[SUCCESS] Mojave 14.1 despite “The macOS Installation couldn’t be completed” error

[cmn699]

The motherboard GA-X79-UP4 is one of the most difficult boards to install OS X and macOS. I had difficulty with ail the previous versions of macOS installation with this board but macOS Mojave was by far the hardest to install.


Both direct upgrade from macOS High Sierra and Clean Install using a Mojave 14.1 USB installer caused boot failure.


The latest attempt was using a Mojave 10.14.1 (18B75) that took about 10 hours and ended with an error message that read “The macOS installation couldn’t be completed” [image. Uploaded]


Despite that seemingly ominous message the installation could be successfully completed without any additional troubleshoot or Reinstallation!


Hardware:


Motherboard: Gigabyte: GA-X79-UP4

CPU: Intel i7 -3820

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GT 710

Hard Disk: Seagate ST5000DM002


USB Flash disk: Kootion 16GB USB 2.0


· Method: USB Flash disk was partitioned and formatted in Disk Utility of my working Hackintosh. Mojave 14.0 in the usual way: GUID Partition Map and HFS+J File system for Format and named it Untitled (the default name)

· macOS Mojave 10.14.1 installer file was downloaded from App Store and saved in the Applications folder.

· I ran a Shasum 1 check through Terminal to make sure the downloaded file had the matching sha1 value as the published one.

shasum /Applications/Install*OS*.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg


635fdcb4a9baee1885825e9067d104d7aa0b9c2f

Next, I ran the 'createinstallmedia’ command to install the Mojave 14.1 installer on to the prepared USB Flash disk Untitled

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app --no interaction


I downloaded and installed Clover EFI on the Mojave 14.1 USB installer disk. The EFI partition of that disk was automounted on the Desktop and easy to navigate and access its File-tree.


Then I edited the CLOVER /ACPI/Patched with the DSDT and SSDT files I have been using in my previous macOSes.

CLOVER/drivers64 and CLOVER/drivers64UEFI folders were edited to include required files


The EMPTY numbered folders from CLOVER/kexts were deleted keeping only the “Other” folder for all Essential kexts for Mojave 14.1 USB Installer to boot and support the Graphics, and Ethernet for System Disk installation.


Config.plist was opened with Clover Configurator Global 5.3.2.0 and all SECTIONS were reviewed and edited. Those who have this board must pay attention to the Boot Args. The System will have a boot failure if we don’t use the boot flags cpus=1 and npci=0x2000 or npci=0x3000


I booted the system with the Mojave UEFI USB installer inserted to the USB 2.0 port at the back of the Computer and pressing Del key opened the BIOS Setup screen. I have edited the Screen as shown on the uploaded BIOS Screen Images. It is important to remember that the Onboard USB 3.0 must be DISABLED for proper booting.


Since my CPU i7-3820 has no Intel HD Graphics for Mojave, I have installed Nvidia GeForce GT 710 in PCIE and that is natively supported in Mojave (and High Sierra) and the BIOS is edited to make First Initial Display to PCIE.


I made the UEFI Mojave USB installer as First Boot Device and Disabled everything else in that list.


After saving the edited BIOS, booted UEFI Mojave 14.1 USB installer and reached the Clover Boot Manager (CBM) Screen.


I checked the Options > Boot Args and all submenu to make sure the Config.plist has loaded all the required options as edited.


I booted in verbose and took series of Screenshots to watch the proper landmark screens for proper booting to macOS Utilities screen. [See selected images]


Opened Disk Utility and clicking View menu checked [√] Show All Devices.


Located the ST 5000DM002 SATA 500GB disk and Partitioned in GUID and Formatted in APFS [ Previously had tried HFS+J to format and had installation failure and I guessed the failure must be due to HFS+J and hence changed this time to APFS]


When installation was started. The system copied files to the Hard disk for about 6 minutes and at the “2 minutes remaining” it suddenly rebooted and the CBM screen showed both the USB Installer and the System disk.


System Disk was booted in Verbose Mode and it went all the way to the Apple logo Boot screen and suddenly rebooted a few seconds later.


On 3rdreboot in Verbose everything went well and the booting turned to Gui mode with apple Logo and Progressbar and showed initially 16 minutes remaining.


After 30 minutes on that same screen, it started to display “Installation is in progress. Calculating time remaining…” but would not advance. The HDD LED continued to show disk activity as the only real sign of life.


After about 1 hour the Screen went to “15 minutes remaining and that also lasted with intermittent “Installation is in progress. Calculating time remaining…”


After about 5 hours when the Screen showed 6 minutes remaining” I stopped the ‘baby-sitting” and went out for a couple of hours. When I returned the screen showed this menacing warning” “The macOS Installation couldn’t be completed”.

I had the same error when I used. HFS+J format on a different Hard disk and at that time I had shut down the computer and changed into an SSD and tried reinstallation with a new USB installer disk on that SSD which I partitioned in GUID and formatted with APFS. But that disk also finally had the above fate after about 3 hours with the same error and I had shut down and started with the current disk. This whole saga happened over a 4-day period.


This time, I decided to reboot to CBM screen. Instead of Shutting down.

To my pleasant surprise I saw 3 icons, the USB installer, the System disk and a Recovery Disk!

I booted the System Disk and after it went through the usual ‘normal’ verbose phase, it entered the Gui phase with apple logo and then suddenly a grey screen and then the Welcome Screen for Country Selection appeared.

The installation proceeded without a hitch to Desktop and my GA-X79UP4 had a brand-new Mojave 14.1 with everything working Perfectly after I copied and pasted the EFI from the USB on to System Disk’s EFI partition.

I cloned that disk onto another 500GB SATA Platter disk using Clonezilla and tested that and it too booted flawlessly.

I decided to try a fresh install on another SATA Platter disk and went through the same Error but ended up with a working System

I have no idea what caused the very long installation time with frequent "Calculating time remaining " and the error message despite a successful hard disk installation.
I could not upload all the images because of 100 image limit.

 

[lysid]

Thanks for the detailed information. I have the same Board with a 3930k and a 660ti - bios is the latest f7. I made a clean install without any problems from yosemite to 14.1 via Unibeast. Everything works fine but sleep is not working. Does it work for you? If yes, what settings did you set to make it work?

 

[cmn699]

Thanks for the detailed information. I have the same Board with a 3930k and a 660ti - bios is the latest f7. I made a clean install without any problems from yosemite to 14.1 via Unibeast. Everything works fine but sleep is not working. Does it work for you? If yes, what settings did you set to make it work?

• I did not see any Gigabyte: GA-X79-UP4 in your Profile!
• Your Personal Details shows your Motherboard as "Mountain Lion" and you have not displayed any other hardware under Build Signature
• Because of the 4 system limit to Build Signature according to Forum rules, I could not list all my systems including GA-X79-UP4
• I am very much surprised (but happy) to find you had no problem installing the system with Unibeast (I assume 9.0 for Mojave) created USB Installer without any SSDT/DSDT in CLOVER/ACPI/Patched for X79.
• Your detailed illustrated post about your install can help others with that board as many find it one of the hardest to use to build any Hackintosh.
• Since I have other systems, I hardly ever use my GA-X79-UP4 and Intel DH67BL systems and had DISABLED all Energy Saver options in them as they are always sleeping. I use them only when somebody has a problem and I want to see if I can reproduce that and find a fix to help.
• I'm sorry I could not give you a definite answer to help with your problem nor do I know enough about your Mojave from your post.

 

[AG_Cipher]

"The longest 16 minutes remaining" Haha, I love it!
Going through the same thing here myself right now, not sure if I want to interrupt it and try APFS partition to see if it's any faster, or whether I should just let it continue
Thanks for the info!

 

[AG_Cipher]

For anyone who happens to stumble across this through searching as I did:

Mine too went through it all, gave the error but continued fine, however, since I had to redo this because UEFI is very unstable on my system, I spent some time figuring out why this takes forever.

Looking at the log, the last command before the whole installation bogged down to the speed of drying paint was:

Jan 19 14:15:17 iMac OSInstaller[556]: PackageKit: Extracting file:///Volumes/InstallESD/Packages/Core.pkg (destination=/Volumes/Mojave/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root, uid=0)

Extracting is a CPU intensive process, and my system required booting with the cpus=1 flag, so instead of that flag, I put the VoodooTSCSync.kext for my 6core 3930k into the clover extensions/other folder.

The only other thing I changed, because I read about it somewhere on this website, is that I formatted the drive as APFS before starting the installation process (As this was a test drive I didn't care about the content, with my actual drive, I won't be able to do this, so I hope it's the CPU fix that did the trick)

Hope this helps!
(The whole installation completed in ~10 minutes... as opposed to the 7 hour one beforehand >_>)

 

[Joehen]

For anyone who happens to stumble across this through searching as I did:

Mine too went through it all, gave the error but continued fine, however, since I had to redo this because UEFI is very unstable on my system, I spent some time figuring out why this takes forever.

Looking at the log, the last command before the whole installation bogged down to the speed of drying paint was:

Jan 19 14:15:17 iMac OSInstaller[556]: PackageKit: Extracting file:///Volumes/InstallESD/Packages/Core.pkg (destination=/Volumes/Mojave/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root, uid=0)

Extracting is a CPU intensive process, and my system required booting with the cpus=1 flag, so instead of that flag, I put the VoodooTSCSync.kext for my 6core 3930k into the clover extensions/other folder.

The only other thing I changed, because I read about it somewhere on this website, is that I formatted the drive as APFS before starting the installation process (As this was a test drive I didn't care about the content, with my actual drive, I won't be able to do this, so I hope it's the CPU fix that did the trick)

Hope this helps!
(The whole installation completed in ~10 minutes... as opposed to the 7 hour one beforehand >_>)

I have the same board that you have, but a different GPU (Geforce GT640 - basic! maybe this is the problem?)
Did you do an install on your actual main drive and was it successful? I'm stuck getting my system to upgrade to High Sierra (trying to get to Mojave). When I try to do the reboot after the initial install, it goes into an auto reboot loop)
I don't want to hijack this thread, so was wondering if you I could PM a few questions?

 

[AG_Cipher]

I haven't done it on my main SSD yet as I want to ensure that everything is stable and working correctly first, which I have almost reached, just the USB 3.0 ports being a bit finnicky (3 out of 5 USB 3.0 ports not working (1 front panel, 2 back panel)) and sleep wakeup killing the system (although I'm not too fussed about sleep)

Feel free to send me your questions, but note that I'll be updating my original system build thread with how I did it and which problems I encountered (After getting a stable/working build) located here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...9-16gb-ram-gtx680-dc2o-2gd5-dual-boot.104284/ ;-)

 

[Joehen]

AG_Cipher Thank you so much, and thank you for your link - I'm watching it now.
I'll send you a couple of brief questions when I'm home later and can look at the system (on my phone now).
I'm hoping to get one or two more rounds out of this system. It's been great for a long time now (I did my build in 2012!)

 

[Joehen]

Hmmm. Looks like you can't send a private message until you have 75 posts.
I'll watch your thread for an update.
I guess I'll keep trying to figure out my system in the interim. If I find something that works, I'll post it on your thread.