[solved] auto update to 10.12.5 broke install on NVMe boot drive

Hey folks!

After being gone for a day, I came home and noticed my screen was on. When I sat down, I realized it was in a crashing reboot loop. Ugh!

I didn't change anything, but I suspect after weeks of putting off a system update, it auto-updated. I'm guessing to 10.12.6 (but could have been .5 ... I think I was on .4)

I'm at a bit of a loss on how to troubleshoot. I noticed some posts about incompatibility with Nvidia drivers. I've tried booting into safe mode and single user mode and it doesn't change the results.

I'm attaching a screenshot.

I'd be grateful for some help in thinking through how to troubleshoot this one.

I have another drive, which is bootable, to 10.12.4...but my current OS drive is a Samsung evo 950 and for some reason when I boot to the SSD with .4 it doesn't see the Samsung boot drive.

Any Tips?

I was able to get my 12.4 install to see my Samsung boot drive. But I'm still not able to get that drive to boot and the worst part is I don't even know how to troubleshoot this. I'm filling a bit helpless.

Does the screen shot I posted suggest anything to anyone?

Are you able to load the OS using the USB installer? If so, check and see if the OS did get updated and if so, try running Multibeast again with the settings that have worked for you previously.

CyCLoBoT said:

Are you able to load the OS using the USB installer? If so, check and see if the OS did get updated and if so, try running Multibeast again with the settings that have worked for you previously.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip! Had to make a new install with Multibeast (lost my original apparently...)

Was able to boot to the installer. I can tell it auto-upgraded to 10.12.5 (from .4)

The process of making it made me think, I know the NVMe patch is specific to the MacOS version number. I'm guessing I need to re-run that script. But my question is how to do it? If I run it from the installer, it will patch the install. If I run it from my .4 install on the SSD, it patches that install.

How do I patch the install on the NVMe itself?

(hoping that's the problem)

quick update - was able to get my system to boot!

Thanks @CyBLoBoT - thinking though the original install and consequent changes helped me tackle it in order.

It was, in fact, the NVMe driver. I was able to boot to my .4 install on the SSD (thank goodness I kept it plugged in and didn't format it!). From there, I was able to create kext for the NVMe drive for 12.5 and used Kext Beast to load it. For good measure, I also mounted the EFI drive on the NVMe drive and copied the kext into ..../Clover/kexts/12.5/

After that, the system rebooted and finished the 12.6 install. Then I had to update the Nvidia web drivers and all's bliss again!