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E7440: Trouble installing Catalina


MatrixHack

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Hello,
I'm trying to install catalina to my Laptop ( Dell e7440 ).
I had mojave working in this previously, and from there I downloaded catalina very long ago. Today, i saw this guide :


and decided to install catalina. I Followed the new install method because i wanted a fresh install.
and i also used this bootpack :



First I updated some the kexts available in EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Others which i could find from the links provided from that link above.
Then i rebooted to install and successfully got to the catalina installation page. ( One thing to note here.... when i boot the first clover that is loaded is Clover Version 2.4k rev 4871 , and then i had to choose 'Boot UEFI optical from Install MacOS catalina'  to go to the latest version 5118)

I erased my install drive completely and started the installation, the installation went fine and rebooted, now in Clover ( 2.4k rev 4871) i selected boot MacOS Install from Catalina ( i named the drive catalina as said in the guide ) and it got stuck at the very beginning. I restarted the laptop and selected the same macos install from Catalina with verbose option and it gave me this ( the image attached )

FYI:
processor : core i5
bios : A08

 

IMG_20200526_160807.jpg

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did you notice this ?
after installing it boots back to 4871 and when i go to 5118 from there is no options to continue the installation. it only has the 'Boot macOS Install from Install macOS Catalina'

SO, i noticed that v4871 is present in the system even without the USB inserted. How do i remove the v4871 ?

EDIT : i cannot see my usb in uefi boot options i have to go to v4871 and then to v5118. so i need a way to remove v4871. I did a complete erase of the ssd but the v4871 is still present there. please help ! @Jake Lo

UPDATE : I copied the EFI folder from USB to THE INSTALLED LOCATION EFI and now i'm able to boot to v5118 but installation is not working
it is stuck at the '+++++++++++++++++++...' thing

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It sounds like your SSD contains Clover 4871, and I'm not sure about that 5118 but it sounds like it's probably not bootable. One things's for sure, it shouldn't switch like that from one to the other. That's the UEFI bios trying to find a bootable partition. I'm thinking either it's missing some drivers (NOTE: driver location has changed, by the way, so it could be why it fails to boot) oor...something else is not right. Config should be the same.

 

Drivers from /drivers64UEFI should now be under drivers/UEFI

Drivers from /drivers64 should now be under drivers/BIOS

 

You should not have any drivers named "[driver name]-64.efi". Since Clover only supports 64-bit drivers.

For newer Clover, your drivers should be under drivers/UEFI (for UEFI systems) and driver/BIOS (for Legacy systems).

 

So, what I would suggest is...if you have 4871 (to your SSD I suppose) then...what you could do is copy/paste that EFI folder from your SSD to your USB drive containing the Catalina installer. Make sure your drivers are respecting this exact location.

 

One other thing that Clover does is it makes backups of itself on your system partition in a folder called EFI-backups. That's usually useful. But you can delete some of the old "snapshots". :) 

 

So, what I would do...is this:

1. if the 4871 Clover is working (doesn't matter right now that you can't use it for Catalina, it just matters that you can use it to boot), then copy-paste that to the USB drive you want to use for booting Catalina installer

2. use the official Clover installer pkg (I would suggest downloading from their official website) to update the Clover on your USB (so you can use it to install Catalina later on).

3. make sure the drivers folder structure is ok! This is important. Otherwise, you can end up with an unbootable system. At least when booting from your USB.

4. do a test boot from the USB into your current system (not Catalina installer). Make sure you can boot whatever version you've got right now with that USB drive. If you can, then you can move on to actually using the same drive for installing Catalina.

5. when you're done, update your SSD Clover to the same version as the one on the USB drive. Either copy-paste from USB to SSD, or just use the installer  I mentioned at Step 2 to update that, as well. Again, please, double/triple check the drivers folder structure after Clover update!

 

If you need more help, remove the SMBIOS information from your config and upload your updated Clover EFI folder.

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7 minutes ago, arsradu said:

copy/paste that EFI folder from your SSD to your USB drive

after i posted that update, i did the exact opposite to what you have mentioned.

I copied EFI from USB to SSD and now boot to clover 5118.
But now i can't see my SSD in the options provided in Clover, it just shows the Installer Drives' options. And clicking in the first one which says 'Boot macOS Install from Install macOS Catalina' with verbose mode takes me to a screen showing '++++++++++++++..' stuff and it's stuck there.

 

Clicking on the second option 'Boot macOS optical ... from Install macOS Catalina' it takes me to another clover with a white UI , i can give you the images if you want it and there i get the same option as above which first let me install Catalina, but now it also is stuck in a screen with '_' cursor.

What can i do now ??

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Yeah, that's not what I meant. :)  And doing the opposite means you probably replaced your existing (but working) 4871 with 5118...

 

The reason you probably don't see your system is because you're missing the APFS driver from that 5118. That's why I suggested taking 4871 which is working and updating it to 5118. Not the other way around. :)) Cause now you can't boot.

 

Do you have any working operating system you can use to fix your USB drive first? It's a good thing Clover makes those backups, cause you can use them to just copy-paste from EFI-backups into EFI(partition)/EFI(folder). But the problem is you need access to that partition. Which is not gonna be easy, since your system partition is probably APFS.

 

Do you have another USB drive with a working version of Clover that could get you back into the OS? Or can you make one? 

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16 minutes ago, arsradu said:

Do you have another USB drive with a working version of Clover that could get you back into the OS? Or can you make one? 

i have a windows / linux system nearby and a couple of pendrives . What should i do now exactly ? Thank you

UPDATE : i copied an EFI from a post and now when i booted to the White clover i could see the Install macOS from Catalina, i opted it and now it's working

UPDATE : i could reach the apple logo ... it started with '11minutes remaining' but then suddenly said something and restarted

UPDATE : now reached a stage which says '8 minutes remaining' and i see some disk activity too. hope it installs without any problem

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