Medion P6705 laptop: failing to install Big Sur

[Ezenia]

After having some success installing Big Sur on two other machines (one laptop and one desktop), I decided to try it out on my gaming laptop. Both the other builds are Skylake. My laptop has the following specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7 8750H
GPU: Intel UHD 630 + GTX 1050Ti (using -wegnoegpu boot arg to disable it)
RAM: 16GB DDR4 @ 2667MHz
Storage: currently using a SATA HDD. This laptop comes equipped with an SK Hynix PC401M280S SSD. I thought this might've been a cause as I was originally getting kernel panics relating to NVMe. I removed this SSD from the laptop and added the SATA HDD in place of it to see if it helped. It didn't.

This laptop has not been as easy as my other two builds. The installation on my two other machines went really smoothly, barely any significant issues.

The problem I am having with my laptop is it seems to keep freezing at various points in the installation. When it freezes, the drive stops running (no HDD activity at all) and my CPU fan goes to what sounds like max speed. CPU heat also increases, so this is not just the fan itself going crazy - it's actually responding to heat. It remains this way until power is cut.

I've tried quite a lot of times to get this OS installed. It'll occasionally get stuck on the recovery's install MacOS Big Sur screen. This tends to happen when it says "about 15 minutes remaining".

If it makes it past that, it will try to reboot. When it does try to reboot, it often kernel panics. I attached a file showing what the kernel panic says. It's generally the same (sometimes I see SMCProcessor instead of VirtualSMC). I see AHCIDiskDriver mentioned on all the panics I have encountered.

Once I power off and reboot, I will see the "Mac OS installer" show up. I can boot to it. Once there, I'll be met with the Apple logo on a black background. It'll either immediately get stuck on "29 minutes remaining", or it'll go all the way to where it says "less than a minute remaining" where it halts indefinitely. As before, the CPU fan ramps up, is far hotter and the HDD light goes completely dead. No matter how long I leave it, nothing happens. I have no choice but to forcibly cut power.

After I force cut power and reboot, I boot back to the "Mac OS installer" to see what happens. I often find that it starts the count at "29 minutes remaining" and then boots to the "Mac OS upgrade assistant" several minutes later where it says it failed to apply the software update. Not much can be done here. Other times, it won't go back to the Apple logo and instead will get stuck on the verbose screen. It'll go through a lot of debug stuff, occasionally going extremely slow and then reboot if I leave it long enough. Rebooting to the installer leads to the same screen.

I'm honestly lost on what to do here. I have been troubleshooting for days. I've been scouring Google trying to find some resolution, but nothing has helped. I am still no closer to identifying what is causing the installer to halt so much.

Compared to my other systems, I find the overall time it takes to do things is slower. For example, the time it takes to go to the recovery or Mac OS installer screen feels like forever. It's far slower than my other machines. That alone concerns me.

I've attached one of my log files hoping someone might be able to identify what's happening. I followed the Dortania's vanilla guide to set everything up. I made my own EFI folder, as well as the config.plist. I used the prebuilt SSDT's (AWAC, EC-USBX-LAPTOP, PNLF and PLUG). My BIOS is pretty limited. VT-d, Fast Boot, Secure Boot and Intel SGX are disabled. SATA mode is set to AHCI. There's not much else that can be altered.

I will attach the config.plist soon if needed. I'm currently trying to install the OS again after making some changes.

EDIT: forgot to mention I am using OpenCore 0.7.6

 

[Ezenia]

Updates:

So after still failing to get Big Sur up and running, I decided to try out Catalina. That was also a little troubling to install. The installer would hang at 2 minutes remaining all the time. In response to this, I took out the drive that was in my laptop and replaced it with another. I thought it was just a bad drive. Same thing happened with the "new" drive.

After looking at the installer log, I noticed it said that it couldn't convert to APFS. This was at 2 minutes remaining and resulted in a complete freeze. No mouse movement or any activity whatsoever. Just CPU getting hotter and high fan speed. This was even with the drive formatted to APFS with the proper container and volume (both said APFS as well).

I then read some thread on various sites and saw a post suggesting to just leave it stuck at 2 minutes remaining for a bit. I left it alone for about 30 minutes and then forcibly cut power. Upon rebooting, the "Mac OS installer" option showed up. It then proceeded to install and to my surprise it completed.

So I did end up getting at least one MacOS version installed. I was quite happy about that after trying so many days to get somewhere. However, it's far from perfect.

Some issues with it I am experiencing right now:

1. Sleep/wake behaviour is broken. It went to sleep and it actually does wake up with a signal being sent to the screen. However, after a few seconds, it completely freezes and power needs to be cut. I switched my SMBIOS (was on MacBookPro15,1) to Macmini8,1 and now sleep seems broken entirely. It won't sleep at all now, screen just goes black and it goes no further. Power has to be cut.

2. Rebooting is iffy. I occasionally encounter kernel panics (seems to mention VirtualSMC often) when rebooting. If I don't kernel panic, the laptop will just halt on a black screen. I won't see the Erazer splash screen. Power has to usually be forcibly cut.

3. While booting, I see a bunch of APCI errors pop up. There's quite a large amount of them. They don't prevent me from booting to the OS, but something about them doesn't look right. I don't know why they're appearing or how to fix them.

4. Occasionally when booting, I will notice that the screen does not show any image after boot completes. For example, I will boot up the OS, it'll go through the boot process and all that. After that it goes to a black screen and stays there pretty long. As audio works, if I press some keys on my keyboard, I hear audio playing, indicating the login screen is up and the laptop is "awake". This is then verified when the screen gets an image. I see the password field filled up with keys I pressed.

#4 has always been a problem. It was something I frequently encountered when trying to install Big Sur. Sometimes it gets an image quickly. Other times it stays on a black screen for a while before it "wakes up".

This laptop has been a wild ride. It's a shame it doesn't seem capable of running MacOS without many problems like my other machines. It feels like I am just dealing with incompatibility problems and there's nothing I can really do to truly fix it.

I will keep looking and trying though. Maybe one day I'll succeed, or I'll give up. Who knows.

 

[Feartech]

Updates:

So after still failing to get Big Sur up and running, I decided to try out Catalina. That was also a little troubling to install. The installer would hang at 2 minutes remaining all the time. In response to this, I took out the drive that was in my laptop and replaced it with another. I thought it was just a bad drive. Same thing happened with the "new" drive.

After looking at the installer log, I noticed it said that it couldn't convert to APFS. This was at 2 minutes remaining and resulted in a complete freeze. No mouse movement or any activity whatsoever. Just CPU getting hotter and high fan speed. This was even with the drive formatted to APFS with the proper container and volume (both said APFS as well).

I then read some thread on various sites and saw a post suggesting to just leave it stuck at 2 minutes remaining for a bit. I left it alone for about 30 minutes and then forcibly cut power. Upon rebooting, the "Mac OS installer" option showed up. It then proceeded to install and to my surprise it completed.

So I did end up getting at least one MacOS version installed. I was quite happy about that after trying so many days to get somewhere. However, it's far from perfect.

Some issues with it I am experiencing right now:

1. Sleep/wake behaviour is broken. It went to sleep and it actually does wake up with a signal being sent to the screen. However, after a few seconds, it completely freezes and power needs to be cut. I switched my SMBIOS (was on MacBookPro15,1) to Macmini8,1 and now sleep seems broken entirely. It won't sleep at all now, screen just goes black and it goes no further. Power has to be cut.

2. Rebooting is iffy. I occasionally encounter kernel panics (seems to mention VirtualSMC often) when rebooting. If I don't kernel panic, the laptop will just halt on a black screen. I won't see the Erazer splash screen. Power has to usually be forcibly cut.

3. While booting, I see a bunch of APCI errors pop up. There's quite a large amount of them. They don't prevent me from booting to the OS, but something about them doesn't look right. I don't know why they're appearing or how to fix them.

4. Occasionally when booting, I will notice that the screen does not show any image after boot completes. For example, I will boot up the OS, it'll go through the boot process and all that. After that it goes to a black screen and stays there pretty long. As audio works, if I press some keys on my keyboard, I hear audio playing, indicating the login screen is up and the laptop is "awake". This is then verified when the screen gets an image. I see the password field filled up with keys I pressed.

#4 has always been a problem. It was something I frequently encountered when trying to install Big Sur. Sometimes it gets an image quickly. Other times it stays on a black screen for a while before it "wakes up".

This laptop has been a wild ride. It's a shame it doesn't seem capable of running MacOS without many problems like my other machines. It feels like I am just dealing with incompatibility problems and there's nothing I can really do to truly fix it.

I will keep looking and trying though. Maybe one day I'll succeed, or I'll give up. Who knows.

maybe zip and upload your EFI so someone can take a look?

 

[Ezenia]

I've attached my current EFI folder and removed the serial numbers from config.plist.

 

[Feartech]

I've attached my current EFI folder and removed the serial numbers from config.plist.

MacBookPro15,2 is a better choice

also you haven't done this yet:

The New Beginner's Guide to USB Port Configuration

Important Update: June 2023 From Big Sur 11.3 on the built-in OpenCore XhciPortLimit quirk no-longer worked as described. This became a known "bug", though in reality it was Apple changing their internal code, making a simple "peek and poke" to keep it operating, a difficult task. However, with...

www.tonymacx86.com

best to be done in Catalina as XhciPortLimit is broken in Big Sur onwards

 

[Ezenia]

Ah, I was picking the SMBIOS' that matched my CPU type (it's a Hexa core 45W chip), so I thought MBP15.1, MBP15.3 and Macmini8.1 were the better choices. I'll try out 15.2 to see how that goes.

I haven't done the port mapping yet as I was spending so much time trying to get Big Sur installed (never did). Catalina works at least somewhat OK (no real issues when booted to the OS, just those issues I mentioned earlier). I will try it out.

Sleep actually seems OK on 15,3. I tested it and it sleeps OK. I woke it up and it came back to life. It did freeze like before, but this time it corrected itself and continued to work fine afterwards.

 

[Feartech]

Ah, I was picking the SMBIOS' that matched my CPU type (it's a Hexa core 45W chip), so I thought MBP15.1, MBP15.3 and Macmini8.1 were the better choices. I'll try out 15.2 to see how that goes.

I haven't done the port mapping yet as I was spending so much time trying to get Big Sur installed (never did). Catalina works at least somewhat OK (no real issues when booted to the OS, just those issues I mentioned earlier). I will try it out.

Sleep actually seems OK on 15,3. I tested it and it sleeps OK. I woke it up and it came back to life. It did freeze like before, but this time it corrected itself and continued to work fine afterwards.

not having your usb setup correctly can actually cause a lot of issues....

 

[Ezenia]

So I've mapped my USB ports following that guide. Everything looks good as far as USB is concerned. I also switched to SMBIOS MBP15,2.

Sleep and wake seem to be working OK now (was working on 15,3 too).

Restarting the system appears to work now. It's successfully rebooting (no panics) and shows the Medion splash screen in a timely manner. I've done about 6 reboots now and all have been successful.

CPU fan no longer seems to ramp up to max speed. I think the issue with this was simple overheating. I re-pasted the CPU yesterday with some new paste. I noticed in Windows it was getting to 97C pretty easily. This laptop has always had issues with heat. I have to undervolt on Windows to get optimal thermal performance. Even with re-pastes, the laptop still gets pretty hot quickly on default settings. ThrottleStop on Windows eliminates these problems. Temps are currently OK in the OS itself (using Intel Power Gadget to monitor).

I am still getting a bunch of ACPI errors when it boots to the OS. I don't know if these are relevant at all or causing problems.

Another issue I am still getting is the screen takes a while to show an image when I get to the login screen. It'll stay on a black screen with no backlight for quite a bit (several minutes I'd say). It'll then show an image. I know it's on and at the login screen because I can hear sound when I press certain keys. I'll also be logged in if I type my password while the screen is still black.

I am tempted to give Big Sur another shot (I have another spare SATA drive to use for this). Maybe it'll go through now that I've made some more changes (USB mapping, CPU re-paste, SMBIOS change etc).

 

[Feartech]

So I've mapped my USB ports following that guide. Everything looks good as far as USB is concerned. I also switched to SMBIOS MBP15,2.

Sleep and wake seem to be working OK now (was working on 15,3 too).

Restarting the system appears to work now. It's successfully rebooting (no panics) and shows the Medion splash screen in a timely manner. I've done about 6 reboots now and all have been successful.

CPU fan no longer seems to ramp up to max speed. I think the issue with this was simple overheating. I re-pasted the CPU yesterday with some new paste. I noticed in Windows it was getting to 97C pretty easily. This laptop has always had issues with heat. I have to undervolt on Windows to get optimal thermal performance. Even with re-pastes, the laptop still gets pretty hot quickly on default settings. ThrottleStop on Windows eliminates these problems. Temps are currently OK in the OS itself (using Intel Power Gadget to monitor).

I am still getting a bunch of ACPI errors when it boots to the OS. I don't know if these are relevant at all or causing problems.

Another issue I am still getting is the screen takes a while to show an image when I get to the login screen. It'll stay on a black screen with no backlight for quite a bit (several minutes I'd say). It'll then show an image. I know it's on and at the login screen because I can hear sound when I press certain keys. I'll also be logged in if I type my password while the screen is still black.

I am tempted to give Big Sur another shot (I have another spare SATA drive to use for this). Maybe it'll go through now that I've made some more changes (USB mapping, CPU re-paste, SMBIOS change etc).

you can look into CPUFriend kexts to see if that helps the hardware issue you are having

 

[Ezenia]

I'll look into that.

Another thing I forgot about: the OS thinks I am on battery even when connected to charger. Battery percentage shows, but it does not update in real time. I did try adding SMCBatteryManager.kext and ECEnabler.kext. Those did not help. They helped me on my other laptop. I'm guessing this laptop needs something more.