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Z97x MB Won't boot with OC 0.6.6 USB : Invalid Boot Disk

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I will return to this on the weekend and check the battery etc.

Yes the boot options for Windows remain. But the UEFI boot options for the Mac (OC ) never appear, except immediately after the BIOS reflash. Next time I restart they are gone...
 
No logic in that at all.

You would think all the boot options would disappear or reappear as a group, not some remain and others disappear.
 
@Edhawk

Yes is there is no logic in this, but I found a work around.

There was nothing wrong with the CMOS battery, but I replaced it anyway. Original still held a voltage of 3.23V. New one was 3.3V. The only way I could get the BIOS to see the UEFI USB Opencore stick was to re-flash the BIOS and load the defaults, set some defaults and reboot. When I did that the BIOS sees all the drive / USB boot options available to it.

This is a Gigabyte Z97x motherboard. After one successful boot to OSX the USB stick was no longer seen by the BIOS. So one time I changed the BIOS boot option to UEFI Only boot, from Legacy and UEFI boot mode. The BIOS now saw the USB Opencore stick. But my dual boot, one drive OSX the other Windows, now only saw the USB stick. Eventually I was able to mount the EFI partition of the NVME drive on the motherboard. I was using Opencore Configurator to mount the EFI partition. The Configurator offers the choice of either the APFS partition of the NVME or the 'root' partition. I choose the 'root' EFI partition and copied the USB stick EFI to it.

I was never sure which of those two options to choose from the Configuator but I stuck to the 'root' EFI partition to mount - possibly mounting either results in the same EFI partition being mounted??

And following the copy of the USB EFI to the NVME driver EFI partition I was able to reboot using the SSD, with the USB removed from the system.

After a NVRAM reset, and a copy of a Microsoft boot folder to the EFI folder of the NVME EFI partition, I was able to see the second drive containing Windows in the Opencore boot selector.

To cut an even longer story shorter, I was able to boot into Windows, iff I turned off the iGPU in the BIOS. But OSX wants the IGPU enabled. Go figure.

And finally I found that the Z97x motherboard supports a dual BIOS, but I can only get the 'slave' BIOS to work. Setting the motherboard BIOS to the 'master' or #1 ROM just gives me a splash screen, no keys working, frozen system.

A cross between a HW issue of the ROM and a transition version of the BIOS (F8) that doesn't do mixed UEFI and legacy booting correctly (not that I care about Legacy booting).
 
If the 'M' bios (main bios of the dual-bios) chip is borked you may need to re-flash the bios so that the M and the B bios are both available.

Do this bios flash in windows, if possible using the Gigabyte Bios app, now you are able to boot in to Windows.
 
Do this bios flash in windows, if possible using the Gigabyte Bios app, now you are able to boot in to Windows.

I will attempt it in Windows. Using the BIOS flash utility only seems to flash the 'S' bios. If I switch to 'M' bios on the MB I can't get out of the splash screen to flash the 'M' version.

Why do you think the Windows Gigabyte app would be any different, i.e. allow a flash of the 'M' bios ROM?
 
If you watch the process of the Bios flash in the Windows app, you see it run through the flashing process twice. Well that is what it looked like to me when I last flashed a bios update via the windows app.

So I am assuming the Bios flash is overwriting the M Bios and the B Bios during the process.

Screenshot 2021-03-23 at 19.03.01.pngM & B Bios chips highlighted in red rectangle.

The Bios flashing process may do the same, but it is not as clear.

The Bios flash should overwrite the information in both the M & B chips.
 
The Bios flash should overwrite the information in both the M & B chips.


I don't think it overwrote the M chip. So I successfully loaded the Windows @BIOS app, and used it to flash the ROM. It produced a single ROM message - success or something like that.

I rebooted and noticed that I had lost my BIOS settings, so loaded them again. Most importantly the BOOT option changed back to Legacy and UEFI, under OS Type -> Other.

After reinitialization of the BIOS I issued a reset. The BIOS only saw Windows boot or invalid drive partition boots. It did not see the Opencore on the NVME Drive. Windows booted fine, and then I restarted again.

This time, and many times thereafter, I set the BOOT option to UEFI only. No Opencore boot option, only a single Windows Mangager boot option. No matter how many resets or toggles of the BOOT option I tried I can't get the BIOS to see the Opencore EFI partition boot.

Now I'm dead in the water - stuck on Windows only boot. The BIOS does not see the USB stick.

Did I mention that I have set, and kept set, the Dual Boot switch on the motherboard fixed on the B Bios option - as I can't get anything from the Master ROM option?

I will have to try and re-flash the ROM from the BIOS and see if I can get the Opencore boot back.

:banghead:
 
While the OpenCore option is missing, does the UEFI partition for the macOS drive show?

I don’t have an OpenCore option in my bios. I use the UEFI partition on the macOS drive to access the OpenCore boot screen.
 
While the OpenCore option is missing, does the UEFI partition for the macOS drive show?

No it doesn't show.

I don't mean that the BIOS has an Opencore setting. What I mean by this is the Boot Option - F12, before used to show an Opencore option - as 0.6.6. has implemented a replacement for BOOT/bootx64.efi (spelling?) in the EFI partition, and when it works ( as it is NOT now ) gives one a boot option named Opencore.

I am attempting to use the UEFI partition on the macOS drive; just the BIOS never sees it, and I didn't touch the EFI partition - as far as I'm aware - using the @BIOS utility to flash the ROM.
 
Have you checked that you reset your bios correctly to run macOS? These are the bios settings required for most systems running OpenCore:

Disable
  • Fast Boot
  • Secure Boot
  • Serial/COM Port/Super IO port
  • Parallel Port
  • VT-d
  • CSM
  • Thunderbolt
  • Intel SGX
  • Intel Platform Trust
  • CFG Lock (MSR 0xE2 write protection)(This must be off, if you can't find the option then enable AppleXcpmCfgLock under Kernel -> Quirks. Your hack will not boot with CFG-Lock enabled)
    • For 10.10 and older, you'll need to enable AppleCpuPmCfgLock as well
Enable
  • VT-x
  • Above 4G decoding
  • Hyper-Threading
  • Execute Disable Bit
  • EHCI/XHCI Hand-off
  • OS type: Windows 8.1/10 UEFI Mode
  • DVMT Pre-Allocated(iGPU Memory): 64MB or higher
  • SATA Mode: AHCI
Your system may not have all these settings, some may be hidden within other settings, CSM, OS Type and UEFI booting being the ones to spring to mind.

You may need to changes some settings, save and exit the Bios and re-enter the bios to make more changes before all the changes required are complete.
 
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