[WARNING] Clover will break your REAL Mac, use with caution

[KanzakiMirai]

Hey guys, I am recently making a multi-booting USB flash disk for my MacBook and my Hackintosh PC, and my Clover on the USB drive is configured a SMBIOS or something else that is required to boot the official OS X installer on a PC.

Then I started to test my USB drive, and it works well on my PC, but it breaks my MacBook Air, the BIOS/EFI bootrom is broken after booting with Clover, SMC PRAM reset will not working, then I send it to a local store to re-flash my BIOS/EFI bootrom firmware and it goes well again.

The post is to warn everybody that NEVER use Clover on your REAL Mac. Although I saw somebody use it as a multi-boot controller on REAL Mac by disabling hackintosh related feature, I would like to suggest you to NOT use Clover on REAL Macs.

If you are making a multi-boot USB drive, I would like to suggest you use a pure boot controller (such as rEFIt, rEFInd, grub) and adding Clover as one of the option, instead of directly boot Clover.

FOR ADVENTURES:
If you would like to test this EFI bootrom bug, I am providing a detailed steps below, please have a try and comment if your Mac device is broken or not LOL.

HOW TO BREAK YOUR REAL MAC:
(Do it on OS X)
1. Format your USB flash disk as GPT
2. Open "/Application/Install MacOS Sierra.App/Contents/Shared Support/InstallESD.dmg"
3. Open "/Volumes/InstallESD/BaseSystem.dmg" (This is a hidden file)
4. Restore BaseSystem to your USB flash disk by using DiskUtility.
5. Copy "/Volumes/InstallESD/BaseSystem.*"to your USB disk.
6. Copy and overwrite "/Volumes/InstallESD/Packages" folder into your USB disk's "System/Installation/Packages"
7. Get Clover installer (pkg) from tonymacx86
8. Install Clover to your USB disk with options: UEFI only, Clover only
9. Use clover configurator to randomize a Clover SMBIOS
10. Reboot, hold option key, boot with EFI (not OS X installer)
11. Boot installer from clover
12. Select language, and then reboot inside installer
13. And your Mac's EFI BOOTROM is broken, go to Genius Bar

 

[vinai]

MacBook only?

 

[KaHa6uc]

I did the same on both my MacBook Pro's - just a single boot from the Clover EFI Bootloader broke them. Now they are both in the service center.
I come to confirm that one should never use Clover on a real MacBook!

 

[pandapandix]

I tried to boot on a USB hackintosh stick I prepared for another project on my real macbook pro and sadly I confirm this is a big mistake.
My EFI boot is not showing up anymore.
I saw the clover boot menu once and then black screen.
Reset SMC and PRAM did not work

Does anyone has an idea to recover the original EFI boot menu on my macbook ?
I literally have access to nothing ... (no recovery boot, nor target mode)

I have a time capsule save of course so my data are intact but I would like to be able to use my mac again

 

[Brainwasher]

Same here.
I'll try to bring it to an apple store and ask them to flash my BIOS/EFI bootrom firmware.

 

[pandapandix]

Same here.
I'll try to bring it to an apple store and ask them to flash my BIOS/EFI bootrom firmware.

My first attempt in a apple premium reseller store was "you need to change the motherboard", for approximatively 700$ (650€)
I'm very interested in your expérience, if Apple agree to do it, may be a simple flash of the EFI won't cost that much.

Ps : I didn't dare to say how I break my macbook but now I think it doesn't matter anymore (my apple cover has expired of course)

 

[dehjomz]

Did you all try to reset NVRAM? Doing so fixed the problem for me.

 

[vk2fro]

I trashed mine by mistake too, but thankfully I had nothing of value on the macbook (loaned it to a friend to take overseas) so I simply booted my carbon copy clone, and transferred the system back after zapping the PRAM - this fixed it for me, but took some time to figure out. It needed to be done anyway. Now my USB sticks for reinstalling OSX have tags on them. The Clover one has "CLOVER - DO NOT USE ON MACBOOK", the other "MACBOOK SIERRA REINSTALL STICK".

 

[Gigamaxx]

I have a MacBook 6.1 and have used Clover to load El Capittan and Sierra. The key was to disable every option or injection. No DSDT fixes, power management, graphics etc... disable or uncheck every option and check you Symbios. Did anyone try disconnecting battery and power supply and removing the ram?

 

[Gigamaxx]

I tried to boot on a USB hackintosh stick I prepared for another project on my real macbook pro and sadly I confirm this is a big mistake.
My EFI boot is not showing up anymore.
I saw the clover boot menu once and then black screen.
Reset SMC and PRAM did not work

Does anyone has an idea to recover the original EFI boot menu on my macbook ?
I literally have access to nothing ... (no recovery boot, nor target mode)

I have a time capsule save of course so my data are intact but I would like to be able to use my mac again

if you can get to clover menu screen try deactivating all fixes.