<< Solved >> Prelinkedkernel error on working Mojave

[Nodarkthings]

Hi!
It's been years now that I'm running Mojave on my Z68 build, it works nicely but when for whatever reason I have to force-shutdown, I get this dreadful error and I'm totally unable to recover.

I've tried any fix I could find around such as:
- booting with -f UseKernelCache=No
or
- in Terminal (from another working drive) touch /Volumes/Mojo/System/Library/Extensions && kextcache -u /Volumes/Mojo
then rm -rf /Volumes/Mojo/System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/prelinkedkernel
but no way. The files are actually deleted but nothing changes at boot (forbidden sign, etc.)

Some people say it's something about AptioMemoryFix.efi or FakeSMC, but it sounds to me that it may be true if they have issues at install time...

I never had this issue with any other MacOS version that have run on this build (from 10.6 to 10.13), so what can I do apart from reinstalling every time?

 

[Middleman]

Your answer: get a new motherboard and system. Either that or change your graphics card to AMD.

My suspicion lies with the fact that it works with everything up until 10.13 but not 10.14. Well we know what happened after that don't we? Mojave does not have Nvidia Web support - that is why you're getting those KPs and no entry signs. So therein lies your answer.

 

[Nodarkthings]

Your answer: get a new motherboard and system. Either that or change your graphics card to AMD.

My suspicion lies with the fact that it works with everything up until 10.13 but not 10.14. Well we know what happened after that don't we? Mojave does not have Nvidia Web support - that is why you're getting those KPs and no entry signs. So therein lies your answer.

While I can't absolutely exclude your theory — for the sake of science —, I don't have any KP and the workaround for old GCs is working perfectly.
I didn't want to be too specific while explaining my issue because it happened on various occasions, but the last time it happened was while trying to run Migration Assistant over again because I found I imported the wrong backup of my main user: while exiting from the user account, I had a black screen with the rotating gear and had to force shutdown. It can be for any reason (it can happen too on my older OSes), but the point is the "force shutdown" part of the issue and I can't exclude that I have to do it sometime on any OS version, that's computers lives...
All the former versions are fixable in those situations (actually rebooting in safe mode is usually enough...) so I'd be surprised if there's no solution for Mojave.

And I repeat myself: my installation of Mojave is otherwise working perfectly — it never has that Prelinkedkernel error spontaneously.

N.B.: I've slightly edited my initial post to avoid other misinterpretations of my issue, thanks to Middleman.

 

[Nodarkthings]

Turns out that touch /Volumes/Mojo/System/Library/Extensions && kextcache -u /Volumes/Mojo finally worked but it has to be done from a drive with the same OS version!
I used to do it from a 10.13 partition instead...
Important note: the partition doesn't have to be Recovery (I never use it as I prefer having a basic "maintenance" partition with all the convenient tools and the ability to dig in the system through Finder if needed).
I think kextcache -i /Volumes/Mojo would have worked too, as I read in my notes from my first trials with Mojave.

P.S.: the rm -rf /Volumes/Mojo/System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/prelinkedkernel command is actually removing the prelinkedkernel file but it's only needed if you get an error running the other one — then you have to run touch, etc. again.