USB EFI recognition on boot

[jezzalencko9]

Partition seems setup ok?

 

[P1LGRIM]

Something is on the EFI partition.
You do know that the EFI partition must be mounted before you can see the contents ?

 

[jezzalencko9]

yep. I experimented with putting a working EFI folder on there just to see if that did anything (it didn't).

 

[jezzalencko9]

Just did a fresh install again. Here you can see it mounted and empty.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

UDB, thought I would check this but I'm not sure what the equivalent setting nomenclature is for this in the Gigabyte BIOS world...
Is it xHCI mode?
Boot Mode selection I have as UEFI and Legacy.
There is a USB Storage Device section but I have that as Auto. There is an option to change that to Forced FDD, but that doesnt seem right.
Again I think the bios settings are a red herring because it picked up the UEFI partition on a previous USB. Def think its how Unibeast is creating the drives.
(Note, SIP is disabled).
Any other ideas?

All very confusing.

No, it is not likely to be the way UniBeast creates the installer. That has been proven to work over many years. We've all used it.

If nothing is appearing on a correctly partitioned and formatted USB stick after UniBeast has run its course, then the problem is likely the SIP setting on the creating machine, or the USB stick itself.

Incidentally the older UEFI BIOS you have may not have "CSM" as a setting. This is "Compatibility Support Module" and not xHCI mode. A pre-Skylake chipset like the Z77 has both EHCI (USB2-only) and XHCI USB controllers.

The only other thing you can do is create a USB Installer manually:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-installer-using-opencore.296375/post-2108796

 

[jezzalencko9]

All very confusing.

No, it is not likely to be the way UniBeast creates the installer. That has been proven to work over many years. We've all used it.

If nothing is appearing on a correctly partitioned and formatted USB stick after UniBeast has run its course, then the problem is likely the SIP setting on the creating machine, or the USB stick itself.

Incidentally the older UEFI BIOS you have may not have "CSM" as a setting. This is "Compatibility Support Module" and not xHCI mode. A pre-Skylake chipset like the Z77 has both EHCI (USB2-only) and XHCI USB controllers.

The only other thing you can do is create a USB Installer manually:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-installer-using-opencore.296375/post-2108796

Okay thanks UDB. I’ll try that. I’ve run out of options at this stage.
Just one other thing. I’ve removed everything from mobo except the USB and this is what I get on F12 (attached).
Do you have any idea what those Mac OS X and UEFI OS entries are?
They reappear even when clearing CMOS (none of them are bootable).

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Okay thanks UDB. I’ll try that. I’ve run out of options at this stage.
Just one other thing. I’ve removed everything from mobo except the USB and this is what I get on F12 (attached).
Do you have any idea what those Mac OS X and UEFI OS entries are?
They reappear even when clearing CMOS (none of them are bootable).

Well it was common at one time to get "Ghost" drives like this appearing in BIOS boot menus.

You could address this in two ways:

1) Re-Flash your BIOS to the same version already installed. Understandably some people were wary of doing this.

2) A few guides were written to correct this problem. Here's one:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...boot-entries-prevent-further-problems.175274/

 

[jezzalencko9]

btw, here is a super weird observation... when running Unibeast installer creator on the Catalina machine, it was quite fast and the EFI partition was left empty at the end. Nothing copied to it.
On the other hand, when running exact same Unibeast installer on a High Sierra machine, it took much longer and ALSO populated the EFI partition with EFI folder (see attached).
No idea why it would act in 2 different ways from different machines (both legit macs).
Either way, neither USB's EFI is recognised on boot up unfortunately.

 

[jezzalencko9]

You could address this in two ways:

Do you think the ghosting issue is affecting the USB EFI discovery issue? I'd prefer not going down that path if I didnt need to and it wasn't going to address my initial issue.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

btw, here is a super weird observation... when running Unibeast installer creator on the Catalina machine, it was quite fast and the EFI partition was left empty at the end. Nothing copied to it.
On the other hand, when running exact same Unibeast installer on a High Sierra machine, it took much longer and ALSO populated the EFI partition with EFI folder (see attached).
No idea why it would act in 2 different ways from different machines (both legit macs).
Either way, neither USB's EFI is recognised on boot up unfortunately.

Perhaps take a look at the "Clover_Install_Log.txt" in the EFI folder that was created. Maybe there will be a clue as to what's going on?

Do you think the ghosting issue is affecting the USB EFI discovery issue? I'd prefer not going down that path if I didnt need to and it wasn't going to address my initial issue.

No.