Help :( Clover Scan Entries... with a twist

[spballer]

Hello,

I had a nice Sierra set up running when I left for work today, came back and turned on the machine and got the message;

Welcome to clover 3974
...Scan Entries...

Just hangs.

I dived into some research and found the issue always seems to focus around using multiple hard drives, in particular dual booting windows.

WELL, I've only ever used one SSD on my machine, and its never been partitioned for a dual boot.

Not sure how or why this started, but I'm at a complete loss for how to solve it.

I tried entering my MB's boot selection and selecting my install USB so I could use the OS X installers disk utility to wipe, but even booting from the USB shows;

Welcome to Clover 3766
...Scan Entries...

I'm assuming because thats' what unibeast uses as its boot loader.

Help, I need to find a way to either fix the issue without completely erasing the build on the hard drive, or a last resort I need to find a way to wipe the hard drive (its a SSD and my external USB/SATA connecter is ancient and doesn't seem to work) without use of another computer.

Currently operating off a super safe (and slow) build I loaded onto an old spinning hard drive from the mid 2000's

Many thanks for any help!

 

[Going Bald]

Remove SSD, move to super slow machine.
boot OS X, open terminal and run diskutil list
use EFIMounter app to mount EFI partition of SSD
open config.plist in Xcode or other plist editor
change Scan Entries from true to false/yes to no.

 

[spballer]

if the ssd is connected to the machine at all during boot it seems to mess things up, even if it's removed from boot options. If it's disconnected from the machine during boot it isn't recognized when I plug it in to another bay.

I'll try fussing around some more after work today so I can get to a place where I can try your method. Thank you for the reply!

 

[spballer]

Remove SSD, move to super slow machine.
boot OS X, open terminal and run diskutil list
use EFIMounter app to mount EFI partition of SSD
open config.plist in Xcode or other plist editor
change Scan Entries from true to false/yes to no.

Ok, after much trail and error I was finally able to load the SSD and access its config.plist. I switched scan entries from true to false, but when I attempt to boot from it I get nothing, circle with line through it . Reverting it back to true from false just brings back the scan entries hang.

I'm just going to wipe it now that I have access and reinstall from scratch.

Any thoughts on why this error (the scan entries hang) would have popped up at all? I'd like to avoid this kerfunkle in the future. The only thing I can think of is loading TRIM; but I had several boot cycles with success before the calamity.

EDIT: Well, I figured I'd try one more thing, and Going Bald - your advice did indeed work!!!! Thank you very very much

Those who are more knowledgable about all this stuff will probably see something in my methodology that'll hopefully give you a chuckle..

Every time I tried to boot with the SSD connected directly to MOBO it seemed to override my boot selection, and it was not being recognized if swapped in after a boot. I tried many many different ways, but that was the case. SO, I went and bought a USB-SATA adaptor after work today to see if I could get the SSD recognizable after boot so I could try the above method, or wipe the drive and start fresh in a last case scenario.

Well, I applied the changes and tried to boot from it, no go. Switched them back, scan hang... figured it was time to wipe. I went to disk utility and tried to wipe it, but it failed... I tried to unmount it, but it failed... then I looked at the damn thing, it was still connected via the USB-SATA adaptor! I changed the scan entries to false once again, shut things down, and plugged the SSD back in directly, and VIOLA!!! Started up like a champ, build intact and running beautifully.

Going Bald, you rock