[Solved] Help with update from El capitan to Mojave

[jvikjord]

Dear peeps,
I need some help. I have not had the time to keep everything up to speed lately, and my machine is now still running El Capitan, see screenshot. The machine specs are in my profile.
Is there anyone who could tell me if I can upgrade directly to Mojave, or do I need to start all over again? All help would be much appreciated

 

[Nyctalopia]

As far as I know, newer Maxwell and Pascal graphics cards like yours will suffer from significant lag issues on Mojave without nVidia's web drivers. It's best to hold on until nVidia release the web drivers.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Dear peeps,
I need some help. I have not had the time to keep everything up to speed lately, and my machine is now still running El Capitan, see screenshot. The machine specs are in my profile.
Is there anyone who could tell me if I can upgrade directly to Mojave, or do I need to start all over again? All help would be much appreciated

View attachment 359210

Your GTX 960 has no support in Mojave due to lack of Nvidia web drivers. Avoid Mojave for the time being.

If you really need to run Mojave, either get a supported graphics card (such as a RX 560) or try to use the CPU integrated graphics.

 

[jvikjord]

As far as I know, newer Maxwell and Pascal graphics cards like yours will suffer from significant lag issues on Mojave without nVidia's web drivers. It's best to hold on until nVidia release the web drivers.

Thx for your reply. I am aware of the issues with the nVidia drivers, but do you think I could upgrade directly from appstore?

 

[jvikjord]

Your GTX 960 has no support in Mojave due to lack of Nvidia web drivers. Avoid Mojave for the time being.

If you really need to run Mojave, either get a supported graphics card (such as a RX 560) or try to use the CPU integrated graphics.

Thx for your reply. I am aware of the issues with the nVidia drivers, but do you think I could upgrade directly from appstore?

I don't need to run Mojave, but I experience that some of my apps can't be upgraded unless I upgrade my OSX. The thing I am most uneasy about, is if my hackintosh will crash if I try to upgrade directly. This is why I skipped the upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra and High Sierra. The process of starting all over is not one I am very keen on doing more than I have to.
What if I ask: Do you think I could upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra/High Sierra directly, without risk? I guess nVidia has drivers for Sierra?

 

[Nyctalopia]

I don't need to run Mojave, but I experience that some of my apps can't be upgraded unless I upgrade my OSX. The thing I am most uneasy about, is if my hackintosh will crash if I try to upgrade directly. This is why I skipped the upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra and High Sierra. The process of starting all over is not one I am very keen on doing more than I have to.
What if I ask: Do you think I could upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra/High Sierra directly, without risk? I guess nVidia has drivers for Sierra?

I was in the same position as you when I made the leap from El Capitan to Mojave, I did it to keep using some apps which discontinued El Capitan support. I think the best and most clean way to do this efficiently is to download the OS and then create a USB installer but first make sure you create a Carbon Copy Cloner copy of your current setup and put it on a separate drive or external hard drive since a lot could go wrong especially with Mojave giving people all kinds of trouble.

Sierra and High Sierra have web drivers but if you wait a little longer you can skip both and make it to Mojave and take advantage of cool things like global dark mode.

 

[jvikjord]

I was in the same position as you when I made the leap from El Capitan to Mojave, I did it to keep using some apps which discontinued El Capitan support. I think the best and most clean way to do this efficiently is to download the OS and then create a USB installer but first make sure you create a Carbon Copy Cloner copy of your current setup and put it on a separate drive or external hard drive since a lot could go wrong especially with Mojave giving people all kinds of trouble.

Sierra and High Sierra have web drivers but if you wait a little longer you can skip both and make it to Mojave and take advantage of cool things like global dark mode.

That sounds like a nice plan, but if you forgive my ignorance: I have Carbon copy and it makes a copy to a separate SSD-disk. But I thought this was a complete clone of my current disk, including OSX and everything? How do I make a copy of my current "setup", and does that mean that I can install Mojave and then get all apps and settings back like I have them now?
Can I just use migration assistant after installing Mojave and choose the clone as source?

 

[Mr-E4GLE]

I can't tell you if you can upgrade directly from App Store but you can try, you need to fully back up your current system to avoid risking losing anything

 

[Nyctalopia]

That sounds like a nice plan, but if you forgive my ignorance: I have Carbon copy and it makes a copy to a separate SSD-disk. But I thought this was a complete clone of my current disk, including OSX and everything? How do I make a copy of my current "setup", and does that mean that I can install Mojave and then get all apps and settings back like I have them now?
Can I just use migration assistant after installing Mojave and choose the clone as source?

CCC will create an exact copy of your current installation, data and all. Make sure the partition you're cloning has a bootable EFI folder by installing clover and then copy the EFI folder of your current working setup to the CCC backup created partition so if Mojave fails to install after you format the drive you can boot to your CCC backup and restore it to your partition which you failed to install Mojave on.

And yes CCC can restore all your files, you can do a selective backup/restore and leave out files and folders you don't want to clog your main partition with and they'll always be accessible just like any partition files. From my experience CCC is as reliable as it gets, i never bothered with any other backup method since it never failed me.

 

[jvikjord]

Ok, this has happened:

I wanted to be prepared for the big update from Sierra to Mojave, and went thru the checklist of what to update, and so on. I updated Clover from running version 4035 to 4741 and rebooted the machine.

The Clover menu was different (red /white theme instead of grey/green) and I proceeded to boot from standard disk. Then I got a black screen...nothing else. I tried rebooting a few times, but no joy. Still just a black screen. Since I no longer have the time to use all my spare time on fixing stuff on my computer, I just turned the machine off and thought that I most likely had to start all over again. This is an operation I am not afraid of, but I don't have the time now. I need the machine to work!

After a few days, I found an old USB stick with OSX on it. I tried to boot from the USB, but nothing. Then I just started trying the different boot-options in BIOS and suddenly i was back at the old clover menu. The machine started up again, and I could log into my user. -Wow, was I happy
The sad part is that the sound is gone. I can not use Multibeast to install sound, as I get an error message every time. Video playback is also somewhat corrupted, meaning it plays a few secs, then halts, then suddenly comes back after a while, and so on.

I actually don't even know if the machine now has booted from the USB or not, but I am worried that trying ANYTHING right now, will render my machine useless again.

If there is anyone out there who could give me some good advice right now, I would much appreciate it. Why did an updated Clover cause a black screen? How did the old Clover menu suddenly appear again? Why do I have no sound and corrupted video now? Most importantly: What can I do to fix this?

I use my computer mainly for photo editing. I have Lightroom and Photoshop installed, together with loads of tweaks and updates for this and that. Starting from scratch again is something I really dread, but that could be due to the fact that I don not know any other way of doing this than installing everything over again. If there is another way, like what I think is described earlier in this post, it probably could be done much easier, but I would need a step by step guide. -Anyone?