Newbie Needs Help with Siera And Clover Bootloader

[cmw5216]

Hi Everyone ,

I'm new the world of Hackintosh as i've always owned mac's but due to cost restraints decided to go for a Hackintosh. I was lacking skills to built my own so ended up buying a complete build from eBay. Everything was working fine apart FaceTime and iMessage so this morning after watching a couple of videos I came across this step through guide on how to fix FaceTime on Siera. Here's the video so you can see which steps I followed. Basically I got the stage where I needed to reboot my PC and when I rebooted and clicked on mac os via clover boot loader, instead of the regular apple logo appearing i got a circle with a line through it. I know what this means but can't figure out where everything went wrong, but really need some help to sort it out.

Here's a list a the machine's specs as far as I know going by what was listed in the eBay description

PC: Dell Precision T1600
dual boot windows 10 professional & osx Sierra latest
Quad core xeon e3-1225 3.1GHZ shows as i7 on osx
12gb ddr3 ram fast ram
radeon hd5450 dual monitor
nvidia quadr 600 512mb Card

If anyone can advise what I need to do to rectify it I would really appreciate as at the moment I'm back to using my crappy 2010 mac mini until I can get my Hackintosh back up and running.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Hi there, Like you, I chose the hackintosh route for the same reasons.

The 'prohibited' or 'no-entry' sign usually means the drive selected in the Clover menu has for one reason or another become unbootable.

Did your Ebay seller give you anything to help restore your system in case of problems? I'm thinking you'll need to know what drivers/kexts they installed. If the drive is okay but the settings have become corrupt it might be the easiest option. If not, you will have to re-install macOS and the support files. Not as dire as it sounds. It should leave your programs and data intact.

First thing you could try is to boot your system using a UniBeast stick. If you need to build one you can make one using your Mac Mini. Just follow Step 2.

Start your PC and keep an eye on the initial screen. We are looking for a boot drive selection option. Could be a function key. If there isn't one you will need to get into the BIOS itself (F2 or Del key?) and search the menu for the option to select the boot drive.

Choose the UniBeast stick and reboot.

If Clover comes up okay select your Sierra main drive and see what happens. Then report back

 

[cmw5216]

Hi there,

Thank you so much for taking the time to help with this issue, as I still haven't heard back from the ebay seller I bought it from. I contacted him yesterday, but no reply. Unfortunately it didn't come with anyway to restore my system in case there was a problem. Luckily I didn't sell my Mac mini, which I planned to do, as now I can make a Unibeast bootable USB.

Another issue is because I didn't build it myself, how do know what drivers/kept files to install?

Wish me luck, I'll report back as soon as I can get it working.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Hi there,

Thank you so much for taking the time to help with this issue, as I still haven't heard back from the ebay seller I bought it from. I contacted him yesterday, but no reply. Unfortunately it didn't come with anyway to restore my system in case there was a problem. Luckily I didn't sell my Mac mini, which I planned to do, as now I can make a Unibeast bootable USB.

Another issue is because I didn't build it myself, how do know what drivers/kept files to install?

Wish me luck, I'll report back as soon as I can get it working.

Most settings will be in a folder called EFI which is on a hidden drive partition itself called EFI. There will be "kexts" or drivers in a couple of other places too, depending on the hardware in your PC.

If you can create a UniBeast stick with your Mac Mini, assuming no help from your seller, first step will be to see if your Hackintosh will boot from it. Then we can dig a bit more

 

[cmw5216]

Hi,

It took a while because my wife kept disturbing me. Anyway I followed your instructions and so far was able to boot from the USB. After holding down F12 the same screen as as shown in the image below came up.

First I chose the last option on the right which seemed to do an install. After that finished it reverted back to the menu screen. I then renoved the USB,and rebooted, clicked on the Mac icon in clover bootloader and low behold that 'no entry, sign appeared.

As that didn't work I then tried the last but one icons on the right, 'boot from OSX Siera', which booted fine and I was able to view my desktop. Because I thought the problem must be down to the startup disc I went into preference and change the startup disc to my internal drive, and then rebooted. That didn't work, so now I have no idea what to try next.

It's all one big learning curve!

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Okay, well at least you are moving forward!

So in your final paragraph you say you successfully booted to the desktop? If that's the case the Clover drive icon you chose is your boot drive and it seems to be working.

Will it only do this with the UniBeast USB in place?

(When you went into System Preferences and Start-up Disk you should have chosen the Sierra macOS, 10.12.5 option as this has nothing to do with Clover as such).

 

[cmw5216]

Yes, it only works with unibeast plugged in.

I've been wracking by brain trying to figure out a solution for this. If it's nothing to do with the startup disc, what else could be causing the problem.

 

[cmw5216]

That's exactly what I chose. Mac OS Siera 10.25 as the other option was windows 10.

I tried contacting the eBay seller one last time, and still haven't heard back. Funny that he replied within minutes when I was going to buy the aching and ask him a couple of questions I was unsure about. Typical really as the whole reason I didn't build one myself was because I didn't feel comfortable doing do.

At least by the end of this exercise I'll now more than I did before, which isn't a bad thing.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

That's exactly what I chose. Mac OS Siera 10.25 as the other option was windows 10.

I tried contacting the eBay seller one last time, and still haven't heard back. Funny that he replied within minutes when I was going to buy the aching and ask him a couple of questions I was unsure about. Typical really as the whole reason I didn't build one myself was because I didn't feel comfortable doing do.

At least by the end of this exercise I'll now more than I did before, which isn't a bad thing.

Indeed, that's a big part of the Hackintosh thing - learning!

Okay, if you can boot to the main system using UniBeast as your start-up disk then the system as a whole sounds as if it's still there, complete. It's just the part that does the booting that's been corrupted.

Since we don't know much about how this machine was originally built we can move forward but we need to see what's there first. Run a couple of checks.

First up run Disk Utility again and on the left panel check for the main boot drive, with the correct size, that is probably labelled "Sierra". Look on its main panel, bottom-left where it says "Device:" Note that code - disk0s2 or similar.

From this site download the utility called EFI Mounter v3. Run it and when it offers two choices select the one you made a note of above (the other choice will actually be the UniBeast USB stick we don't want to touch).

An EFI drive icon should appear on your desktop. Right-click on it and choose "Get Info". The Format: should show as MS-DOS(32).

If all ok, double-click the drive icon to bring up Finder. There should be a folder called EFI on it. Open that to see a tree of folders: APPLE, BOOT & CLOVER plus a Clover_Install_Log.txt. Open CLOVER and you get a whole lot more folders but also a file called "config.plist".

If the format is correct and all those folders and files are present and correct, things are looking good. We will just need to check what's gone wrong...

 

[cmw5216]

I'll go through and your instructions and get straight back to as soon as I'm done.