[solved] Intermittent HD4000 screen issues.. flickering, QE/CI not loading, when it feels like it

[burnindaylight]

OK here's the deal and I'm stumped (for now..). I'm posting it here because I would like to get High Sierra working on it but Sierra or El Cap would be acceptable too (I've tried em both.) Hopefully I've picked the right forum this time, sorry mods if I didn't, but this seems most appropriate

I've got a HP 4730. I did some rigging and it's now a HP 4540 motherboard in a 4730 case because I liked the big screen and 1600x900 native resolution. Oh yeah, a the big battery that lasts like 10 hours with the lower power motherboard is nice too. The only electrical work needed was a dual-link video cable and a custom wired 4-pin to 6 pin cable to go between the trackpad and the audio/sd card board out of the 4540. Other than that it was all fabbing a few custom mounts and a little dremel tool work for the mounts that hit the 4540 motherboard, the boards were close enough. Oh yeah, and a keyboard extender cable/adapter + DVD-ROM extender cable I'm still waiting for (shipped from China, hopefully I'll see it by Christmas.)

Here's my problem.. the thing works great - most of the time.

Sometimes however it will boot and as soon as the graphics switch on (the real drivers loading, the last switch before the login screen) it will just go nuts - a completely white screen and flashing lines, and no text. Other times it loads fine and works great except for no QE/CI even though kextstat shows all appropriate drivers loaded & running.

Now here's the nuts part I noticed the other night: if I let the display go to sleep and wake it up the damn thing works fine afterwards!!

I'm positive this is some kinda software issue, I've tried running it opened up spread out on the desk, fiddling with connectors, etc.. It happens the same and with the same frequency whether I'm booting an installed HD, a re-installed HD from scratch, the USB installer, etc. It also persists through El Capitan, Sierra, and High Sierra.

I've checked all the obvious - something shorted out, overheating from something getting blocked, etc.. I've tried different ig-platform-id's (0x01660004,0008,0009) I could find. I've tried injecting/not injecting Intel graphics, I've tried various fixes in Clover. Safe mode does crap, not injecting kexts doesn't do anything, re-building caches, repairing permissions, etc.. It's running as a MBP 9,2 SMBIOS. I'm going to try a few others but got too tired last night to screw around with it any further. I'm also going to try down-grading Clover and see if that helps but I like the 4297 I'm running (other than the holiday themes I'll 86 when I get it working..)

Now not this thing was working fine with the 4540 single-like display and installed with PBI installer/El Capitan. NO problems whatsoever. I think I'm gonna need to start from scratch with a vanilla install again and do-up my own DSDT/SSDT but I'm hoping someone has seen this before and can tell me to change/install/delete this and good-to-go.

TIA if anyone has had this problem and solved it. Let me know if you've had this problem and didn't get a solution and what you tried that didn't work. When I get it working I'll post what did the trick!

 

[RehabMan]

OK here's the deal and I'm stumped (for now..). I'm posting it here because I would like to get High Sierra working on it but Sierra or El Cap would be acceptable too (I've tried em both.) Hopefully I've picked the right forum this time, sorry mods if I didn't, but this seems most appropriate

I've got a HP 4730. I did some rigging and it's now a HP 4540 motherboard in a 4730 case because I liked the big screen and 1600x900 native resolution. Oh yeah, a the big battery that lasts like 10 hours with the lower power motherboard is nice too. The only electrical work needed was a dual-link video cable and a custom wired 4-pin to 6 pin cable to go between the trackpad and the audio/sd card board out of the 4540. Other than that it was all fabbing a few custom mounts and a little dremel tool work for the mounts that hit the 4540 motherboard, the boards were close enough. Oh yeah, and a keyboard extender cable/adapter + DVD-ROM extender cable I'm still waiting for (shipped from China, hopefully I'll see it by Christmas.)

Here's my problem.. the thing works great - most of the time.

Sometimes however it will boot and as soon as the graphics switch on (the real drivers loading, the last switch before the login screen) it will just go nuts - a completely white screen and flashing lines, and no text. Other times it loads fine and works great except for no QE/CI even though kextstat shows all appropriate drivers loaded & running.

Now here's the nuts part I noticed the other night: if I let the display go to sleep and wake it up the damn thing works fine afterwards!!

I'm positive this is some kinda software issue, I've tried running it opened up spread out on the desk, fiddling with connectors, etc.. It happens the same and with the same frequency whether I'm booting an installed HD, a re-installed HD from scratch, the USB installer, etc. It also persists through El Capitan, Sierra, and High Sierra.

I've checked all the obvious - something shorted out, overheating from something getting blocked, etc.. I've tried different ig-platform-id's (0x01660004,0008,0009) I could find. I've tried injecting/not injecting Intel graphics, I've tried various fixes in Clover. Safe mode does crap, not injecting kexts doesn't do anything, re-building caches, repairing permissions, etc.. It's running as a MBP 9,2 SMBIOS. I'm going to try a few others but got too tired last night to screw around with it any further. I'm also going to try down-grading Clover and see if that helps but I like the 4297 I'm running (other than the holiday themes I'll 86 when I get it working..)

Now not this thing was working fine with the 4540 single-like display and installed with PBI installer/El Capitan. NO problems whatsoever. I think I'm gonna need to start from scratch with a vanilla install again and do-up my own DSDT/SSDT but I'm hoping someone has seen this before and can tell me to change/install/delete this and good-to-go.

TIA if anyone has had this problem and solved it. Let me know if you've had this problem and didn't get a solution and what you tried that didn't work. When I get it working I'll post what did the trick!

No "Problem Reporting" files attached.
Read FAQ, "Problem Reporting" again. Carefully. Attach all requested files/output.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.164990/

 

[burnindaylight]

No "Problem Reporting" files attached.
Read FAQ, "Problem Reporting" again. Carefully. Attach all requested files/output.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.164990/

OK Sorry.. will attach a little later, I'm on my way out for a bit and I screwed with it enough last night that I'll want to do a fresh install and post the configs from that. (As you can tell from all of 10 posts I'm kinda new to posting here although I've been hackintoshing for 10 years or so and using real macs prior to that.. usually something like this I end up figuring out on my own and helping other people with but this one has be totally stumped.. intermittent problems suck!! I like this laptop enough I'll patch the drivers in machine code with hexedit if I have to to get it to work

 

[RehabMan]

OK Sorry.. will attach a little later, I'm on my way out for a bit and I screwed with it enough last night that I'll want to do a fresh install and post the configs from that. (As you can tell from all of 10 posts I'm kinda new to posting here although I've been hackintoshing for 10 years or so and using real macs prior to that.. usually something like this I end up figuring out on my own and helping other people with but this one has be totally stumped.. intermittent problems suck!! I like this laptop enough I'll patch the drivers in machine code with hexedit if I have to to get it to work

My guess: Your Intel MEI is broken.

 

[burnindaylight]

My guess: Your Intel MEI is broken.

I think you're on the right track for sure.. it gets even weirder.. I can boot it up with no problem except the laptop display is all garbled. Connecting via VNC from my desktop and everything will display perfectly. I set a hot corner to sleep the display, move the trackpad there and sleep, move it somewhere else and it's fine. (doesn't work until I login in though and that's not acceptable ong-term anyway!) It's something with the video driver not setting up the monitor right on boot I think.. weird. Anyway I'm attaching the files, I hope I did it right - first time for everything and I tried to follow your instructions to a T.

Any help help you can provide (or even a suggestion as to where to start hacking is greatly appreciated!!

BTW I know there is a lot of other crap (audio, battery, etc) I don't have working yet but I want the video reliable before I even bother setting that stuff up - it's pretty useless unless I can get it to boot every time!

 

[RehabMan]

I think you're on the right track for sure.. it gets even weirder.. I can boot it up with no problem except the laptop display is all garbled. Connecting via VNC from my desktop and everything will display perfectly. I set a hot corner to sleep the display, move the trackpad there and sleep, move it somewhere else and it's fine. (doesn't work until I login in though and that's not acceptable ong-term anyway!) It's something with the video driver not setting up the monitor right on boot I think.. weird. Anyway I'm attaching the files, I hope I did it right - first time for everything and I tried to follow your instructions to a T.

Any help help you can provide (or even a suggestion as to where to start hacking is greatly appreciated!!

BTW I know there is a lot of other crap (audio, battery, etc) I don't have working yet but I want the video reliable before I even bother setting that stuff up - it's pretty useless unless I can get it to boot every time!

In ioreg, no Intel MEI.
Confirmed by Clover bootlog:

0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:00.00) : 8086 0154 class=060000
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:02.00) : 8086 0166 class=030000
0:102  0:000   - GFX: Model=Intel HD Graphics 4000 (Intel)
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:14.00) : 8086 1E31 class=0C0330
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:1A.00) : 8086 1E2D class=0C0320
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:1B.00) : 8086 1E20 class=040300
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:1C.00) : 8086 1E10 class=060400
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|00:1C.02) : 8086 1E14 class=060400
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|02:00.00) : FFFF FFFF class=FFFFFF
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|02:00.02) : FFFF FFFF class=FFFFFF
0:102  0:000  PCI (00|02:00.03) : FFFF FFFF class=FFFFFF
0:103  0:000  PCI (00|02:00.04) : FFFF FFFF class=FFFFFF
0:103  0:000  PCI (00|00:1C.03) : 8086 1E16 class=060400
0:103  0:000  PCI (00|03:00.00) : 168C 002A class=028000

Expect to find IMEI as 8086:1e3a.
macOS/OS X requires IMEI for reliable QE/CI.

 

[burnindaylight]

My guess: Your Intel MEI is broken.

You've definitely got me on the right path!! I injected the IMEI and it boots fine (no garbled screen) but without no QE/CI and 5 MB ram instead of 1536.. getting there! I used 1eba8086.. wow I'm typing this as your reply came up on my desktop.. lol I couldn't tell whether it was a 3 or a B and I went with B.. I'll try the 3 after I hit post.

Thanks for all your help! (I never had to screw with this before at all, it either worked OOTB or on this box with the smaller display PBI took care of it.. now I'm not even using PBI but when I did the results were worse.. and plus it installed a whole lotta crap I didn't need!)

 

[RehabMan]

You've definitely got me on the right path!! I injected the IMEI and it boots fine (no garbled screen) but without no QE/CI and 5 MB ram instead of 1536.. getting there! I used 1eba8086.. wow I'm typing this as your reply came up on my desktop.. lol I couldn't tell whether it was a 3 or a B and I went with B.. I'll try the 3 after I hit post.

Thanks for all your help! (I never had to screw with this before at all, it either worked OOTB or on this box with the smaller display PBI took care of it.. now I'm not even using PBI but when I did the results were worse.. and plus it installed a whole lotta crap I didn't need!)

You cannot fix a broken IMEI with Clover options/ACPI/etc.
It is more of a hardware problem.
You need to actually fix your motherboard/BIOS to somehow flash valid firmware to the IMEI device.

 

[burnindaylight]

You cannot fix a broken IMEI with Clover options/ACPI/etc.
It is more of a hardware problem.
You need to actually fix your motherboard/BIOS to somehow flash valid firmware to the IMEI device.

I don't get it... You obviously know alot more about this than I do though.. the machine works just fine with the other display and supports a full HD 1920x1080 display, and also works fine (QE/CI and boots fine) about half of the time.. other thing I've noticed is when it's not working it takes forever to boot even with a SSD (like longer than a normal boot with a HD)... So I think it's some software setting timing out on me. IDK.. I'll **** around with it a couple hours here & there a every few days (I'm about done for the day at this point) and see if I can get it working.

 

[RehabMan]

I don't get it... You obviously know alot more about this than I do though.. the machine works just fine with the other display and supports a full HD 1920x1080 display, and also works fine (QE/CI and boots fine) about half of the time.. other thing I've noticed is when it's not working it takes forever to boot

Yes. It is typical with broken IMEI.