macOS Catalina Cleanup: Remove Kexts From /Library/Extensions and Recache

hendraanggrian · May 28, 2020

I have FakeSMC.kext in my /Library/Extensions. Should it be deleted as well?

Feartech · May 28, 2020

hendraanggrian said:
I have FakeSMC.kext in my /Library/Extensions. Should it be deleted as well?

yep

Namok88 · May 28, 2020

And always rebuild kext caches after you remove a kext from /L/E before rebooting.

hendraanggrian · May 28, 2020

Thanks. I don't know if it's related: after removing FakeSMC.kext in my /Library/Extensions, I can finally use VirtualSMC.kext in MultiBeast 12. Before all of this, I had to manually replace VirtualSMC.kext with FakeSMC.kext in EFI/CLOVER/kext/Other.

Planet884 · Jun 7, 2020

I have been struggling every night for a week to get Catalina up and running and I think my problem is due to old kexts or GPU frambuffer?

I followed the update directly to Catalina thread, but got a blank screen when the progress bar was about 60% on the black background/white apple logo loading screen just before you get to log in.

I initiated a clean install of 10.15.5 with UniBeast and was up and running. I used Migration Assistant (with "other files and folders" deselected), to transfer my account data and apps from 10.14.6 and the same thing happened - black screen just before the login. This happened with Migrating from Time Machine backup and a clone.

Finally, I followed the steps in this thread's original post, to try a UniBeast install over my Mohave clone from CCC. Same thing, I can't get to step #2 because of the black screen just prior to being able to log in. I tried the direction in Post #70, mount -uw / from UEFI Shell, but no luck.

Hackintosh details:
GA-Z170X-UD5-TH (F22g)
Sapphire Pulse RX-580
Ballistix 64GB DDR4 - 2400 (4UDIMMs)
All other cards/hard drives unplugged

Any ideas? Since I can do a clean install of Catalina and all problems occur when I either try to upgrade or migrate my data, I assume something from my Mojave install is to blame. ANY help is appreciated!

rudimania · Jun 8, 2020

Can I run Multibeast to clean up my /Library/Extensions on my existing Catalina install before I update to the new Catalina version? I want to cleanup all my kexts in /library/extensions. I am running 10.15.4

Namok88 · Jun 8, 2020

Planet884 said:
I initiated a clean install of 10.15.5 with UniBeast and was up and running. I used Migration Assistant (with "other files and folders" deselected), to transfer my account data and apps from 10.14.6 and the same thing happened - black screen just before the login.

When you use migration assistant, it also imports old 3rd party kexts from /Library/Extensions.

If you have duplicates kexts there and in your CLOVER/OC EFI, that will most certainly cause issues.

Namok88 · Jun 8, 2020

rudimania said:
Can I run Multibeast to clean up my /Library/Extensions on my existing Catalina install before I update to the new Catalina version? I want to cleanup all my kexts in /library/extensions.

Back them up somewhere first, then delete them from /L/E, then recache with Hackintool and reboot to install the update.