Strip the machine down to the bare minimum (ONE HDD), RESET BIOS to DEFAULTS - and then reboot and re-set to the CONFIG DOC settings.
Grizz

Stripping down now, I replaced the CMOS battery too. Ill update later.
Thanks.

 

[trs96]

PSU replacement for your 7010/9010 Mini-Tower
​

If you got one of those terrible low efficiency (65%) power supplies in your Dell MT here's a chance to get a new Seasonic 500W PSU (Bronze rated). Selling for about 27 dollars AR shipped. Will fit perfectly as a Dell OEM PSU replacement.

New Seasonic 450W S12 III PSU - $20 after rebate at Newegg

EDIT 4/25/19 These have already sold out on newegg. Deal was just too good. There is an auto-notify option. EDIT 4/23/19 The 450W version of this is on sale today for about $19.99 AR at Newegg. A 2nd chance if you missed before. This is a brand new model from Seasonic. Cables are all...

www.tonymacx86.com

The 650W version is what the link goes to, just select the 500W version. There is no graphics card that you can put in these that will need more than a 500W 80+ power supply. No need to spend extra for the 650W version. Get the 650W version for a custom Gigabyte or Asus build that could possibly have an i7/i9 K CPU and up to 4 hard drives plus an RX 580 or better.

 

[craighazan]

Thanks trs96 and Grizz for your helpful advice and tips. Got everything working again all drives are showing up and working fine. Got Mojave back on the SSD, still working on the NVMe. Think I’ll leave the fusion drive until I’ve read up some more. One thing I discovered, the same NVMe card and adapter works in the PCIe X16 slot in the HP6300pro.

 

[trs96]

Thanks trs96 and Grizz for your helpful advice and tips. Got everything working again all drives are showing up and working fine. Got Mojave back on the SSD, still working on the NVMe. Think I’ll leave the fusion drive until I’ve read up some more. One thing I discovered, the same NVMe card and adapter works in the PCIe X16 slot in the HP6300pro.

Any idea what the exact cause of the boot failure was ?

 

[craighazan]

Any idea what the exact cause of the boot failure was ?

Wish I could tell!. I did change the CMOS battery and then I wiped the drives clean in my other build, hp6300. And started again from a High Sierra install. Maybe something got corrupted, I'm not sure.

 

[trs96]

Wish I could tell!. I did change the CMOS battery and then I wiped the drives clean in my other build, hp6300. And started again from a High Sierra install. Maybe something got corrupted, I'm not sure.

Yeah, you've got a very complicated setup going on. So many things connecting via PCIe that multiple different things could have happened. I usually take the opposite approach of keeping things as simple as possible. Glad to hear that you've got it all sorted now.

 

[BillyGoatGruff]

PSU replacement for your 7010/9010 Mini-Tower
​

If you got one of those terrible low efficiency (65%) power supplies in your Dell MT here's a chance to get a new Seasonic 500W PSU (Bronze rated). Selling for about 27 dollars AR shipped. Will fit perfectly as a Dell OEM PSU replacement.

New Seasonic 450W S12 III PSU - $20 after rebate at Newegg

EDIT 4/25/19 These have already sold out on newegg. Deal was just too good. There is an auto-notify option. EDIT 4/23/19 The 450W version of this is on sale today for about $19.99 AR at Newegg. A 2nd chance if you missed before. This is a brand new model from Seasonic. Cables are all...

www.tonymacx86.com

The 650W version is what the link goes to, just select the 500W version. There is no graphics card that you can put in these that will need more than a 500W 80+ power supply. No need to spend extra for the 650W version. Get the 650W version for a custom Gigabyte or Asus build that could possibly have an i7/i9 K CPU and up to 4 hard drives plus an RX 580 or better.
View attachment 398039

I picked up the 500W. What a bargain. You will have to pay up front and submit a rebate with the usual 4-6 week wait time, but still, if you are working a budget, it's worth it. Thanks @trs96 for keeping us updated on these nice upgrades to our pre-builts. I am looking to add a GPU to my 9010 MT. Considering your recommended Saphire Pulse Radeon RX 570. Any other choices that may be better since Post#1?