[Guide] Install High Sierra or Mojave on the Dell Optiplex 7010 / 9010 Desktop PC - Revision II

[theandrewgordon]

Thank you for the feedback! with WEG and LILU in L/E I am still not waking up the display after sleep unless I get in through remote and switch resolutions, that somehow tells it to wake... its odd. any thoughts? See attached for DTDS and Config etc..

 

[markcwoods88]

That is an "Insanely Great" deal as SJ used to say. A late 2012 iMac equivalent for 25 USD with your choice of monitor, when refurb i7-3770 iMacs still cost 1,100 USD. If the monitor fails on a refurb iMac you are out of luck or will pay a kings ransom for the repairs.

View attachment 354140

I can’t complain that’s for sure. The only issue I have is it’s hit or miss if my machine will see the SSD on boot. When it does clover loads and I’m in with no issues. I could restart and it won’t see the drive anymore. It works fine with windows but just Mac OS is giving me issues. Otherwise it works perfectly.

 

[N8261D]

That doesn't work well because my patched DSDT is likely different in a number of ways that could prevent it from working on your HP. What I would suggest is a clean install from your Unibeast drive. Wipe the current install of HS by formatting the drive in Disk Utility and then implement the guide in post #1 precisely as it is presented and it will work. I know that for certain from the extensive testing that I did to write the guide for my 7010 USFF with an i5-3475S CPU and HD4000 graphics.

Whenever I try to make a bootable USB for High Sierra in Unibeast, it goes for a while then gives the following message: There was an error creating your UniBeast drive: Copy of apfs.efi failed. I have gotten this message for two different drives now. I tried deleting and reinstalling the Install macOS High Sierra app, but that did not work either.

 

[trs96]

Whenever I try to make a bootable USB for High Sierra in Unibeast, it goes for a while then gives the following message: There was an error creating your UniBeast drive: Copy of apfs.efi failed. I have gotten this message for two different drives now. I tried deleting and reinstalling the Install macOS High Sierra app, but that did not work either.

Read through the troubleshooting notes.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-8-troubleshooting-notes.235489/

 

[N8261D]

Read through the troubleshooting notes.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-8-troubleshooting-notes.235489/

I have gotten the system reinstalled, but when trying to boot from the hard drive after doing the multibeast deal, it hangs right here:

 

[N8261D]

Read through the troubleshooting notes.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/unibeast-8-troubleshooting-notes.235489/

Here is something crazy weird. I made a brand new USB installer. I do the install, boot from the HDD, do multibeast and then can't boot... so I use the USB drive to boot so I can try the DSDT patching. I go to the ACPI/patched folder and it had a DSDT in it. But I replaced it. Then I go to Clover Config to do the patches, and those are also there. What does this mean??? Why am I having all these problems???

 

[N8261D]

I think I know what my problem has been. When I made the original install USB for the 7010, I used an Optiplex 380 hackintosh. When I made it using the Optiplex 7010 to try and start over, I found essentially the same EFI folder on the HDD after installing regardless of whether or not I format the HDD. I think that when I mad the original installer, it took the EFI folder from the Optiplex 380 and that may contain extra stuff that could possibly be:
a. not allowing us to do what we want OR
b. counteract some of the stuff we have done OR
c. put a ton of extra stuff in to the 7010 EFI folder.

 

[nicksoph]

When it does clover loads and I’m in with no issues. I could restart and it won’t see the drive anymore.

You might be able to find reports of some brands/models of SSD's not working in osx, Ive seen such reports but not read any details but first you might check your BIOS - both version and settings, especially the settings for boot device - it must be uefi and the first choice should be the ssd, NOT osx which should be unticked as a boot option. Dual booting?, brings issues on its own and if you are using two drives? make sure you only have one bootable EFI partition (for all drives), Im sure its possible but without special configuration, no two drives should have a bootable EFI partition on.

 

[trs96]

Dell / Mitsubishi CMOS Battery Fails​

I'm going to document the automatic, "switching back to Legacy BIOS" problem further because it's the third time this has happened now. I recently bought a 9010 SFF on Ebay for further testing. Installed High Sierra after setting the BIOS correctly for UEFI booting, everything went perfectly by following the guide in post #1. I then unplugged this Dell 9010 for a few days removed it from my test bench, and let it sit while working on other things. Tried to boot it up this morning and here's what I saw:

​

It didn't take long to figure out that the BIOS had automatically switched back to the default settings. So, it's caused by the bleeping CMOS battery again not holding a charge because this machine was unplugged from the wall for a couple of days.

Legacy and UEFI Boot Sequence of the Dell 9010 BIOS




Above is the default sequence you'll get when the CMOS battery fails
​

If you've followed the guide in post #1 of this thread, you set your Dell up for UEFI booting. When the battery fails, the BIOS changes you've made are lost. The result is that the Dell BIOS cannot see your macOS drive anymore to be able to boot it up. You won't reach the Clover Boot Menu screen or have any UEFI bootable drive options.

​

Here's how it should look when set to UEFI booting ​

This has never happened with any of the HP 6300/8300s I've owned that are about the same age, maybe even a year older than these Dell Optiplex computers. Maybe Dell got a bad batch of CMOS batteries that all fail after 4-5 years, I don't know. It may be the way the motherboard is designed. The only solution is to replace the battery with a fresh one, once you buy one of these refurb machines. If you keep the old CMOS battery you'll have to keep resetting the BIOS quite often and it will get very annoying quickly. So it looks like I'll need to create a step 0 - Replace the Bleeping CMOS Battery! and make it a mandatory step.

Here's an Amazon link to buy a 4 pack. They are very inexpensive and the Energizer brand is the best you can get.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D8P5T0U/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

The lowest cost option is to buy a 2 pack on Ebay.com. These cost less than 70 cents each.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Piece-Fr...010964&hash=item21372f0c48:g:JmQAAOSw-RFaX8G3

Whatever brand you choose to buy make sure it is model CR2032 3V Lithium battery so it will work properly in the PC.

Even if you test the CMOS battery with a multimeter and it registers close to 3V it still may not be able to hold a charge and be a usable battery. You only need to watch the first 3 minutes to understand why battery testers don't work to verify whether a battery is good or not. Watch this video:

If you have any other PCs that are 7 years old or older you can replace those too as a preventative measure.

 

[mervburger]

The config.plist looks ok. You could also fill out all of the sections of the SMBIOS tab. Just click on iMac 13,2 from the dropdown menu in the lower right part and it poplulates the form fields.

View attachment 354923

A failing or failed CMOS batter could be at fault too. I'm not sure why these batteries in Dells that are only about 5 years old are all failing at the same time. Maybe they got a bad batch from Mitsubishi ? I've had CMOS batteries last up to 10 years in other PCs that I've owned.

It's been a couple of days (it's been a pretty busy week for me,) but I do have some information to report.

First, I can report that I don't think the CMOS battery is at fault for me. I did swap it with a fresh battery, but I had the same result with unchecking the Enable Legacy Option ROMs setting - no display at all during boot up. The system doesn't hang while in this state, there just is no display until the OS initializes graphics, which is at the login screen for both macOS and Fedora.

I checked the voltage of both batteries - the original one in the system was just a bit above 3V, and the new one is at 3.25V - well within their proper specs. (edit: I typed this before your recent post - I am still using the new battery in the system, and have no intention of putting the old one back in.)

I've tried seeing if I can get into the macOS installer while in this state too, but I don't believe it will initialize graphics properly to have any display, which isn't surprising to me.

I did a reinstall from scratch last night, and I can say that after completing the guide - everything works. It's not until after where things go wrong with the graphics. I'm going to be doing more testing to see if I can find something consistent that does it.

For reference, with my testing last night, I made it about 3 or 4 system restarts before I encountered any issues, the changes I remember i had made after the last good boot was changing the wallpaper, signing in to the App Store, and then installing the iTunes and Safari updates.