[Solved] El Capitan Boot Loop after Migration Assistant

[clabella608]

Installed El Capitan and it was working fine, then I used migration assistant to import all the data from my old boot drive.

It must have brought a bunch of unnecessary Kexts with it, because after restart it was stuck in a boot loop.

Tried running the boot arg cpus=1 and it still was in a reboot loop but then eventually broke out of it and started up OSX.

Was a fool and restarted before properly clearing out all the old Kexts and now I'm in a reboot loop again.


I've tried deleting EvOreboot.kext, but I can't seem to mount the disk as writable. This is the result I get from running mount -uw

mount -uw
root_device on / (hfs, local, read-only, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)


How can I force the disk into a writable mode so I can delete the unnecessary kexts?

 

[clabella608]

Update: I put my new boot drive back into my old build and booted from my old drive.

Deleted FakeSMC.kext from my new bot drive and replaced with the most current version via terminal.

Still getting the restart loop, but now instead of the progress bar filling half way, it restarts almost instantly.


In verbose mode it gets to "pci (build 18.43.02 June 23 2016) before restarting

 

[clabella608]

I just can't win... I must have fudged something up when deleting and replacing FakeSMC from the New boot drive because now my old boot drive in my old build is having the same boot loop problem

Somebody, anybody, PLEASE help before I end up messing things up worse


Edit** got my old build back up and running somehow. Booted in verbose mode (maybe I accidentally chose safe mode?) and it booted right up. Turned out I deleted the FakeSMC.kext from both drives by acccidnet so I replaced it and now the system is booting normally again. Sadly still not the case for my new build

 

[clabella608]

Tried booting from USB and this is as far as it gets

-also I can no longer boot into single user mode

 

[clabella608]

I got into single user mode via the Recovery partition.

I type in the "fsck -fy" command and this screen shot is what I get.

I read somewhere on here that the "missing Bluetooth controller transport" has something to do with the graphics card, so I removed that and used the internal graphics. Re-ran single user mode Via recovery and got the same result.

Still can't seem to mount the root device as a writable directory though

 

[clabella608]

!!!!!!

Left the computer to keep running its reboot loop and low and behold it randomly started up again!!

No idea how/why it happened

No idea how to fix it Now.


Please please please somebody respond to this post

 

[clabella608]

Tried removing the GPU (GTX 1050) and booted from the install USB.... it worked!

So it sounds like it's a problem with the GPU compatibility. The big list of solutions says to install from USB then install web drivers, then putting the GPU back in... I'm hesitant to do this though now that I at least have access to terminal.


Do I have to refptat drive and install El Capitan again from scratch?

I took screen shots of all the loaded kexts, any i should remove?

 

[BreBo]

So it sounds like it's a problem with the GPU compatibility. The big list of solutions says to install from USB then install web drivers, then putting the GPU back in.

There are no Pascal drivers for El Capitan, support starts with Sierra.

 

[clabella608]

There are no Pascal drivers for El Capitan, support starts with Sierra.

I wiped the drive and did a fresh install of El Capitan following these instructions to a T

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/el-capitan-on-ga-z170x-ud5-success.193293/

When I put the GPU back in everything was working fine. Restarted it 3 times in a row just to be sure, and everything booted up super fast....

...then I tried migration assistant again. Read somewhere that unchecking "other files and folders" would Keep unnecessary kexts from being transferred, so I unchecked that align with anything else that wasn't completely necessary.

Now I restarted again and instead of a boot loop it freezes on this in verbose mode.

Just to cover my bases I removed the GPU again and tried booting from the internal graphics. -it still freezes at the same spot.

Considering that and seeing as how the GPU was working fine before the migration, it doesn't seem like that's the root of the problem.

Any other suggestions besides doing another complete wipe and installing sierra instead? I would be fine with not migrating EVERYTHING, from my old build, but I produce music and at the very least need Maschine, Pro Tools, the project files and all my plug ins to be able to work properly and run like they did on my old build (file structure wise - obviously the old build was getting slow and unreliable, hence a new build)

If there's a way I can manually transfer ONLY the programs and files that I need instead of the whole 50gb Library folder from my old build that would be ideal.

 

[clabella608]

Just tried booting from the USB and it worked.

I'm going to try copying the EFI folder from the USB to the Boot Drive. Wish me luck