OpenCore corrupting BIOS?

[Robbish]

Hi @pgh550 you still have Bootstrap in your EFI. Bootstrap was deprecated several OC version releases ago so is not included in present releases because it is no longer the way OpenCore handles that function so you should remove it.

I also spotted two missing keys in your config.plist ;

NVRAM > Add > 4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102 > rtc-blacklist

NVRAM > Add > Delete > 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14 > 1 > DefaultBackgroundColor

if you load up Simple.plist from the latest OpenCore release (it's found in the Documents folder) and your config.plist side by side then you should copy and paste those missing key lines back into your config.plist

ocvalidate validate has spit out a conflict and returns 2 errors!;

OpenUsbKbDxe.efi at UEFI->Drivers[9] should NEVER be used together with UEFI->Input->KeySupport!
OpenUsbKbDxe.efi at UEFI->Drivers[9], and Ps2KeyboardDxe.efi at UEFI->Drivers[10], should NEVER co-exist!

As I have never Hackintoshed a laptop before, I'll leave that for you to fix.
P.S. I don't think that your supposed to have the OpenUsbKbDxe.efi driver enabled at the same time that you have the PS2KeyboardDxe enabled as this is likely the source of confusion for OpenCore which most likely wants you to clarify which driver is supporting your keyboard.

Also, I noticed that you have a TON of Kexts! Are you sure that you need them all? Are they legacy kexts from when you used to boot with Clover? For example, AppleALC with Lilu takes care of all your Audio patching however you have Codec Commander in there. Is that really needed?

Also in your Tools folder, you have all the Tools. If you don't ever use any of them then you can remove the tools you never use.

 

[Feartech]

Hi @pgh550 you still have Bootstrap in your EFI. Bootstrap was deprecated several OC version releases ago so is not included in present releases because it is no longer they way OpenCore handles that function so you should remove it.

I also spotted two missing keys in your config.plist ;

NVRAM > Add > 4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102 > rtc-blacklist

NVRAM > Add > Delete > 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14 > 1 > DefaultBackgroundColor

if you load up Simple.plist from the latest OpenCore release (it's found in the Documents folder) and your config.plist side by side then you should copy and paste those missing key lines back into your config.plist

ocvalidate validate has spit out a conflict and returns 2 errors!;

OpenUsbKbDxe.efi at UEFI->Drivers[9] should NEVER be used together with UEFI->Input->KeySupport!
OpenUsbKbDxe.efi at UEFI->Drivers[9], and Ps2KeyboardDxe.efi at UEFI->Drivers[10], should NEVER co-exist!

As I have never Hackintoshed a laptop before, I'll leave that for you to fix.

Also, I noticed that you have a TON of Kexts! Are you sure that you need them all? Are they legacy kexts from when you used to boot with Clover? For example, AppleALC with Lilu takes care of all your Audio patching however you have Codec Commander in there. Is that really needed?

Also in your Tools folder, you have all the Tools. If you don't ever use any of them then you can remove the tools you never use.

sometimes codec commander helps with headphone jack distorted noise issues

but newer apps can take care of that better

 

[pgh550]

Hi @pgh550 you still have Bootstrap in your EFI. Bootstrap was deprecated several OC version releases ago so is not included in present releases because it is no longer the way OpenCore handles that function so you should remove it.

I also spotted two missing keys in your config.plist ;

NVRAM > Add > 4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102 > rtc-blacklist

NVRAM > Add > Delete > 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14 > 1 > DefaultBackgroundColor

......

Hi Robbish, thanks again for the reply.

I ran ocvalidate again and still no complains. I looked at the Sample.plist. rtc-blacklist is empty, and DefaultBackgroundColor is the default black color so I did not add these two keys.

Also my UEFI->Drivers has only two entries and it does have entries for Ps2KeyboardDxe.efi. Probably you have run ocvalidate with a different plist file.

I got my EFI from a repo on github and did not remove unused kexts and drivers. Codec Commander.kext was not enabled.

I removed the Bootstrap folder and will use DEBUG OC build to see what happens when the machine just boots itself into a black screen

 

[pgh550]

I enabled OpenCore debug and captured several log files (see attached). The ones dated 12-07 have 3 failed effort before a successful one leading to OC picker. The ones on 12-10 all failed to boot into OC picker, which ended up having to use USB installer to boot the machine.

It seemly confirms my suspicion that OC does not have clean and repeatable booting behavior, alternating some persistent BIOS states (through NVRAM maybe?)

After boot into Monterey, I switched back to RELEASE version and the machine can boot into OC picker MOST of the time, still may fail once or twice before a successful one.