Catalina Installation USB not booting

[Pyromethious]

I followed the basic guide for setting up the latest installer USB for a fresh/new install of Catalina using my Mid 2012 MBP, but when I try to choose either the Legacy or UEFI USB option for the boot device it does one of two things.

Legacy: Gives the old "invalid boot device" error. Same as if no media installed.
UEFI: The BIOS screen flashes, but nothing happens otherwise.

I've compared all the settings and saved this as a unique boot profile (with all other drives disabled to prevent mingling), but even after moving ports, it doesn't seem to want to boot from the USB. The drive works just fine and gave no errors during creation. It shouldn't matter, but I've got the iGPU connected via VGA.

Edit:
I've compared the hidden files of this USB to that of an old Uni_ML USB created with older versions of the above. The older USB has a hidden file called 'boot' and a number of others that the newer USB does not have. I don't think the process is adding the necessary files to actually boot from. I downloaded the latest files as described in the Catalina process. I even went so far as to plug in the older USB and it does boot to the UniBeast bootloader page. Albeit, the older one is MBR vs the newer UEFI.

 

[Middleman]

I followed the basic guide for setting up the latest installer USB for a fresh/new install of Catalina using my Mid 2012 MBP, but when I try to choose either the Legacy or UEFI USB option for the boot device it does one of two things.

Legacy: Gives the old "invalid boot device" error. Same as if no media installed.
UEFI: The BIOS screen flashes, but nothing happens otherwise.

I've compared all the settings and saved this as a unique boot profile (with all other drives disabled to prevent mingling), but even after moving ports, it doesn't seem to want to boot from the USB. The drive works just fine and gave no errors during creation. It shouldn't matter, but I've got the iGPU connected via VGA.

Edit:
I've compared the hidden files of this USB to that of an old Uni_ML USB created with older versions of the above. The older USB has a hidden file called 'boot' and a number of others that the newer USB does not have. I don't think the process is adding the necessary files to actually boot from. I downloaded the latest files as described in the Catalina process. I even went so far as to plug in the older USB and it does boot to the UniBeast bootloader page. Albeit, the older one is MBR vs the newer UEFI.

Hi there,

I presume you are trying to install Catalina onto your Z77X with Unibeast? Have you looked at any of the answers from this thread? > https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/cant-boot-catalina-installer.320400/

To boot from a hackintosh you must have GUID partition selected for the installer USB and using macOS Extended format. The target drive for the OS must also be GUID partition but formatted using APFS format (which has been available since High Sierra, and mandatory for all macOS versions since Mojave). To boot from a UEFI partition on your system you must also have this setting set up in BIOS (boot from UEFI mode enabled) and disable any USB legacy booting functionality in the BIOS.

Anyways if you need help also on installing for the Z77X, this guide from @Stork should help you. > https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-my-ga-z77x-up5-th-system-to-catalina.287173/

 

[P1LGRIM]

new install of Catalina using my Mid 2012 MBP

This is the most common source of failure :

 

[trs96]

It shouldn't matter, but I've got the iGPU connected via VGA.

The 15 pin VGA output does not work with Catalina and most other macOS versions. Use HDMI or DVI. Better yet, use the onboard DP if possible. Windows 10 still supports analog video outputs but Apple gave up on those more than a decade ago.

 

[Pyromethious]

The 15 pin VGA output does not work with Catalina and most other macOS versions. Use HDMI or DVI. Better yet, use the onboard DP if possible. Windows 10 still supports analog video outputs but Apple gave up on those more than a decade ago.

This'll be easy enough to test using HDMI, but I still think my current issue is that the installer isn't actually creating a bootable USB as I'm not seeing any hidden files that seem to relate to one. I've rebuilt the USB and get the same response and I've been choosing UEFI as the boot type during the prompts. The only not exactly clear aspect was whether you simply drop the whole (extracted) MultiBeast folder or just the app and where to put it, so I've been dropping the whole folder into the root of the USB after UniBeast has done its job (or says it does that is).

The contents of the USB after creation:

I went ahead and reran the Disable SIP command in recovery to try again, but I don't think I'm going to see a change.

Edit:
No change to the above USB file listing. Swapping to the iGPU's HDMI simply resulted in getting the "Insert bootable media" message when trying UEFI and MBR options for the USB instead of the UEFI option just rebooting.

 

[Pyromethious]

Hi there,

We're not even nearly this far yet as the USB is not reading as a bootable device for some reason even though its older counterpart does (albeit as MBR). I've gone through and matched the MacOS UEFI profile (gotta love Gigabyte's features) to what's shown as required and disabled all other drives from being visible to it. This profile is also the only one configured to use the HD4000 iGPU, so Catalina Shouldn't be an issue. I wanted to do the least amount of 'hacking' as I'll only really be running Parallels for basic VM testing that I already do on the MBP, but the PC has twice the RAM with otherwise similar architecture (Ivy Bridge), so I didn't see this being that big of an issue seeing as how this whole scenario is why I built this particular rig a decade ago (granted, I had a GTX 770 Ti back then). I suppose I could pre-format the destination SSD, but as of right now it's not-partitioned. Again, we're not even at the point that I can get the Installer too boot, so that's not quite relevant yet.

This is the most common source of failure :

I've had Big Sur running as a Host on the MBP as well, so I'm quite versed in what this is talking about and very comfortable using Disk Utility. This is not the issue as I have other native apps that require SIP to be disabled.