[SOLVED] Infinite spinning beach ball on gray screen

[snottywong]

Here's what I've done so far:

- Created bootable USB drive with Unibeast and macOS 10.12.4
- Installed latest version of Clover on it (version 2.4k rev 4035)
- Booted from USB drive
- Completely erased SSD and did a clean install of 10.12.4 on it
- Rebooted after successful installation, tried to boot the new OS installation using Clover

This is where I'm getting stuck. When the new OS tries to boot, it gets to a gray screen with a spinning beach ball icon for the mouse cursor, and it never gets past that screen. (Interestingly enough, the trying to boot the recovery partition on the USB drive does the same thing. But the OS installation partition on the USB drive boots fine.)

If I boot it in verbose mode (with boot args dart=0 kext-dev-mode=1 -v), the last 2 lines of text before it goes to the gray screen with the spinning beach ball are:

busy timeout[0], (240s), kextd wait(0): 'AppleACPICPU'
considerRebuildOfPrelinkedKernel prebuild rebuild has expired

If I try to boot into -x safe mode, it quickly fails with the following error:

OsxAptioFix2Drv: Starting overrides for \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
Using reloc block: no, hibernate wake: no
Using Safe Mode
Error allocating 0x16aa pages at 0x0000000000c7b000 alloc type 2
Error loading kernel cache (0xe)
Boot failed, sleeping for 10 seconds before exiting...

I've searched and searched, but can't find a solution to this. I just need to get booted up once so I can run Multibeast. Any ideas?

 

[P1LGRIM]

Any ideas?

Try with UniBeast 7.1.1

 

[snottywong]

Try with UniBeast 7.1.1

I thought about trying that when I saw the update come out. However, the only other Mac I have is an old Macbook Pro (early 2008). When I try to download the Sierra installer from the App Store, it won't let me because the computer is too old and not compatible with Sierra.

Is there any harm in changing the system definition of my Macbook Pro? If so, what would be the safest thing to change it to? I just don't want to end up with two bricked computers, because then I don't have any other options left.

Or do I need to re-download the installer at all? Is there a way to re-use what's already on the USB stick and somehow install UniBeast 7.1.1 "on top of" what's already there?

 

[P1LGRIM]

I thought about trying that when I saw the update come out. However, the only other Mac I have is an old Macbook Pro (early 2008). When I try to download the Sierra installer from the App Store, it won't let me because the computer is too old and not compatible with Sierra.

Is there any harm in changing the system definition of my Macbook Pro? If so, what would be the safest thing to change it to? I just don't want to end up with two bricked computers, because then I don't have any other options left.

Or do I need to re-download the installer at all? Is there a way to re-use what's already on the USB stick and somehow install UniBeast 7.1.1 "on top of" what's already there?

If you can boot ok from the USB then do that and when you reach the Desktop delete the /EFI folder and contents on the EFI partition of your hard drive and replace it with the /EFI folder and contents from the EFI partition on your USB flash drive.

Usually the gray screen with a spinning beach ball is a symptom of a missing FakeSMC.kext so don't forget to install it.

 

[snottywong]

Try with UniBeast 7.1.1

Ok, I borrowed a friend's newer Macbook Pro, re-downloaded Sierra, used UniBeast 7.1.1 to create a new USB drive, and did another clean install of Sierra on my SSD. I got much further along in the process now. I was able to boot the SSD using Clover on the USB, get through the OS X setup stuff, and run Multibeast.

However, now when I try to boot the SSD on its own, I get the following error immediately after trying to boot in verbose mode:

OsxAptioFix2Drv: Starting overrides for System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
Using reloc block: no, hibernate wake: no
Error loading kernel cache (0xe)
Boot failed, sleeping for 10 seconds before exiting...

I tried a couple different boot flags, like -f, -x, UseKernelCache=No, kext-dev-mode=1, but nothing seems to get past this error message. I've read that using OsxAptioFixDrv instead of OsxAptioFix2Drv may not be a good idea on Sierra. I'm really not sure what the difference is between them, or what either of them do at all, for that matter. Any ideas on where to proceed from here?

 

[P1LGRIM]

I tried a couple different boot flags, like -f, -x, UseKernelCache=No, kext-dev-mode=1, but nothing seems to get past this error message. I've read that using OsxAptioFixDrv instead of OsxAptioFix2Drv may not be a good idea on Sierra. I'm really not sure what the difference is between them, or what either of them do at all, for that matter. Any ideas on where to proceed from here?

By all means try using OsxAptioFixDrv instead of OsxAptioFix2Drv.
You could also try booting from the UniBeast flash drive and then select your hard drive.
You could try safe mode.
It may be that the MultiBeast that you used does not have the latest Clover in which case you could reinstall everything and then install Clover from Sourceforge.

 

[snottywong]

Thanks again for continuing to help.

Safe mode definitely doesn't work, I get the same OsxAptioFix2Drv/kernel cache error. I can try to use OsxAptioFixDrv instead later tonight.

When you say that MultiBeast may not have the latest Clover, do you mean I need to download the latest Clover from Sourceforge and install it directly to my hard drive? Or do I need to need to install the latest Clover on the USB stick, and then do a fresh install of Sierra on the hard drive?

 

[P1LGRIM]

When you say that MultiBeast may not have the latest Clover, do you mean I need to download the latest Clover from Sourceforge and install it directly to my hard drive? Or do I need to need to install the latest Clover on the USB stick, and then do a fresh install of Sierra on the hard drive?

UniBeast 7.1.1 is all that you need to install the Operating System.
When the installation is complete you should install everything that you require from MultiBeast and then install Clover to your hard drive with the package from SourceForge (currently r4049).

Alternatively if you are currently able to access your hard drive you could just install Clover to it with the package from SourceForge.

 

[snottywong]

UniBeast 7.1.1 is all that you need to install the Operating System.
When the installation is complete you should install everything that you require from MultiBeast and then install Clover to your hard drive with the package from SourceForge (currently r4049).

Alternatively if you are currently able to access your hard drive you could just install Clover to it with the package from SourceForge.

Crap. All of a sudden, my USB drive no longer showed up as an option to boot from in BIOS. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get it back. When I changed ports around (swapped the USB port that my keyboard was using with the USB drive) then my USB keyboard stopped working. This is all in the BIOS, well before anything is attempted to be booted.

Anyway, I finally screwed around enough and found a combination where my keyboard is recognized and the USB stick is recognized as a boot option. However, now when I try to boot the SSD using Clover on the USB stick, I'm getting the same OsxAptioFix2Drv/kernel cache error that I get when I try to boot the SSD directly. I was definitely able to boot it successfully once from the USB (when I ran Multibeast), and I haven't changed anything on the USB stick. What could have changed?

Now that I can't boot at all, I can't install the latest build of Clover....... man, it's just one problem after the next!

 

[snottywong]

I can only boot into the OS X installation partition. Is there a way to download and install Clover on the SSD via Terminal or something?