Black screen with blinking cursor after updating Clover

[Snowy]

To be honest I am a bit confused by the whole thing? As you've somehow gone back to square one?

If you've updated the EFI properly there's no reason why it should start blinking. Blinking usually means something in the bootloader is off - either the BootX64.efi, Opencore.efi etc is wrong or a driver is missing (like OpenShell.efi or OpenHFSPlus.efi). OR the config.plist is somehow corrupted. On all of the bootloader builds you have to ensure ALL the relevant files for the version involved to have to be updated to the same release date, which includes the usual OC kexts - Lilu, Whatevergreen, AppleALC, & VirtualSMC.

The best way to update the older EFI file is to copy that to another USB stick or drive, and then update it using manual methods or Opencore Configurator or similar like Hackintool. Personally I prefer Opencore Configurator - you just load up the old file using the latest version and simply re-save, add in your OC updates manually into the relevant folders and it is mostly done.

There is OCAT (Opencore Auxiliary Tool) but I would avoid using OCAT for now as I noticed it doesn't always update the kext files correctly even though its been specified by the user. Better to do a manual check of the folders to ensure the kexts have been updated.

Imagine how confused I am mate. I get thrown different EFI, try this that so I try to keep up.
Edhawk EFI gave blinking cursor but was 0.8.3 so more recent. I noticed it had a lot of dsdt patches that I used before with clover. I tried my system without them and it still ran ok so I went minimal in clover, only required kexts, drivers and proper config, no dsdt patches Or extra kexts.

Now the one you recommended works but is 0.6.5 or something. OpenCore Configurator even throws an error about the old version. Going trough with it might render the config file useless.

 

[Snowy]

Hey guys, hope all is well.

I'm trying opencore again since the latest Photoshop and Lightroom are not compatible with Catalina anymore so need to upgrade.

I'm trying EdHawk's EFI again since it matches my rig and it's a recent Opencore version.
At first I had the blinking cursor issue again even after flashing the BIOS since Z97 motherboards tend to go bananas mixing clover and opencore bootloaders.

Along the way though (can't remember exactly what step changed it) I think I get Opencore boot loader now because when I press space I get more (efi) options such as clearnvram etc...
But I only get an EFI icon and nothing more. Selecting EFI brings me to the Clover boot loader that's on my Catalina drive.
This is with an USB pen drive (GUID) holding EdHawk's EFI (and my serials of course)

Thanks in advance

 

[Snowy]

Also, I have a Win 11 install ready because I can't keep rendering for 8 hours in MacOS what I can (probably) render in Windows for 8 minutes using an RTX card.
While win 11 is closer to a Mac experience compared to previous versions it still isn't as good, not by a mile but you guys already know that. Installing Win 11 wasn't without issues either. My rig felt more like a Mac then a windows computer the last couple of days. I always feel like I'm using a toy with Windows while MacOS is for the grown ups.

Anyway before I make the final switch though I do want to take a peek at Monterey. Maybe performance might improve and I can stick with Monterey a little longer. Or maybe I could dual boot (separate drives of course) and disable the Nvidia card in Mac. As far as I can tell this should be a simple boot arg.

That is if I can get opencore to work

Thanks in advance!