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ErmaC

By ErmaC,
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chris1111
chris1111
Posted
Posted (edited)

Hi @Zenith432 Happy to see you again 😀

Try this config attaching here, its yours but with the SMBIOS more completed

You can clear the NVRAM first before booting to the USB install media

config.plist.zip

 

Edited by chris1111
  • Like 4
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, chris1111 said:

Hi @Zenith432 Happy to see you again 😀

Try this config attaching here, its yours but with the SMBIOS more completed

You can clear the NVRAM first before booting to the USB install media

config.plist.zip 3.71 kB · 2 downloads

 

Thanks.  I'll try this later.

 

Here's an update.  The problem is not a faulty SSD.  I tried (with my initial config) on an external USB magnetic drive with a 120 GiB APFS partition and ended up with exactly the same result.  The time countdown during the 2nd stage actually went to down to 1 minute before reboot.

 

Here's a little more detail of what I see

  • I start out with a formatted APFS partition (newfs_apfs -C) and add one volume MacHD on it.  Owners are enabled.
  • After 1st stage install, there is still only one volume MacHD with one folder on it 'macOS Install Data'.  It appears to contain everything (about 17.48GB).  I can find no log.  The APFS partition also has the Preboot, Recovery and VM volumes.
  • After 2nd stage install, there are now two volumes.  MacHD and "MacHD - Data".  The one named MacHD is 11GB+ big and appears to have pretty much everything on it, maybe even too much (see later).
  • The Data volume is nearly empty (about 312MB), with only one non-empty folder on it com.apple.installer that has most of the boot files of a recovery boot partition.  It has a prelinked kernel, but no file named boot.efi (although there are boot.efi with various extensions.)
  • What should be the Data volume can be found on the MacHD volume under System/Library/Templates/Data.  It's not really a deployed Data volume, but some kind of template to be made into a Data volume.  So this is something that looks like it should have been copied to the Data volume and 'filled in' from a template, then removed from the MacHD volume.  But none of this got done.  It's as if the installer decided to quit midway for some reason.
  • There's a boot.efi in /usr/standalone/i386 under MacHD, but no com.apple.Boot.plist except in the right place under System/Library/Templates/Data where it's just a template without entries filled in.
  • I couldn't find anything which may be a log of what happened during the 2nd stage.

😳

  • Confused 2
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, LockDown said:

It could be a bad macOS Installer

I used softwareupdate on Mac mini to download macos 15.7.7 and created a USB stick (which is new) with createinstallmedia.  You think this can go bad?  I can redo it.  I just think if there were corrupted files there it would crash in a less subtle way.

 

I could try to do the install on a mac mini to the external USB magnetic drive and see if that succeeds. 🤔

Edited by Zenith432
  • Like 1
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Zenith432 said:

I could try to do the install on a mac mini to the external USB magnetic drive and see if that succeeds. 🤔

I went ahead and tried this.  Installing macos 15.7.7 from an installer USB on a mac mini to an external USB hard drive.  It worked.  This is what happened

  • Booted mac mini into 15.7.7 installer USB.
  • Formatted APFS partition as before with single volume MacHD to start.
  • Ran 1st stage install.  One thing I noticed is some messages reporting successful connections to Apple servers retrieving some update data that I did not see happen on a PC.  This might be because of incomplete SMBIOS information or ACPI information that's used to identify the system.
  • At completion of 1st stage install I turned off the mini, moved the disk to a PC to see what's on it.  It appeared pretty much the same as after the 1st stage install on a PC, and the same size.  There might have been some small changes in data files I didn't notice.
  • Then moved disk back to mini to restart 2nd stage install.   2nd stage install completed.
  • Again, I shut off the mini and moved the disk to PC to see what's on it.  Again, it seemed in the same state as after the 2nd stage on a PC and the same sizes.  The same nearly-empty Data volume.  Again, Clover doesn't show an entry for it because it doesn't recognize it as anything bootable.
  • Moved disk back to mini and voila - mini recognizes it as something bootable and knows how to boot it into 3rd stage install.
  • 3rd stage install goes on for awhile with a bar moving at the bottom but no timer and completes.  Then reboots.
  • At this point I no longer had patience to move the disk to PC to see what's on it.  I let it continue.
  • Booted into 4th stage install.  Again this went on for awhile with a bar advancing at the bottom and no timer.  Eventually completed and rebooted.
  • Again, didn't have patience to move the disk to a PC to see what's on it and let it continue.
  • Booted into the 5th stage which is the final one.  It took a long time to boot because of the slow magentic media but eventually arrived at the setup screen with "Select your region".  I was able to safely shut it down by holding the power key and selecting shut down.  So now there's a working system on the hard drive which can hopefully be replicated to SSD with asr command to be set up and used there.

Conclusion

  • Clover knows how to boot the installer USB.
  • Clover knows how to boot the disk after first stage into 2nd stage.
  • Clover doesn't know how to boot the disk into the 3rd stage.  Needless to say I have no idea about the 4th stage.  The 5th stage is final so Clover may be able to do that.
1 hour ago, chris1111 said:

@Zenith432 Try clear NVRAM before booting in the preboot Volume

 

It is very well possible that might work to boot into the 3rd stage with Clover, but it'll have to wait for another day...

 

  • Like 1
  • Confused 2
  • Sad 1
Slice
Slice
Posted
Posted

For example I installed Tahoe on my first computer all stages with Clover automatically. First time on HDD and second time on SSD as upgrade on Sequoia. If the EFI folder is good enough then all stages passed without a problem. I see no what is the possible error in your case.

See my Quirk set

config.plist

  • Like 3
MakAsrock
MakAsrock
Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, Zenith432 said:

I went ahead and tried this.  Installing macos 15.7.7 from an installer USB on a mac mini to an external USB hard drive.  It worked.  This is what happened

  • Booted mac mini into 15.7.7 installer USB.
  • Formatted APFS partition as before with single volume MacHD to start.
  • Ran 1st stage install.  One thing I noticed is some messages reporting successful connections to Apple servers retrieving some update data that I did not see happen on a PC.  This might be because of incomplete SMBIOS information or ACPI information that's used to identify the system.
  • At completion of 1st stage install I turned off the mini, moved the disk to a PC to see what's on it.  It appeared pretty much the same as after the 1st stage install on a PC, and the same size.  There might have been some small changes in data files I didn't notice.
  • Then moved disk back to mini to restart 2nd stage install.   2nd stage install completed.
  • Again, I shut off the mini and moved the disk to PC to see what's on it.  Again, it seemed in the same state as after the 2nd stage on a PC and the same sizes.  The same nearly-empty Data volume.  Again, Clover doesn't show an entry for it because it doesn't recognize it as anything bootable.
  • Moved disk back to mini and voila - mini recognizes it as something bootable and knows how to boot it into 3rd stage install.
  • 3rd stage install goes on for awhile with a bar moving at the bottom but no timer and completes.  Then reboots.
  • At this point I no longer had patience to move the disk to PC to see what's on it.  I let it continue.
  • Booted into 4th stage install.  Again this went on for awhile with a bar advancing at the bottom and no timer.  Eventually completed and rebooted.
  • Again, didn't have patience to move the disk to a PC to see what's on it and let it continue.
  • Booted into the 5th stage which is the final one.  It took a long time to boot because of the slow magentic media but eventually arrived at the setup screen with "Select your region".  I was able to safely shut it down by holding the power key and selecting shut down.  So now there's a working system on the hard drive which can hopefully be replicated to SSD with asr command to be set up and used there.

Conclusion

  • Clover knows how to boot the installer USB.
  • Clover knows how to boot the disk after first stage into 2nd stage.
  • Clover doesn't know how to boot the disk into the 3rd stage.  Needless to say I have no idea about the 4th stage.  The 5th stage is final so Clover may be able to do that.

 

It is very well possible that might work to boot into the 3rd stage with Clover, but it'll have to wait for another day...

 

Why don't you download Clover from here first and do everything as described in the manuals many times?
I can assume that you are using an incomplete Clover installation package.
1. I installed  MacOS 15.7.7 from an installer USB on a rented Mac mini to an external USB hard drive.
2. I installed Clover then I put the necessary kexts and the correct config into the EFI and moved the hard drive to my main RIG. It worked fine.

Edited by MakAsrock
  • Like 1
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted (edited)
13 hours ago, Slice said:

@Zenith432,

Did you compiled Clover by yourself? By what compiler? You may have a problem with file names so why Clover will not see file "boot.efi". Just a glitch of Xcode clang compiler.

No.  I said I was using 5173 in my first post.  Downloaded binary from github.

Please clarify how you booted into the 3rd stage of the install - did Clover show you an icon or did you need to show hidden options (F3) and use the Preboot volume?  I don't get an icon for booting the 3rd stage.  I can expose the Preboot with F3 and use that.

 

I also said this in my first post

'Clover does show an option to boot the APFS partition from the "Preboot" volume, but this starts and hangs midway eventually rebooting.'

 

I think I misinterpreted this.  In the 3rd stage, with no icon, I tried booting the Preboot instead.  There is a progress bar without a timer.  It went through about midway, then got stuck there for some minutes and finally rebooted.  After the reboot there was again no icon.  So I interpreted this to mean that it's stuck in some kind of loop and not succeeding and didn't try to boot the Preboot again.  But it may have completed the 3rd stage and now I was supposed to start the 4th stage the same way.  On the Mac mini, during the 3rd stage the progress bar moved through until the end before rebooting so it looked like a successful completion.  Also, when booting the Mac mini before the 3rd stage into the boot selection menu by holding the Alt key - it shows an option for booting the newly installing disk.  There is an icon for it.

 

PS

I see in the config.plist you uploaded that DefaultVolume is set to LastBootedVolume which is taken from nvram.  Before the 3rd stage, it would be set to the system volume 'MacHD' which was used to boot the 2nd stage, and as I said in a previous post there is a /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi there.  There is no com.apple.Boot.plist in any of the usual locations.  So set to LastBootedVolume it may boot automatically to something that works.  I have DefaultVolume set to Windows, so have to manually select what to boot - and there is no icon for the installing disk.  It's not detected.  It's detected before the 2nd stage (when boot.efi is under the 'macos Install Data' tree), but not before the 3rd stage.

The MacHD APFS volume was formatted with the default case-insensitive, although system files always have the same case so I don't see why it would matter.

 

Update:

The plot thickens.  I connected the external HDD with the macos 15.7.7 that was successfully installed and is bootable on mac mini to PC.  Booted to Clover to scan it.  Guess what?  Clover does not detect the system.  I then press F3 to show the hidden entries and it shows Preboot and Recovery on this APFS partition.  It doesn't show the main system volume.

 

Here are photos showing it detects the Preboot and Recovery volumes but not the main system volume

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YdHPn3tfvkEHnvqOR6GVwP5O9oZI79Oe

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_D6ARKax9S33LUD_SiU-jKM4k6XAQszV

 

I boot into the Preboot, which actually goes suspiciously quickly and it arrives at the hello screen

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m5idVdO_a3a6CBWZfixy6GaopLX8AHcL

 

From this I can proceed to language selection and region selection.

 

I checked the system volumes (main+data) with the installer USB and they seem fine.  There's boot.efi in /usr/standalone/i386 and /System/Library/CoreServices on the main system volume and com.apple.Boot.plist on the Data volume at /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

 

So what's going on?  The quirks, ACPI, SMBIOS settings have nothing to do with the detection.  They're runtime options.  My config.plist is in my first post.  Why is the system undetected?  The APFS partition was formatted with newfs_apfs from 15.7.7.  The binaries are from Clover github 5173, including CloverX64.efi and ApfsDriverLoader.efi.  The APFS driver itself is on the APFS container.

 

Edit: I tried resetting nvram (F11) several times.  Doesn't make any difference.

 

 

 

Edited by Zenith432
  • Confused 1
MakAsrock
MakAsrock
Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, Zenith432 said:

No.  I said I was using 5173 in my first post.  Downloaded binary from github.

Please clarify how you booted into the 3rd stage of the install - did Clover show you an icon or did you need to show hidden options (F3) and use the Preboot volume?  I don't get an icon for booting the 3rd stage.  I can expose the Preboot with F3 and use that.

 

I also said this in my first post

'Clover does show an option to boot the APFS partition from the "Preboot" volume, but this starts and hangs midway eventually rebooting.'

 

I think I misinterpreted this.  In the 3rd stage, with no icon, I tried booting the Preboot instead.  There is a progress bar without a timer.  It went through about midway, then got stuck there for some minutes and finally rebooted.  After the reboot there was again no icon.  So I interpreted this to mean that it's stuck in some kind of loop and not succeeding and didn't try to boot the Preboot again.  But it may have completed the 3rd stage and now I was supposed to start the 4th stage the same way.  On the Mac mini, during the 3rd stage the progress bar moved through until the end before rebooting so it looked like a successful completion.  Also, when booting the Mac mini before the 3rd stage into the boot selection menu by holding the Alt key - it shows an option for booting the newly installing disk.  There is an icon for it.

 

PS

I see in the config.plist you uploaded that DefaultVolume is set to LastBootedVolume which is taken from nvram.  Before the 3rd stage, it would be set to the system volume 'MacHD' which was used to boot the 2nd stage, and as I said in a previous post there is a /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi there.  There is no com.apple.Boot.plist in any of the usual locations.  So set to LastBootedVolume it may boot automatically to something that works.  I have DefaultVolume set to Windows, so have to manually select what to boot - and there is no icon for the installing disk.  It's not detected.  It's detected before the 2nd stage (when boot.efi is under the 'macos Install Data' tree), but not before the 3rd stage.

The MacHD APFS volume was formatted with the default case-insensitive, although system files always have the same case so I don't see why it would matter.

 

Update:

The plot thickens.  I connected the external HDD with the macos 15.7.7 that was successfully installed and is bootable on mac mini to PC.  Booted to Clover to scan it.  Guess what?  Clover does not detect the system.  I then press F3 to show the hidden entries and it shows Preboot and Recovery on this APFS partition.  It doesn't show the main system volume.

 

Here are photos showing it detects the Preboot and Recovery volumes but not the main system volume

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YdHPn3tfvkEHnvqOR6GVwP5O9oZI79Oe

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_D6ARKax9S33LUD_SiU-jKM4k6XAQszV

 

I boot into the Preboot, which actually goes suspiciously quickly and it arrives at the hello screen

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m5idVdO_a3a6CBWZfixy6GaopLX8AHcL

 

From this I can proceed to language selection and region selection.

 

I checked the system volumes (main+data) with the installer USB and they seem fine.  There's boot.efi in /usr/standalone/i386 and /System/Library/CoreServices on the main system volume and com.apple.Boot.plist on the Data volume at /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

 

So what's going on?  The quirks, ACPI, SMBIOS settings have nothing to do with the detection.  They're runtime options.  My config.plist is in my first post.  Why is the system undetected?  The APFS partition was formatted with newfs_apfs from 15.7.7.  The binaries are from Clover github 5173, including CloverX64.efi and ApfsDriverLoader.efi.  The APFS driver itself is on the APFS container.

 

Edit: I tried resetting nvram (F11) several times.  Doesn't make any difference.

 

 

 

I didn't find anything significant in your configuration file that could prevent it from loading. But I didn't check for any quirks.
Some of them do not match the recommended default values (It needs to be selected individually).

Try this edited config.

And this screenshots of the boot process and my driver folder:
screenshot0.thumb.png.e63215a991c28fe9d8094738dd7f6cf8.png

2026-07-2812_22_25.thumb.jpg.16808b197e3214eb5a37299f34300163.jpg
 

 

config.plist.zip

Edited by MakAsrock
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted

Attached is the log

 

The device is

PciRoot(0x0)\Pci(0x14,0x0)\USB(0x11,0x0)\USB(0x2,0x0)\HD(2,GPT...

 

You can see that it finds volumes

Preboot

MacHD - Data

Recovery

MacHD

Update (this is a snapshot)

VM

 

Then later when creating menu entries, it creates menu entries for Preboot and Recovery, and skips all the other volumes.

2026-07-28_09-46_CLOVERX64.EFI.log

  • Like 1
Slice
Slice
Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Zenith432 said:

No.  I said I was using 5173 in my first post.  Downloaded binary from github.

Please clarify how you booted into the 3rd stage of the install - did Clover show you an icon or did you need to show hidden options (F3) and use the Preboot volume?  I don't get an icon for booting the 3rd stage.  I can expose the Preboot with F3 and use that.

 

I also said this in my first post

'Clover does show an option to boot the APFS partition from the "Preboot" volume, but this starts and hangs midway eventually rebooting.'

 

I think I misinterpreted this.  In the 3rd stage, with no icon, I tried booting the Preboot instead.  There is a progress bar without a timer.  It went through about midway, then got stuck there for some minutes and finally rebooted.  After the reboot there was again no icon.  So I interpreted this to mean that it's stuck in some kind of loop and not succeeding and didn't try to boot the Preboot again.  But it may have completed the 3rd stage and now I was supposed to start the 4th stage the same way.  On the Mac mini, during the 3rd stage the progress bar moved through until the end before rebooting so it looked like a successful completion.  Also, when booting the Mac mini before the 3rd stage into the boot selection menu by holding the Alt key - it shows an option for booting the newly installing disk.  There is an icon for it.

 

PS

I see in the config.plist you uploaded that DefaultVolume is set to LastBootedVolume which is taken from nvram.  Before the 3rd stage, it would be set to the system volume 'MacHD' which was used to boot the 2nd stage, and as I said in a previous post there is a /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi there.  There is no com.apple.Boot.plist in any of the usual locations.  So set to LastBootedVolume it may boot automatically to something that works.  I have DefaultVolume set to Windows, so have to manually select what to boot - and there is no icon for the installing disk.  It's not detected.  It's detected before the 2nd stage (when boot.efi is under the 'macos Install Data' tree), but not before the 3rd stage.

The MacHD APFS volume was formatted with the default case-insensitive, although system files always have the same case so I don't see why it would matter.

 

Update:

The plot thickens.  I connected the external HDD with the macos 15.7.7 that was successfully installed and is bootable on mac mini to PC.  Booted to Clover to scan it.  Guess what?  Clover does not detect the system.  I then press F3 to show the hidden entries and it shows Preboot and Recovery on this APFS partition.  It doesn't show the main system volume.

 

Here are photos showing it detects the Preboot and Recovery volumes but not the main system volume

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YdHPn3tfvkEHnvqOR6GVwP5O9oZI79Oe

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_D6ARKax9S33LUD_SiU-jKM4k6XAQszV

 

I boot into the Preboot, which actually goes suspiciously quickly and it arrives at the hello screen

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m5idVdO_a3a6CBWZfixy6GaopLX8AHcL

 

From this I can proceed to language selection and region selection.

 

I checked the system volumes (main+data) with the installer USB and they seem fine.  There's boot.efi in /usr/standalone/i386 and /System/Library/CoreServices on the main system volume and com.apple.Boot.plist on the Data volume at /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

 

So what's going on?  The quirks, ACPI, SMBIOS settings have nothing to do with the detection.  They're runtime options.  My config.plist is in my first post.  Why is the system undetected?  The APFS partition was formatted with newfs_apfs from 15.7.7.  The binaries are from Clover github 5173, including CloverX64.efi and ApfsDriverLoader.efi.  The APFS driver itself is on the APFS container.

 

Edit: I tried resetting nvram (F11) several times.  Doesn't make any difference.

 

 

 

Strange you have a problem. What I did:

1. Start installation. I didn't use any USB, the package is located on other partition. Clover is located on EFI folder of the hard drive.

2. Reboot to Clover and I see a partition with "Boot Install macOS from..." and "Boot MacOS via Preboot...". Choose first automatically.

3. Second reboot there are no icon with "...Instal...", there are only "... macOS via Preboot...". Choose it automatically. I didn't touch keyboard or mouse.

4,5,6 As many reboots as needed always automatically. I can go to rest or drink. Clover knows what to choose at next reboot.

May be you have a problem with external drive which was lost at next reboot? I made the whole process on internal drive.

  • Like 2
MakAsrock
MakAsrock
Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Zenith432 said:

Attached is the log

 

The device is

PciRoot(0x0)\Pci(0x14,0x0)\USB(0x11,0x0)\USB(0x2,0x0)\HD(2,GPT...

 

You can see that it finds volumes

Preboot

MacHD - Data

Recovery

MacHD

Update (this is a snapshot)

VM

 

Then later when creating menu entries, it creates menu entries for Preboot and Recovery, and skips all the other volumes.

2026-07-28_09-46_CLOVERX64.EFI.log 32.94 kB · 0 downloads

Set ResizeGpuBars to 0 and I think everything will finally load.

  • Like 2
Slice
Slice
Posted
Posted

See 

52:718  0:002   - [!] efi-boot-device-data not found
52:721  0:002   - found entry 0. 'Boot Microsoft EFI Boot from EFI', Volume 'EFI', DevicePath 'PciRoot(0x0)\Pci(0x1D,0x2)\Pci(0x0,0x0)\NVMe(0x1,64-60-4B-00-03-8E-E3-8C)\HD(1,GPT,70D4251A-99AF-4DE9-A93C-C8A8D4BCEEFA,0x800,0x64000)\EFI\microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi'

For such BIOSes we have the follow method:
1. Rename /EFI/microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi to /EFI/microsoft/boot/bootmgfw-orig.efi

2. Copy CloverX64.efi to be renamed to /EFI/microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi

Now your BIOS will start /EFI/microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi but this is a Clover while the Clover will now how to boot Windows using bootmgfw-orig.efi ;)

  • Like 1
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted

Ok, I got it, I deleted hiding of Preboot from config.plist.  I'll try the install again on Sata SSD and also set ResizeGPUBars to zero to see if helps with the erratic progress bars during the install.

 

6 minutes ago, Slice said:

Now your BIOS will start /EFI/microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi but this is a Clover while the Clover will now how to boot Windows using bootmgfw-orig.efi ;)

I don't need this.  What you don't see in the log is that there is an entry for Clover that I created manually with bcfg boot in efi shell and bios boots that.

 

Thanks a lot.

  • Like 2
Zenith432
Zenith432
Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, Slice said:

So, the installation is successful?

Yes, in the end I installed it with my original config on Sata SSD by just booting from Preboot over and over stages 3rd through 5th and ignoring the erratic behavior of the progress bars.  I blocked RealtekRTL8111.kext to prevent it from connecting to Apple servers during the install.

 

ResizeGPUBars=0 didn't seem to make any difference so I reverted it.

 

I migrated the system from a TimeMachine backup of Catalina and it went smoothly about 15 minutes.

 

Thanks a lot.

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