Quick question. USB ports, mostly USB 3 stopped working after I cloned my drive back.

Edhawk said:

Having the kexts duplicated on the CLOVER boot drive and in the /L/E folder is a recipe for disaster. I would recommend you have a read of Jaymonkey's third party kext guide - https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...an-sierra-high-sierra-mojave-catalina.268964/

Why did you choose to roll back, why not use your normal EFI folder to boot your Cloned Mojave drive? That is what the Clone is for, so you don't have to reinstall the OS and all your Applications etc. again if an update borks.

If you have a bootable USB pen drive or can access the EFI partition on your Mojave drive (to use your normal Clover folder), and have your Cloned drive connected to the system, try booting from the USB or your Mojave drive via the Bios Boot Menu. Select the Cloned Mojave drive on the Clover boot screen and you should be in macOS in no time.

You can Clone your Mojave drive from the clone, so you don't need to use the backup drive.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I think you might be misunderstanding.

What happened was this.

1. I backed up my working Mojave install and it's EFI folder (not with CCC), to a separate backup drive, with Carbon Copy Cloner. That is a bootable backup.

2. I then proceeded to try to upgrade to Catalina. After the installer loaded and did its thing for a bit, it reboot like normal where I could continue the install from clover. I chose to boot into the install from Clover, as I have in the past, and it rebooted, then sat on a black screen for a long time. Over 45 mins.

3. I eventually gave up and decided to clone my Mojave backup back to my main drive. I copied my backed up EFI folder back as well.

4. I rebooted, noticed my custom Clover screen had changed, booted into Mojave. Everything seemed to work fine except for some USB issues, certain software losing their registrations causing me to have to re-register some things etc.

I'd love to be able to try to upgrade to Catalina again, this time I will try it on my backup drive so my main drive is still Mojave (when I can get this USB thing sorted). I just fear these issues again if I have to revert.

Does this make a bit more sense?

Thanks!

UtterDisbelief said:

Oh okay

Did you check if you have USBInjectAll.kext installed anywhere?

Click to expand...

For some reason it's in both System/Library/Extensions and Library/Extensions

It's not in my "Other" folder on my EFI. Things is, this is how it always was even when it was all working.

wreckthisplace said:

For some reason it's in both System/Library/Extensions and Library/Extensions

It's not in my "Other" folder on my EFI. Things is, this is how it always was even when it was all working.

Click to expand...

That's why any port configuration will work then. (I would suggest you remove from S/L/E and rebuild the kext caches. Third-party kexts should not go in Apple's system kext folder. For Mojave ~/Library/Extensions is fine. )

As for your original question as to why some USB ports no longer work after re-installing macOS ...

I tried to check with ASUS but their online catalog of older motherboards and specifications seems to have been removed (for me at least). I wanted to check what USB controllers you had onboard. The Z170 will have Intel chipset ports but also perhaps another 3rd-party controller, along with an Intel Thunderbolt one. I can't see that information.

As you have re-used a previous EFI folder for Mojave I would expect it to work as long as the version of Mojave you re-installed is the same as when you created the EFI. The issue may be that a 3rd-party USB controller is no longer being recognised, but as I say, I'm in the dark on that presently.

Yes, it makes more sense now.

I would still recommend you read that guide I linked above regarding third party kexts. As having the kexts in two locations may be why your system stopped running the Catalina update. It is easy for the Clover kexts and the /L/E kexts to get out of sync and for there to be a clash while booting or updating your system.

Make sure you have your USBPorts.kext being injected from the /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder not the /Library/Extensions folder.

The Kexts in /L/E will be added to the kernel/kextcache and when booting with the verbose boot argument (-v) you may see error messages about kexts being present in the kernel cache but not being able to see if they have the same UUID as the ones Clover is trying to inject.

Using the backup drive to update to Catalina makes a lot more sense.

Edhawk said:

Yes, it makes more sense now.

I would still recommend you read that guide I linked above regarding third party kexts. As having the kexts in two locations may be why your system stopped running the Catalina update. It is easy for the Clover kexts and the /L/E kexts to get out of sync and for there to be a clash while booting or updating your system.

Make sure you have your USBPorts.kext being injected from the /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder not the /Library/Extensions folder.

The Kexts in /L/E will be added to the kernel/kextcache and when booting with the verbose boot argument (-v) you may see error messages about kexts being present in the kernel cache but not being able to see if they have the same UUID as the ones Clover is trying to inject.

Using the backup drive to update to Catalina makes a lot more sense.

Click to expand...

Hmm, ok, I'm going to remove the duplicate kexts from both Library/Extensions and System/Library/Extensions as well as my "Other" folder, then I'm going to download any updated kexts I've been using (FakeSMC, Lilu, WhateverGreen) and put those back into the "Other" folder on my EFI. Then I'm going to reinstall the USBInjectAll kexts back into Library/Extensions. Does this sound like a good idea?

Also, I've never used USBPorts.kext before. Where would one find that? Is this good for both Mojave and Catalina? And does it replace USBInjectAll? Meaning I should remove that?

Thanks!

UtterDisbelief said:

That's why any port configuration will work then. (I would suggest you remove from S/L/E and rebuild the kext caches. Third-party kexts should not go in Apple's system kext folder. For Mojave ~/Library/Extensions is fine. )

As for your original question as to why some USB ports no longer work after re-installing macOS ...

I tried to check with ASUS but their online catalog of older motherboards and specifications seems to have been removed (for me at least). I wanted to check what USB controllers you had onboard. The Z170 will have Intel chipset ports but also perhaps another 3rd-party controller, along with an Intel Thunderbolt one. I can't see that information.

As you have re-used a previous EFI folder for Mojave I would expect it to work as long as the version of Mojave you re-installed is the same as when you created the EFI. The issue may be that a 3rd-party USB controller is no longer being recognised, but as I say, I'm in the dark on that presently.

Click to expand...

I'm going to remove the duplicate kexts from both Library/Extensions and System/Library/Extensions as well as my "Other" folder, then I'm going to download any updated kexts I've been using (FakeSMC, Lilu, WhateverGreen) and put those back into the "Other" folder on my EFI. Then I'm going to reinstall the USBInjectAll kexts back into Library/Extensions.

How does one rebuild the kext cache again? Does Kextbeast do this after it installs the kexts from the desktop?

Thanks!

wreckthisplace said:

I'm going to remove the duplicate kexts from both Library/Extensions and System/Library/Extensions as well as my "Other" folder, then I'm going to download any updated kexts I've been using (FakeSMC, Lilu, WhateverGreen) and put those back into the "Other" folder on my EFI. Then I'm going to reinstall the USBInjectAll kexts back into Library/Extensions.

How does one rebuild the kext cache again? Does Kextbeast do this after it installs the kexts from the desktop?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Yes, kextbeast does that.

You can also do it manually using Terminal: sudo kextcache -i /

UtterDisbelief said:

Yes, kextbeast does that.

You can also do it manually using Terminal: sudo kextcache -i /

Click to expand...

Thanks! Are you familiar with the USBPorts.kext? I was told I might need that, and I read that it is supposed to replace USBInjectAll, but I'm not sure if that applies to Mojave or just Catalina and above or both. Somebody was also helping me in another thread, but it seems the moderators deleted it. I was getting some other useful information. Odd that they would deny their members of that when it's obvious I'm simply looking for help. Kind of cruel if you ask me haha.

wreckthisplace said:

Thanks! Are you familiar with the USBPorts.kext? I was told I might need that, and I read that it is supposed to replace USBInjectAll, but I'm not sure if that applies to Mojave or just Catalina and above or both. Somebody was also helping me in another thread, but it seems the moderators deleted it. I was getting some other useful information. Odd that they would deny their members of that when it's obvious I'm simply looking for help. Kind of cruel if you ask me haha.

Click to expand...

no need for two threads

i have moved those posts here

Feartech said:

no need for two threads

i have moved those posts here

Click to expand...

OH! Not cruel, just convenient! My sincere apologies!