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Z97x MB Won't boot with OC 0.6.6 USB : Invalid Boot Disk

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Yes I have made sure all these settings, where applicable have been set. I referred to the earlier post of yours to set them after the re-flash from Windows OS.

Still can't see the EFI/opencore partition on the drive anymore.
 
Probably a stupid question, have you checked that the drive is fully connected to the motherboard/SATA Cable/SATA port and the power cable is connected? That one or more of these connections have not been detached/or knocked loose.
 
have you checked that the drive is fully connected to the motherboard/SATA Cable/SATA port

Sure, I will check, but don't hold out much hope there. After all it was working fine up to the point where I re-flashed from Windows. Then without touching the case, except to hit reset button, the NVME drive boot option disappeared.

By the way in the NVME portion of the BIOS ( forget what the exact name is, but it is in the peripherals section) it sees the Samsung NVMe 256MB SSD.

When the BIOS is set to UEFI only boot option, the BIOS does not see the NVME drive. When I turn on Legacy AND UEFI mode, the BIOS sees the NVME disk and attempts to boot which completely fails with the Invalid Boot Disk message.
 
OK, I don't expect it is the NVME has been displaced or worked loose then, if it shows up when the Bios is set to Legacy and UEFI.

What that means is the bios is not seeing and booting from /EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi.

Your OC boot setup wasn't set for Legacy boot was it?

I have a Sandy Bridge Hack that won't boot in UEFI mode, it requires an additional Boot entry in the EFI Partition, sitting alongside the EFI Folder before the system will boot to the OC boot screen.

Can you check that the /EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi file matches the /EFI/OC/OpenCore.efi. By that I mean they have the same Created and Modified dates and times, as shown in the screenshot below for the two efi files from OC 0.6.6

Screenshot 2021-03-25 at 23.26.41.png BOOTx64.efi and OpenCore.efi - Get Information

Mixing the BOOTx64.efi from one version of OpenCore with the OpenCore.efi from a newer version is not good and can cause problems.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I will check it out as soon as I can get OSX back up.

I have an question. Has this something to do with NVRAM emulation in Opencore on Z97x motherboards?

I'm thinking that a re-flash messes with the virtual NVRAM somehow and UEFI boot from Opencore is not seen?


I just noticed something in your images of the file INFOs. The number of bytes is different between Opencore.efi and BOOTx64.efi. The only commonality is the date of creation.

I thought in 0.6.6 and above one can copy OC/Opencore.efi to BOOT/BOOTx64.efi and that works?

True not true? I'm sure I read it in the documentation somewhere on the bootstrap options.
 
That might have been a result of the re-flash. I haven't had to re-flash any of my Z97 systems while running OC, so I can't say for sure.

I am sure I read that the Z97 systems had native Nvram and didn't need to use an emulator. I may be mistaken but that is the premise I have used when hacking a Z97 system.

Do you have a copy of your OC folder on a USB? Possibly an older version of OC, that you used to boot this system previously?

If you do, can you plug in the USB and see if the Bios recognises and can boot from the OC USB.
 
If you do, can you plug in the USB and see if the Bios recognises and can boot from the OC USB.

The oldest copy I had on USB stick was 0.6.6, and it exhibited all the same BIOS problems.

This must be some kind of HW problem with my MB. I spent many hours trying to get the M Bios of the dual to go beyond the splash screen, but I never could. Plugging in and out the USB keyboard caused the debug led display go from A2 to B4 state - detecting a hot plug. But no amount of pounding on the keyboard would get the M Bios beyond the splash screen.

In the end I just re-flashed the B Bios, booted from the USB stick, reset the NVRAM. Next boot / reset hid the UEFI USB boot, so I disconnected my Windows SSD drive, removed a Time machine HDD, and just left the M.2 NVME OSX disk, then set the BIOS to boot ONLY UEFI drives, no legacy. Long story short, I was able to boot the 'Opencore' bootstrap on the NVME drive, add back the Windows SSD, and the HDD and using the F12 key able to boot from Opencore or Windows manager (on the SSD). The Opencore bootstrap sees the Windows drive, but when selecting it it boots to a blank screen from which it never returns. I suspect a conflict between IGPU and the RX580 discrete GPU, but at this stage I don't care. I simply use the F12 key to choose which OS to run.

My Z97x does run the latest Big Sur version (11.2.3 ?). All the regular features, bluetooth, iMessage, handoff, sleep all work.
 
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