About to try to upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra (again). Have a few questions.

[tfloyd]

Hi All,

So, I tried to upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra last night and failed.

I followed the instructions here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/update-directly-to-macos-high-sierra.232707/

Things seemed to be going smoothly until I reached the point where the installer needed to reboot my computer to complete the install. At that point, the installation stopped my progress due to a reboot loop. I was, however, able to enter the High Sierra system via safe booting into it.

I tried following some troubleshooting techniques I found here on the forum to no avail. I feel like I'm on the right track but I can't find the information I need to resolve this issue.

Can someone provide any help? I'm about to try to upgrade again and since I haven't really done anything new, I don't expect a new result. Attached you will find some pictures I took of the loading screens from this morning. You will also find the pictures that show the content of the EFI folder's kexts and driver64UEFI folder. You will find the pictures of my /Library/Extensions folder. File paths can be found at the bottom of the screen. Do I need all of the kexts and drivers I have? Am I missing something?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you!

T

 

[tfloyd]

What are most of you thinking? Should I just dive in again and deal with the problems that might arise? @Feartech @BreBo @cmn699 @P1LGRIM @jaymonkey , Please forgive the tags, I'm just trying to cover my bases. If any of you awesome folks have any advice, it would be much appreciated.

I'm at the point where I have recovered the drive I tried to update via a backup I had and I can start the new upgrade attempt. But I haven't truly done anything differently. So if someone could take a look at my previous pictures and let me know if they see any warning signs, maybe something that I should try adding/deleting before or maybe after the upgrade, it would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[Jamesbond007]

What are most of you thinking? Should I just dive in again and deal with the problems that might arise? @Feartech @BreBo @cmn699 @P1LGRIM @jaymonkey , Please forgive the tags, I'm just trying to cover my bases. If any of you awesome folks have any advice, it would be much appreciated.

I'm at the point where I have recovered the drive I tried to update via a backup I had and I can start the new upgrade attempt. But I haven't truly done anything differently. So if someone could take a look at my previous pictures and let me know if they see any warning signs, maybe something that I should try adding/deleting before or maybe after the upgrade, it would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

What is the version of Clover you are using on your system to boot Sierra?

If it is an old version (like 4045 which is used on the Sierra version of Unibeast) then it won't support booting High Sierra and will cause a boot loop.

In such a case you may have to upgrade Clover first if you want to attempt to upgrade Sierra by running the High Sierra installer inside Sierra.

Personally, if I were you I would have used an USB boot stick created from the High Sierra version of Unibeast to boot the system and install High Sierra onto a new disk (keeping the old Sierra disk so that in case of failure you can fall back to that). Is there a reason why you want to perform an upgrade rather than a clean install?

 

[tfloyd]

What is the version of Clover you are using on your system to boot Sierra?

If it is an old version (like 4045 which is used on the Sierra version of Unibeast) then it won't support booting High Sierra and will cause a boot loop.

In such a case you may have to upgrade Clover first if you want to attempt to upgrade Sierra by running the High Sierra installer inside Sierra.

Personally, if I were you I would have use an USB boot stick created from the High Sierra version of Unibeast to boot the system and install High Sierra onto a new disk (keeping the old Sierra disk so that in case of failure you can fall back to that). Is there a reason why you want to perform an upgrade rather than a clean install?

Thanks, Jamesbond.

I didn't consider needing to update my clover to a recent version. The High Sierra installation guide said to update clover to v4173+ so I went and only updated to v4200 to play it safe, ya know. I think earlier this week I tried updating to the most recent Clover version I could find on the clover web site and when I tried to reboot after the installation I couldn't get into my system. I didn't really troubleshoot anything because I needed to work and only restored my system from a backup I made that same night and got back to work. I will try again. Hopefully, things go my way this time around.

I think your suggestion of doing a fresh install might be for the best. I'm only hesitant to do a fresh install because I don't want to spend the time reinstalling my work programs again. I have sooo many. But honestly, it's looking like it might be the easiest thing to do.

That being said, If I'm going to do a fresh install, would it be wise to just make the jump to Catalina? Forum wise, it seems to have more support.

Thanks for your time. I appreciate the help.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Thanks, Jamesbond.

I didn't consider needing to update my clover to a recent version. The High Sierra installation guide said to update clover to v4173+ so I went and only updated to v4200 to play it safe, ya know. I think earlier this week I tried updating to the most recent Clover version I could find on the clover web site and when I tried to reboot after the installation I couldn't get into my system. I didn't really troubleshoot anything because I needed to work and only restored my system from a backup I made that same night and got back to work. I will try again. Hopefully, things go my way this time around.

I think your suggestion of doing a fresh install might be for the best. I'm only hesitant to do a fresh install because I don't want to spend the time reinstalling my work programs again. I have sooo many. But honestly, it's looking like it might be the easiest thing to do.

That being said, If I'm going to do a fresh install, would it be wise to just make the jump to Catalina? Forum wise, it seems to have more support.

Thanks for your time. I appreciate the help.

I see. Certainly if you have a lot of software installed it would be a pain to reinstall all of them and reconfigure them to your liking if you want to do a clean install.

High Sierra is out of support and will not receive any more security updates from Apple.

Catalina is currently in "Security Support" which means it is still supported by security updates from Apple. Obviously it is going to have more support forum wise.

However, in your case, there will be a problem if you want to install Catalina (or Mojave) : Your GTX 1080 Ti will lose driver support since Nvidia did not release any more web drivers after High Sierra. So if you want to keep using that card you can only go to High Sierra but no further.

Also, a newer version of MacOS may not be compatible with the current versions of software that you are using on your machine. Make sure that any software you need has been updated to support the newer version, be it High Sierra / Mojave / Catalina, before you upgrade.

 

[tfloyd]

I see. Certainly if you have a lot of software installed it would be a pain to reinstall all of them and reconfigure them to your liking if you want to do a clean install.

High Sierra is out of support and will not receive any more security updates from Apple.

Catalina is currently in "Security Support" which means it is still supported by security updates from Apple. Obviously it is going to have more support forum wise.

However, in your case, there will be a problem if you want to install Catalina (or Mojave) : Your GTX 1080 Ti will lose driver support since Nvidia did not release any more web drivers after High Sierra. So if you want to keep using that card you can only go to High Sierra but no further.

Also, a newer version of MacOS may not be compatible with the current versions of software that you are using on your machine. Make sure that any software you need has been updated to support the newer version, be it High Sierra / Mojave / Catalina, before you upgrade.

You've just blown my mind! I've spent about a week preparing for the upgrade and somehow I missed the fact that my graphics card would not be supported by Catalina.‍ ::Facepalm:: So glad you caught that in my system specs. Thank you. Well, I guess that makes my decision easy. I'm going to do a fresh upgrade to High Sierra. That being said, I'm going to check out the buyers guide for graphics cards.

Thank you!

 

[tfloyd]

Just to update those who might come across this in the future, I opted to do a fresh install of High Sierra.

For my system, the High Sierra install guide worked well and got me all the way to where I can now boot into the system on its own.

The sound help was pulled from here.

And the Nvidia web driver help was gotten from here.

I still need to get my ethernet working. It was working immediately after my fresh install but stopped after a restart.

Lastly, I Used Migration Assistant to transfer over my programs. I'm still sussing through the further upgrades. I'll keep you posted.

 

[tfloyd]

So the fresh install was pretty straightforward and worked the best. The upgrade was a pain in the arse. If I was a more adept Hackintosh'r I probably could have figured out the reboot loop that stalled the direct upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra. But whatever. All that said, this'll probably be the last update I give to this thread. Thx for the help @Jamesbond007 . You're much appreciated.