<< Solved >> Did I bork my EFI, or should I just throw it all into a lake?

[geoffoliver]

Long story short, I had been dual booting Windows and MacOS just fine having followed the instructions here, then I tried to setup the startup chime, and now there's no OpenCore boot option in my BIOS. Now for the long story...

I followed the instructions here trying to setup the startup chime (not sure why I was pressing my luck like that, everything was working almost flawlessly), and I wasn't hearing the chime when I booted up. Well, I didn't follow the instructions exactly because I wasn't running a debug build of OpenCore, so I couldn't check the log lines for determining my "AudioOut" value, and I just guessed at the value ("0" for those that are curious). So, after the sound didn't work, I downloaded a debug build of OpenCore, slapped it onto my "working hackintosh" thumb drive (that I created from the EFI of the actual working hackintosh), and booted up with that.

After initial startup, and F12-ing until I was able to choose a boot device, I selected my thumb drive and hit enter. I saw a handful of log lines, and then the screen went black. It stayed black for about 2 minutes until I decided that I didn't really need the startup chime, and that this was dumb (i.e. I was being impatient). I hit the power button on the case, the machine shut down, I yanked the thumb drive, and started up the machine again. It was then that I discovered that there was no "OPENCORE" option in my boot devices (after F12-ing a bunch, as usual), only an option to boot Windows.

I shut down the machine, stuck the thumb drive back in (still running a debug OpenCore), booted up the machine, F12'd, selected the USB, waited for a while, finally selected "Macintosh HD" from the picker (that's what I called the drive I installed my hack onto), and eventually got into my desktop. All my settings and everything were still there, so I didn't mess things up too bad. "Okay, maybe I just jacked up the EFI partition", I thought. Weird because I booted from the USB so I didn't think it would mess with that, but whatever. So I started up OpenCore Configurator, mounted the EFI partition, and, well, everything looks fine as far as I can tell.

I thought maybe the EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi had got messed up, so I copied over the file from the OpenCore I downloaded earlier (yes, all on the same version -- the most recent), shut down the machine, yanked the thumb drive, booted it up, F12'd, and still, no OPENCORE boot device option. Okay...

I mounted the EFI partition from the actual boot drive (Macintosh HD), and copied everything there (a working hackintosh installation) back over to the thumb drive, so that it's no longer running a debug OpenCore. Shut down the machine, boot it up, F12, still no option to boot OpenCore, just Windows.

I shut down the machine, opened it up, and disconnected the drive with Windows on it (an SSD plugged in over SATA - the hack lives on an M.2 card), and started it back up thinking, maybe, by some dumb chance, that I'd be able to boot into my hack. Nope, still just an option for the Windows bootloader that, when selected, unsurprisingly threw a nasty exception about how Windows couldn't boot and needed to be repaired. I powered down the machine.

I started up the machine again, with the thumb drive still attached, F12'd and selected it, and then cleared the NVRAM. I didn't think this would fix the problem, and I was right. I shut the machine down again.

So, after getting a beer, I stuck the thumb drive back in, booted up the machine, F12'd, selected the thumb drive, and booted into MacOS, and that's where I am now. Writing this from MacOS on my hackintosh, booted from a USB drive because there was no option in the "F12 menu" of my BIOS to get into it.

I know there has to be a fix for this, and I hope it's something simple. I am sincerely dreading having to wipe this whole machine and reinstall everything for some reason that I still can't quite figure out... I don't understand why trying to boot a debug version of OpenCore, and just being impatient and cutting the power, would result in an entry missing from my BIOS boot device selection, but that is exactly what happened. I feel so dumb right now.

 

[geoffoliver]

I just noticed something weird, which is that now there's options for "Hackintosh" (the one I just added) and "OpenCore" (the one I spent ~8 hours trying to get back) in my boot devices selection, both of which boot, and seem to be working perfectly. While annoying, I'll take it. Certainly, it's dumb as hell that I spent all day trying to get just one option to boot my hackintosh to show up in that stupid menu, but two options is better than none. What a bunch of stupid crap.

Side note: if you're thinking of building a hackintosh just to save a little money (half of why I thought of doing it, the other half was because it sounded kinda fun), consider what your time is worth. I've lost days to this dumb thing, and I can't imagine I would've even got this far without the amazing community here, and on the internet at large.