Warning/Report: Booting Clover on a real Mac can be dangerous

Same situation here - worked on a friend's MBA with a problematic SSD and booting from a clover-enabled USB HDD enclosure as a test. Once I shutdown I had the sound chime replay constantly with the black screen.

Just ordered the solderless EFI chip tool from macunlocks.com and hoping that does the trick. Can't believe how simple it was to bork the chip on this MBA.

Sod it, I've just done the same, booted by MacBook Pro with the wrong USB stick, the one with Clover on, and am now stuck on the repeated chimes.

I blame Apple though and not my own stupidity. I left it doing the 10.13.4 update and came back to it stuck in a reboot loop. It would boot, say it was installing and then reboot again, repeat ad infinitum.

I'd just done a Carbon Copy Cloner backup (how fortunate was that) so I plugged that back in and booted to that. Ran Disk Utility and it said that the main drive was corrupt but the repair didn't fix it. I therefore decided to erase it and thought I'd do a fresh install to get rid of all the rubbish and start afresh, just retreaving my files from the CCC backup.

Ran upstairs to get my USB install stick but picked up the wrong one, took the clover one rather than the plain one. Oops.......

Thought I'd completely killed it until I came across this thread. Have now ordered a Matt Card from Chipmunk and hoping that sorts it, otherwise it is a very expensive mistake to make.

thanks for that post... I did this mistake yesterday, on my late 2013 I7/16gb MPB 13.3"... now I just have the blank screen and nothing works

needed to say, macunlocks saved me... now I realise that my old I5/8gb mobo that I thought was dead is in the same state, so I'll order a second chip, and save the second mobo toothanks for that hints about macunlocks, really a savior things

Another confirmed macunlocks fix. The dangers of clover on an external hdd or thumb drive cannot be stressed enough. I had no idea that clover was so toxic to real macs until it was already too late.

hello,
it just happent to me too with an imac 27 retina.
i noticed that it starts if i disconnect the display.
First i tried to start it with another monitor connected to the minidisplay port but was the same (chime loop)
Then i started it whit no display at all and i did the pram reset (ctrl+alt+p+r) , waited 3 reboots then release the keys and it worked!!!
)

mmcubu1 said:

hello,
it just happent to me too with an imac 27 retina.
i noticed that it starts if i disconnect the display.
First i tried to start it with another monitor connected to the minidisplay port but was the same (chime loop)
Then i started it whit no display at all and i did the pram reset (ctrl+alt+p+r) , waited 3 reboots then release the keys and it worked!!!

Click to expand...

How did Clover affect your iMac ? Did you install it to the EFI partition ? Did you just boot from it ? What caused the problem initially ?

So, it all begun with a hdd failure.
The model of imac is A1419, i believe is 2015 model.

In the past i installed yosemite, from a hackintosh stick made with clover, an imac with no problem ( it was an older model of imac , the model that has the glass kept in place with magnets).

Now the imac was in good order except from the hdd problem. when you start it, it opened with a folder with a question mark.

First i started with cmd+r and open disk utility and the only partition was osx base disk 1,3 gb, and the whole disk was seen as 1.3 gb
then i inserted a stick with high sierra, with clover. it booted directly from the stick and the clover boot selection appeared and the only option was : boot from usb. i selected to boot from usb then an apple logo appeared ( but was much smaller in size, about 1 cm) and hang like this for about 5 minutes. i restarted holding the button and tried again but it was the same.
Then i tried to boot from a sierra usb with clover, and it happened the same. it hang after i choose to boot from stick ( with the small apple logo)

Then i sad, maybe will work with the yosemite stick )
I inserted the stick and when i start the imac, after the first sound, the screen was dark but with some light underneath, and the starting sound repeated over and over again at 2 seconds interval.
And everything i tried after was in vain.
all you could hear was bang bang bang...

So i take it to a friend who took off the display, change the faulty hdd with a new ssd. he was the one who discovered that it will start with no screen at all.

The board has 4 diagnostic leds.
with the display attached 3 leds lights up, but the last did not , and the imac entered in the chime loop.
with the display detached from the board, all the for leds will light up, only one chime sound, and the vents will go to full speed.
we concluded that is a problem is with the video card. we looked up for a spare logic board on the internet.

Then i backtracked what i did and i found this forum.
AAAhhh
i had no idea of what can happen if you use a clover usb on a mac.
Ah ah ah.

Then i thought that maybe clover messed up something that has to do with the videocard and the retina display high resolution and if i can start it without the videocard, i can install the osx and update it and maybe it will update the efi by itself (i read somewere that wen you upgrade from sierra to high sierra it will also update the efi eprom)

But without retina display and with external monitor - same chime loop
Then i opened it with no display at all and did the pram reset, and it worked.
With the display attached it did not have time to do the pram reset because it will restart itself too often (after 2 seconds)

So maybe this will help some of you in the future.
unplug the display ( the screen) from the main board and see if it starts, and if it does, do a pram reset.

I call BS. clover isn't capable of corrupting your EFI...

khcs said:

mmcubu1,

I have the same issue with a macbook pro 13" And indeed if I disconnect the screen the chime only goes once in stead off indefenately.

But I tried alt+cmd+p+r to reset pram. And also crtl+alt+p+r like you typed (I suppose crtl by mistake in stead of cmd). But it made no difference until now after connection the screen back in.

Did you do something else? And how long did you keep the keycombination? because my mac makes the chime once it starts but not after reset of the pram so without the screen I cannot see when it is rebooted.

Thanks,

Karel

Click to expand...

Just do the pram reset like you normally do it. press the power button and then the keys. you will know when it resets because you hear the chime again.
In my case it reset itself in about 7 to 10 seconds , and i let it reset about 3 times then i release the keys, shut it down by holding the button and then i plug the display back.
And it worked
Sorry, y meant cmd+alt+p+r
If you hear only one chime and the vents are working, it means that it starts.
Maybe its freezing after..

In my case i had an empty (new) ssd inside instead of his hdd because i had just changed it. Maybe it was because of this.
Unplug your hdd/ssd and give it another try.