OS 11.4 Help

[manolo2001]

After having heaps of trouble with 11.3 on updates, and having solved most of them, I decided to update to 11.4 to find that my hackintosh crashed once more.

As of yesterday I had to reinstall using 11.2.3 decided to use OC 0.7.0. That install works really well and is very stable.

Nevertheless I have a test drive on which I have OS 11.4 with OC 0.7.0 that I managed to work through to install, and went through all the setup process but now when I boot and reach the login screen it crashes.

If I login I get the beachball and it crashed and if I just let it sit for a few seconds without logging in it crashes.

Basically it reboots.

I have tried basically all the fixes I have found on the internet, but it will simply not go beyond the login screen without rebooting.

i am attaching my efi folder.

The setup is as follows:

Supermicro X10SAE motherboard
Xeon E3-1246 V3 CPU
AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100 GPU
32Gb Ram

I have a Lynx Aes16 card that works fine as well, and a PCIe Bluetooth WIFI card that is fully compatible also.

Any help is very welcome, as I think that if i can't get 11.4 running, I will probably not be able to eventually upgrade to OS 12.

Thanks

Manolo

 

[manolo2001]

Hate bumping my own post, but considering no replies yet, I decided I'd just post something on my progress.

I have kept trying to fix this, what I did notice, and changed, is that I had not created my own SSDT files, I had been using the generic prebuilt files that are found in dortania. I have now created and loaded new SSDT-PLUG and EC files, and the system seems more stable. It has not crashed in the last 24 hours even though I have been really pushing it. I will now try using those SSDT files with OS 11.4 test drive and see if it finally lets me log in.

Will post any further news.

Manolo

 

[etorix]

While making your SSDTs, have you noticed anything special in the DSDT?

You still have the XhciPortLimit quirk. The next step should be a USB map and remove the quirk.

 

[manolo2001]

I noticed nothing, I don't know much about hackinstoshing, so don't think I would notice anything special.

I have mapped my USBs and changed the setting in the XchiPortLimit Quirk. USBs are working fine.

I have managed to get 11.4 running on my computer using the test drive and the EFI folder from my 11.2.3 install, OC 0.7.0, but with the new SSDTs, it boots fine but pretty much anything I do now gets a beachball for 10-15 seconds which is annoying to say the least.

What could be the cause of this ?

 

[manolo2001]

I have news, while on 11.2.3 I was still getting freeze-ups, less often but still annoyingly often, in particular when pushing the machine hard. The machine was much more stable, but with heavy use it would still freeze.

I generally run python processes in the background while doing other things, lately I have been running HandBrake while running Python simultaneously, and it all takes a toll, leading to freezing more often than not.

I decided to go through pretty much all of the Dortania guide looking for fixes, and found the following page:

OpenCore and macOS 11: Big Sur | OpenCore Install Guide

On this page I found this bit of info:

• Certain SATA controllers dropped
  • For some reason, Apple removed the AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI class from AppleAHCIPort.kext. Due to the outright removal of the class, trying to spoof to another ID (generally done by SATA-unsupported.kext) can fail for many and create instability for others.
  • A partial fix is to inject Catalina's version with any conflicting symbols being patched. You can find a sample kext here: Catalina's patched AppleAHCIPort.kext(opens new window)
  • We recommend setting the MinKernel value to 20.0.0 for the kext CtlnaAHCIPort.kext to avoid any potential conflicts. This way, it will work in both Catalina and Big Sur so you can remove SATA-unsupported if you want.

I was not using sataunsupported, as I had no idea I needed it, nor had I reasoned out that I could need it.

But looking back, considering all the problems I have had on the Supermicro X10SAE, running a Xeon, coupled with the drive problems I have had starting with Big Sur, eventually I realized that I could be having sata support issues.

I decided to implement the kext and change the MinKernel value, and so far no crashes, drives are behaving, and as of today I have gone through three days of very heavy use, with no freeze-ups, so far.

I think anyone having freezing problems should have a good look at their SATA support, as so far this has worked really well for me.

As a summary, these are the changes to a vanilla install I have made:

1.- I had to remap USBs, generate a kext and change the portlimit quirk (did this on Windows)
2.- I also generated my own SDDTs (on Windows as well)
3.- I added a kext for sata support, per the above.
4.- I added the intelmausi kext, as I have two different ethernet controllers and one is not supported, based on the Dortania guide.
5.- Changed an RX560 GPU for a Radeon Pro WX 4100, for some reason my two monitor setup was not working well as the second monitor had really coarse resolution, this change fixed it and all is now working really well.
6.- I changed my SMBIOS from iMac15,1 to iMacPro1,1 (based on the fact that I have a Xeon running and thought this would be closer to my setup. It seems to work well so far). Not sure if this has had any impact, to be honest, but it works well, and seemed like a reasonable change to make at the time.

All of these changes have definitely made my hackintosh much more stable and usable.

I will post any new problems or issues should they arise, as well as any fixes I find.

So far so good, will test everything in my 11.4 install test drive, if it boots and runs well I will go ahead with the update, as for everyday use I am on 11.2.3, with all these changes implemented hopefully all should be OK for Monterrey.

This has been a very steep learning curve, but you do learn, a lot, plus its always a challenge to figure out what the problem is in order to find the correct solution.

Thanks to all making hackintoshes work !!!!!

Manolo

 

[manolo2001]

Bumping the thread once again ...

It has been another two days without crashes, so I am now installing 11.4 on the test drive.

I ran:

Handbrake
Python
Plex Server
VLC

All simultaneously for pretty much half a day and no crashes, so I would tend to think all is OK now.