Gigabyte H370M DS3H - 10.15.7 Fresh Install - Black Screen After Boot

[JingleDjango]

Motherboard: Gigabyte H370M DS3H (BIOS ver. F10)
CPU: i5 8600K
GPU: RX580 Pulse
Single 8GB DDR4 240MHz
Western Digital 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD

All other disks are disconnected save for the target volume and the USB install media.

This machine was previously running 10.14.3. I have a bootable backup I can go back to but I'm trying to do a fresh install of 10.15. I successfully created the install media using UniBeast following the guide. I assume the installer is for the most recent release (10.15.7?) since I just downloaded it.

I've referred to other threads concerning this motherboard but have had no success with the installation. Initially I was able to enter the installer, format the target disk and boot into the Install partition but I was getting a reboot loop that would trigger as soon as the GUI and progress bar initiated (12 minutes remaining. . .). Now I'm unable to boot the install media again. Runs through the apple logo progress bar then drops to a blank black screen.

I'd appreciate any further guidance. Are there additional kexts I should add to /other to support this mobo?

EDIT 1: I needed to inject USBInjectall.kext and XHCI-Unsupported.kext to boot the installer. To fix the Russian language problem i hit F11 at the Clover menu to reset NVRAM. Still facing a boot loop in the install partition of my target volume.

EDIT 2: I've attached the EFI folder of my install media.

EDIT 3: What I've learned regarding this board and Catalina:

• Enable PEG in BIOS. Seems to help move things along. Not sure why.​

• Installer booted well with VirtualSMC injected but post-install I needed FakeSMC to boot.​

• As with 10.14.6, it's necessary to inject USBInjectAll.kext and XHCI-Unsupported.kext.​

• It may have been necessary to disconnect other SATA drives during install, or maybe not. Probably good practice regardless.​

​

 

[JingleDjango]

I will add that I've tried both HDMI and DP to no avail. I've since tried injecting XCHI-300-series-injector as I've found that necessary with this motherboard on Mojave but still no success booting the installer.

I will build the installer for a third time and try some more.

EDIT: I was wrong, the kext I've used before was XHCI-unsupported in conjunction with USBInjectAll. So I tried injected those two and booted to the installer successfully. Unfortunately my installer is in ##LANGUAGE-UNRECOGNIZED##?! Some cyrillic script, maybe Russian. Why?? I downloaded from the App Store in Canada.

EDIT 2: Reset NVRAM in Clover with F11 key. This fixed the installer language.

 

[JingleDjango]

Was able to run the installer from the USB install media but again I'm facing forced reboot at 'About 12 minutes remaining'.

EDIT 1: Adding EmuVariableUefi-64.efi did not solve it. Still reboots at "About 12 minutes remaining" every go around.

EDIT 2: enabling PEG in the power management page of the BIOS has gotten me clear of the 12 minutes hurdle. No idea what that setting does.

 

[craighazan]

Hi I also once owned this board and encountered the same issue. It was last year some time and if I remember rightly I solved the issue by entering Recovery>Utilities and formatted the disk as Extended Journaled and GUID partition map. Not APFS as was recommended, try it and see what happens, I’ll be back in front of desktop later and will check my notes.

edited: Make sure it’s APFS not Ext journaled, my mistake. Check out the 1st post here using this board.

 

[JingleDjango]

Hi I also once owned this board and encountered the same issue. It was last year some time and if I remember rightly I solved the issue by entering Recovery>Utilities and formatted the disk as Extended Journaled and GUID partition map. Not APFS as was recommended, try it and see what happens, I’ll be back in front of desktop later and will check my notes.

edited: Make sure it’s APFS not Ext journaled, my mistake. Check out the 1st post here using this board.

Thanks for taking the time to reply and follow up. My target volume is indeed formatted to APFS. I will sift through the rest of your thread tonight. In the meantime. . .

After enabling PEG I was able to boot the Install partition and migrate my accounts from a Time Machine backup, so that's great. Only now I get tossed to black screen after a very slow boot. Tried again to boot, this time with safe mode and verbose flags. The long boot sequence seems to be due to stalls at the following lines:

considerRebuildOfPrelinkedKernel com.rehabman.driver.USBInjectAll triggered rebuild

(68sec.)
then:

tx_flush:1028: xed 957 tx stats: # 20 finish 20 enter 793 wait 2 267us close 95us flush 6649us

(hangs here for 2min)

I took a video of the verbose print and at this point there's a flurry of text that's hard to make out for how fast it was scrolling up. The last frame before blackout does manage to capture some coherent output:

 

[JingleDjango]

Tried setting SMBIOS to iMac 19,2 as per @craighazan 's linked thread. No change.

Also tried disabling PEG again in BIOS to no discernible effect.

Once screen goes dark, if i unplug the DP cable from the GPU and connect HDMI I get this grey background with a white square:

. . .which is interesting because there is a cursor present and it responds to mouse movement. So I know that I'm not crashing out hard. A problem with video output? If I click the mouse the cursor disappears permanently.

Tomorrow I'll try FakeSMC instead of VirtualSMC.

 

[JingleDjango]

Swapped FakeSMC in this morning. Booted successfully. First login took ages. So did the setup wizard. Probably this is due to 'optimizing your mac' which I got a notification about.
Been looking at "Setting up your Mac" screen for some time.