El Capitan won't boot without USB after CPU cooler installation

[hamiltrp]

The usual 'please forgive my ignorance' affidavit applies here, as I'm new to this. After doing all the prep work (bios settings etc, disconnecting all PCI/USB devices) I successfully installed El Capitan using UniBeast, and then applied MultiBeast after, and had it booting successfully from my internal HDD (only one drive, single GUID partition, OS Ext Journ - NO WINDOWS ANYWHERE). Had it booting a number of times stably, then I installed a new CPU Cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO) so I could overclock (haven't changed FSB or any values in BIOS yet), and now it won't boot from the internal HDD anymore. It hangs on 'scan entries' for a good 2 mins and then finally goes into the Clover Boot Manager screen with the lime green clover and light grey background. Can still manage to boot into El Capitan using USB and then selecting 'HFS internal', but would prefer not to continue this way, obviously. Tried mounting EFI and edited config to ensure default volume was the same name as my internal HDD. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Specs:

Gigabyte MoBo GA-EP45T-UDP3 with AWARD BIOS
Core 2 Quad Q9550 (Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO)
8 GB Crucial 1333 RAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500 GB connected via SATA
ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB RAM (have set MultiBeast to properly work around this, I believe)

THANK YOU!

 

[UtterDisbelief]

The usual 'please forgive my ignorance' affidavit applies here, as I'm new to this. After doing all the prep work (bios settings etc, disconnecting all PCI/USB devices) I successfully installed El Capitan using UniBeast, and then applied MultiBeast after, and had it booting successfully from my internal HDD (only one drive, single GUID partition, OS Ext Journ - NO WINDOWS ANYWHERE). Had it booting a number of times stably, then I installed a new CPU Cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO) so I could overclock (haven't changed FSB or any values in BIOS yet), and now it won't boot from the internal HDD anymore. It hangs on 'scan entries' for a good 2 mins and then finally goes into the Clover Boot Manager screen with the lime green clover and light grey background. Can still manage to boot into El Capitan using USB and then selecting 'HFS internal', but would prefer not to continue this way, obviously. Tried mounting EFI and edited config to ensure default volume was the same name as my internal HDD. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Specs:

Gigabyte MoBo GA-EP45T-UDP3 with AWARD BIOS
Core 2 Quad Q9550 (Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO)
8 GB Crucial 1333 RAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500 GB connected via SATA
ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB RAM (have set MultiBeast to properly work around this, I believe)

THANK YOU!

Not 'ignorant' at all. We all get through the hackintosh process by reading the forums and by trial-and-error. Keep at it and your confidence will increase. No secret, just frustrating sometimes

As for your problem. I can't see the cooler would stop a boot - unless it was absent all together. Sometimes a BIOS can refuse a boot if it detects there is no CPU fan attached, but from what you say this isn't the case as the UniBeast stick still boots.

More likely is that the boot files or area of your HDD has become corrupted.

First mount, with EFI Mounter v3, and check the format of the EFI partition on your HDD for any errors using Disk Utility.

If all appears ok, backup your old EFI folder on the HDD partition (I'd recommend zipping it if you can and storing it elsewhere) then simply copy the EFI/EFI folder from your UniBeast stick over the one on the HDD.

This should repair any damage, as you've said you *can* boot using the USB stick. Be aware though that any command-lines you've previously edited into your old config-plist probably won't be there in the USB version, but you have a backup in the zip file.

That should get you booting the HDD again.

If it doesn't then you might like to re-install Clover using the Clover installation pkg and then copy the folder tree into place.

As long as the USB stick remains untouched it should continue to provide a back-up boot option until we figure out what's gone wrong.