[Solved] Suddenly can not boot into 3 copies of Sierra

[bmoag]

Long but bear with me please:
I had issues I thought I had resolved after a BIOS update which fixed problems on the Windows side.
I could not get audio working after the BIOS update but I have a USB adapter which worked fine.
As of yesterday I can not boot into Sierra which is installed on both its own SSD and a second installation at the front of an internal hard drive (used for experimentation) and also on an external USB drive (my backup clone).
The motherboard says there is no problem with the SSD and the UEFI partition with clover is seen.
If I boot from Clover on the UEFI partition of the SSD it sees everything except the SSD.
I can no longer boot from even the copy of Sierra installed on the hard drive using clover from the SSD, that hard drive or Unibeast. The progress bar halts at the very beginning and does not progress after ten minutes of waiting.
Booting off Unibeast I can not boot into the external Sierra USB clone- the same thing happens.
The motherboard was overclocked and worked stably before this happened in OSX and Windows. I turned off the overclock, still can't boot OSX.
I detached the SSD but that changed nothing.
If I try to boot into the installation section using Unibeast I arrive at the OSX installation screen but the return/enter key does not work (arrow keys work). The keyboard is an Apple USB keyboard attached to a backplane USB port on the mobo.
I have checked and rechecked UEFI/motherboard settings which all seem correct, but I could be wrong.In any event I did not change anything before this problem began.
Booting with nv_disable=1 did not work.
Booting with -v the process stops at the screen shot I have attached. It notes "SuperIODevice: [Fatal] but I believe that only refers to a sensor (based on a web search) and should not affect booting like this.
I can't post the configp.list since I can't get into the system.
In sum: can not boot into OSX in any way, shape or form--gotta be something in the mobo?
Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

[BreBo]

I have checked and rechecked UEFI/motherboard settings which all seem correct, but I could be wrong.

Change XHCI Hand-off to Enabled in your BIOS.

 

[bmoag]

Thank you for your reply.
I do not see that as an option.
Under USB settings in the BIOS it merely says greyed out "2 XHCIs."
That appears to be one of the things changed in the most recent and irreversible ASUS BIOS for this motherboard as XHCI Handoff was present as an option formerly.
In any event what I am seeing in the BIOS settings is how things were set when Sierra was bootable and running stably.

 

[BreBo]

I do not see that as an option.
Under USB settings in the BIOS it merely says greyed out "2 XHCIs."
That appears to be one of the things changed in the most recent and irreversible ASUS BIOS for this motherboard as XHCI Handoff was present as an option formerly.
In any event what I am seeing in the BIOS settings is how things were set when Sierra was bootable and running stably.

For possible solution start reading from Post #55

 

[bmoag]

Thanks but:
I actually pursued all of this and nothing works.
I have combed through all BIOS options with copies of almost every guide on this website.
I had the settings that worked previously.
I am not sure if something has happened electronically in the motherboard as the onset of problems was sudden--mouse movement became erratic while using Sierra and since then I am unable to boot into OSX.
If the Windows side fails-there was one BSOD- I will have to fall back on my old Sandy Bridge Desktop, my MacBook Pro and save up for a Coffee Lake CPU and mobo (won't be ASUS next time).

 

[bmoag]

Finally solved.
Problems began after abortive update to High Sierra and restored from Sierra clone without reformatting.
Reformatting the drive in OSX Disk Utility does not delete all partitions and whatever High Sierra did to anything on which Sierra was installed because High Sierra did me in--at some point all of my Sierra Clones had been attached to the machine after an initial High Sierra upgrade of the main Sierra drive but not during the High Sierra update.
I do not know how but that seems to have been the culprit as the drives were only read from and not written to by me, whatever High Sierra did in the background.
I did nothing but passively upgrade a drive to High Sierra as instructed.
By using Diskpart in Windows to entirely clear a drive (OSX creates three partitions but disk utility does not really wipe them) I have been able to reinstall a bootable and apparently fully functional copy of Sierra.
Previously working copies of Sierra could not be repaired by Disk Utility when attached to a genuine Apple machine (unfortuanely running High Sierra), could not be repaired by entering commands after booting Sierra Unibeast with -s and could not be repaired after booting with Sierra Unibeast into the installer and running Disk Utility repair--the last option yielded a code 8.
Before performing a complete wipe of all partitions of a drive in Windows I could sort of install Sierra but Multibeast would not run. After the Windos/DOS wipe, reformat with the Unibeast Sierra installer, reinstall SIerra Multibeast ran correctly,
Interestingly all prior functioning Hackintosh Sierra clones can be read by a working High Sierra Apple machine, and indeed can be read by my new installation of Sierra, but not repaired. Every time they are attached to a working OSX, High Sierra or Sierra, Apple machine or Hack, Disk Utility automatically attempts to repair the drive for a few minutes, fails, but says it is readable.
So if one encounters similar problems after High Sierra it might just be High Sierra. Disk Utility does not adequately prep a damaged drive and I find it easier to resort to DOS Diskpart than Terminal commands to completely clean a drive.