High Sierra - Black Screen after upgrading to Clover r5103

[wdogmx]

Hope I can get some help, please!

While preparing to upgrade my OS, I’ve run into some trouble of a type I haven’t seen before. I need to upgrade my system from High Sierra 10.13.6 to Mojave. (Catalina is out for me for the minute due to recent workflow issues with Quicktime.) Because my current graphics card is not Metal-compatible, I bought a Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 570 which I’m ready to put in. I also know I’ve also got to get Lilu/WEG going, since I’m currently using deprecated methods for audio, etc.

In preparation for the upgrade, I updated Clover and then cloned my system drive and EFI folder. I noted in some of the Lilu installation forums that I should keep an eye on my Bios in case something might need changing there relative to onboard audio, so I took screenshots of all my current Bios settings.

However, after exiting the Bios setup, my system - which has been running without flaw for a year - will not longer boot. Clover appears, but I get a black screen when trying to boot the Mac OS and then nada. (If I hit ESC during the black screen, Clover reappears (!), but then the system reports not finding a boot volume if I try to proceed… though I can reach the Shell).

Unfortunately the exact same thing happens with my clone (of course, because - stupid me - I made the clone after the Clover upgrade). I suspect something happened during the Clover upgrade which is preventing the machine from reaching the OS. I’ve read a bunch of forum posts on this and will attach my EFI so it’s visible, but the fixes I’ve read about are not working for me.

Things I’ve tried:

1) I tried restoring a number of my old EFI folders from my backup set, and rebuilt caches/permissions, etc. All no dice. (I do this by mounting my SSD Hackintosh system drive as an external device on a laptop, mounting its EFI partition, etc.)

2) Though I was a long shot, I reset my CMOS on my motherboard and recreated all my Bios settings, also no dice. I figure since I’m seeing the Clover screen, it really can’t be a hardware issue, right? Has to be a missing or corrupted kext or driver or something off in my S/L/E.

Attempting to boot from Clover in verbose mode, I get this:

OsxAptioFixDrv: Starting overrides for \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
Using reloc block: yes, hibernate wake: no
OsxAptioFixDrv: AllocateRelocBloc (): can not allocate relocation block (0x207D9) pages below 0x1000000000): Not Found


Looking through the forums, I see various notes about being sure to use OsxAptioFixDrv-64-efi and NOT OsxAptioFix2Drv-64-efi which is what I am doing. I’ve also got SIP off of course with 0x67.

Frankly, I’m stumped, and even more frankly, a lot of this is over my head. No doubt I’m making a noob mistake. Because I upgrade infrequently, when I do so, I need to re-learn of lot of things and don’t find it easy.

I was planning on doing a direct upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave using the same methods tonymac recommends and which I used successfully in the past to get from Yosemite to El Cap to Sierra, etc…but if I can’t get my system running again, that won’t work of course. It does occur to me that perhaps I should skip straight to the Lilu/WEG update in my EFI and S/L/E and put in my new Metal-compatible card before I try to fix all this, but that seems like adding new variables to the problem which may make it more difficult to unravel if things don’t right themselves in the process.

Really would appreciate any expert help here!

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Hope I can get some help, please!

While preparing to upgrade my OS, I’ve run into some trouble of a type I haven’t seen before. I need to upgrade my system from High Sierra 10.13.6 to Mojave. (Catalina is out for me for the minute due to recent workflow issues with Quicktime.) Because my current graphics card is not Metal-compatible, I bought a Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 570 which I’m ready to put in. I also know I’ve also got to get Lilu/WEG going, since I’m currently using deprecated methods for audio, etc.

In preparation for the upgrade, I updated Clover and then cloned my system drive and EFI folder. I noted in some of the Lilu installation forums that I should keep an eye on my Bios in case something might need changing there relative to onboard audio, so I took screenshots of all my current Bios settings.

However, after exiting the Bios setup, my system - which has been running without flaw for a year - will not longer boot. Clover appears, but I get a black screen when trying to boot the Mac OS and then nada. (If I hit ESC during the black screen, Clover reappears (!), but then the system reports not finding a boot volume if I try to proceed… though I can reach the Shell).

Unfortunately the exact same thing happens with my clone (of course, because - stupid me - I made the clone after the Clover upgrade). I suspect something happened during the Clover upgrade which is preventing the machine from reaching the OS. I’ve read a bunch of forum posts on this and will attach my EFI so it’s visible, but the fixes I’ve read about are not working for me.

Things I’ve tried:

1) I tried restoring a number of my old EFI folders from my backup set, and rebuilt caches/permissions, etc. All no dice. (I do this by mounting my SSD Hackintosh system drive as an external device on a laptop, mounting its EFI partition, etc.)

2) Though I was a long shot, I reset my CMOS on my motherboard and recreated all my Bios settings, also no dice. I figure since I’m seeing the Clover screen, it really can’t be a hardware issue, right? Has to be a missing or corrupted kext or driver or something off in my S/L/E.

Attempting to boot from Clover in verbose mode, I get this:

OsxAptioFixDrv: Starting overrides for \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
Using reloc block: yes, hibernate wake: no
OsxAptioFixDrv: AllocateRelocBloc (): can not allocate relocation block (0x207D9) pages below 0x1000000000): Not Found


Looking through the forums, I see various notes about being sure to use OsxAptioFixDrv-64-efi and NOT OsxAptioFix2Drv-64-efi which is what I am doing. I’ve also got SIP off of course with 0x67.

Frankly, I’m stumped, and even more frankly, a lot of this is over my head. No doubt I’m making a noob mistake. Because I upgrade infrequently, when I do so, I need to re-learn of lot of things and don’t find it easy.

I was planning on doing a direct upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave using the same methods tonymac recommends and which I used successfully in the past to get from Yosemite to El Cap to Sierra, etc…but if I can’t get my system running again, that won’t work of course. It does occur to me that perhaps I should skip straight to the Lilu/WEG update in my EFI and S/L/E and put in my new Metal-compatible card before I try to fix all this, but that seems like adding new variables to the problem which may make it more difficult to unravel if things don’t right themselves in the process.

Really would appreciate any expert help here!

Hi there.

Is the Clover EFI you've uploaded one that you tried with the RX570 or the GT740 ? I assume we are going with the RX570 for now ... (because depending on the version of GT740 you have it may be simply a native card or one that needs Nvidia's web-drivers.)

Make a backup of the EFI folder in case anything you do to it causes further problems

Looking through the EFI folder:

Remove all kexts from any of the other kext directories (10.11, 10.12 etc) and place the ones you want just in "Other". The rest, scattered about like that, will just be confusing.

The latest Clover file hierarchy has the *.efi files only in the folder 'drivers/UEFI' , so you can remove 'drivers32UEFI' and 'drivers64UEFI'.

You need the latest Lilu.kext and Whatevergreen.kext in the EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other folder.

 

[wdogmx]

Actually, this is the EFI folder for the GT 740 which has been working fine up until now. Can you see anything wrong with it? (I haven’t put the RX 570 in yet. I just wanted to get my old system operating correctly again before upgrading.) And what about the -v output. Why is it hanging at OsxAptioFixDrv.efi...?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

...Can you see anything wrong with it?...

Please re-read my post

...Why is it hanging at OsxAptioFixDrv.efi...?

Because you have two different versions of the OsxAptioFix driver in place - in drivers/UEFI you have OsxAptioFixDrv.efi
and in drivers64UEFI you have OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi .

Again, please re-read my previous post.

Also a good idea to upload a screengrab/photo of the point at which it freezes in verbose mode so we can see more.

 

[wdogmx]

Screen grab below. Many thanks for your help. I had actually read your post and noted the drivers situation you pointed out, but since you had mistakenly thought the EFI was for the RX card, and not the GT, I was not sure which parts of your fix were relevant. If I keep the GT in until I can restore the system, perhaps all I need to do is remove one of the OsxAptioFixDrv’s...?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Screen grab below. Many thanks for your help. I had actually read your post and noted the drivers situation you pointed out, but since you had mistakenly thought the EFI was for the RX card, and not the GT, I was not sure which parts of your fix were relevant. If I keep the GT in until I can restore the system, perhaps all I need to do is remove one of the OsxAptioFixDrv’s...?

No problem.

It turns out the problem you are having wasn't necessarily related to the GPU, but I wasn't sure at that point so mentioned it But still implement the clean-up I suggested.

Okay, with that screengrab it does indeed look to be memory-fix related. Assuming you are still on the Z97 and High Sierra I would test different ones. The problem might be getting in to your system to make the changes...

Do you still have your UniBeast installer drive? You can boot your system with that and then make the necessary changes to the main drive.

Looking back through my own EFI folders, the memory fix driver most reliable for High Sierra was OsxAptioFix2Drv-64.efi on these older motherboards. Your mileage may vary as they say, but why you were advised not to touch it is beyond me. The only one not recommended to try nowadays is the OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi.

On my current High Sierra desktop I'm using AptioMemoryFix.efi with the near-latest version of Clover (5102).

If you still get a freeze, same again. Screengrab if different etc.

 

[wdogmx]

Great. I’ll investigate on Monday when I can get back to the rig.

 

[wdogmx]

Well, no luck yet, but, here's where I am. I started with the cleanup you suggested.

1) I removed both folders Clover/drivers32UEFI and Clover/drivers64UEFI from my EFI along with their contents, leaving only Clover/drivers/UEFI which now contains only apfs.efi and OsxAptioFixDrv.efi. (But see below.)

2) I removed all the old kexts in the 10.x folders, leaving just the five kexts that were already in Clover/kexts/Other - FakeSMC.kext, AppleIntelE1000e.kext, AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext, realtekALC.kext and RealtekRTL8111.kext.

2) Following this tonymac guide (https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/an-idiots-guide-to-lilu-and-its-plug-ins.260063/) and using Hackintool, I installed Lilu, WEG and AppleALC into Clover/kexts/Other.

3) Here's where it's slightly confusing to me - the guide recommends putting Lilu and it's associated kexts into S/L/E and just leaving a second copy of FakeSMC in Clover/kexts/Other. However, you yourself and some others say to put Lilu, etc. into Clover/kexts/Other. Despite the guide, I followed your advice.

4) The guide also says that WEG, etc. replaces some older kexts and recommends removing them from the EFI so as not to create conflicts. So, thinking they might be trouble, I removed four of the older kexts from Clover/kexts/Other (AppleIntelE1000e.kext, AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext, realtekALC.kext and RealtekRTL8111.kext), leaving only FakeSMC, Lilu, WEG, and AppleALC in there. (There is also still another copy of FakeSMC in my S/L/E.)

5) The guide also says to make a few config.plist changes, which I did: in ACPI - disabled all patches, in Kernel & Kext Patches - disabled all patches except TRIM enable. But in System Parameters - Inject Kexts remains "Yes" (...because I think I was supposed to change it to "Detect" if Lilu was going to be in S/L/E instead of Clover/kexts/Other).

5) using Clover 5103, I downloaded several OsxAptioFix-type files to try out. OsxAptioFixDrv.efi, AptioMemoryFix.efi, OsxAptioFix3Drv.efi and OsxLowMemFixDrv.efi. Incidentally, OsxAptioFix2Drv.efi which you mentioned in a previous post doesn't appear to be available in the Clover download list - if you want me to try that, maybe you could point me to it?

6) And incidentally on the subject of "where is it?" I was also trying to find AirportBrcmFixup on Github to use with Lilu, but could not find the release folder there -- or there's some debug operation required that's kinda beyond me (But that's maybe for later....)

Hoping for the best, I tried out my five OsxAptioFix-type files one at a time, but sadly none of them moved the needle forward. Screen grabs of the verbose outputs for each attempt are attached below. (My the test of OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi was the same as AptioMemoryFix.efi.)

Attaching my revised EFI folder (with OsxAptioFixDrv.efi in Clover/drivers/UEFI).

I know this is a long post. Once again my thanks for helping me through this.

 

[wdogmx]

One last test using ApfsDriverLoader.efi (instead of apfs.efi) and AptioMemoryFix.efi in Clover/drivers/UEFI

 

[wdogmx]

[SOLVED]. Well, kinda solved. After various unsuccessful attempts at fixing the problem with different drivers, and then reading around about memory allocation, I decided the best thing to do for now was try to restore my old High Sierra system. I was finally able to get it all together back by removing my PCIe cards except the GPU, re-flashing my BIOS and then restoring my system folder from a backup copy. Frankly I am wondering if upgrading to Mojave is going to be possible with this hardware, though I see nothing in the literature to say why it wouldn't be. But the prospect of messing with boot args like "slide=xxx" are beyond me. I might be better off building a new rig with a newer motherboard, etc., and installing Catalina fresh, once the Quicktime headaches with ProTools are resolved.