Upgrading from Catalina to BigSur. Never seems to work.

vanquish

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I currently run Catalina 10.15.7 which mostly runs fine. The only thing that doesn't work is AirDrop but I can live without that.

I would like to upgrade to BigSur and I have tried this several times before but always seem to get stuck on the Apple logo on a black screen and cannot get any further. I am using a cloned drive by the way so if it all goes wrong again, there is nothing lost but time. I would definitely like to try and crack this though.

My Motherboard is a Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi.
CPU is a Ryzen 3600
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 32MHz C16 XMP
Hard Drive Crucial MX500 500GB
Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB (XFX)

For some reason all that works fine with Catalina but results in a black screen with BigSur.

It is probably something in the EFI but I cannot figure out what. Perhaps someone who is already running BigSur on a B540 I can shed some light on what the problem maybe?
 

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elixir

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we have the same mobo its a great mini itx with wifi, my system start from catalina then big sur + monterey + windows.
 

vanquish

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So how did you go about upgrading to BigSur? Every time I have attempted it I just end up with either a black screen or a black screen with the Apple logo on it.
 

elixir

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So how did you go about upgrading to BigSur? Every time I have attempted it I just end up with either a black screen or a black screen with the Apple logo on it.
I have modified your EFI with mine, try this in USB if can boot.
input your SMBIOS and NVRAM.

sorry edit: re-attached file due to my network problem.

edit again: can you check again the attached EFI if have the NVRAM data? I have network problem sorry bout that.
 

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Last edited:

vanquish

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Thanks so much for taking the time to do that! The NVRAM data is in there. I will give it a try and let you know how it goes.
 

vanquish

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Just. quick thought. How would I "upgrade" from Catalina with your EFI?

I am thinking perhaps boot to Catalina, mount the EFI and replace it with yours, plus my serial etc. Then run the BigSur update. Is that likely to work or is the only way to do a fresh install from USB?
 

elixir

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Just. quick thought. How would I "upgrade" from Catalina with your EFI?

I am thinking perhaps boot to Catalina, mount the EFI and replace it with yours, plus my serial etc. Then run the BigSur update. Is that likely to work or is the only way to do a fresh install from USB?
i would suggest to mount the efi with your catalina usb installer, put that efi, and boot. this way it will not mess up your catalina, if can boot then update big sur from catalina once available in your preferences.
if nothing update to show up, you have an option to fresh install from your usb

this is what i have;
1. usb installer for big sur
2. usn installer for monterey
just incase i got into trouble i can re-install anytime
 
Last edited:

vanquish

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Thanks. First I am going to try a normal update from Catalina to BigSur. I know it won't boot but, I have two drives, both with exactly the same copy of Catalina. So I can then mount the EFI from the BigSur drive, change it for your EFI and then try and boot again. I always clone my drives so if the update doesn't work I won't lose anything.
 

vanquish

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Well, that didn't work. Got the same black screen with the Apple logo as all the other times I have tried the update. I just can't understand why this doesn't work.

In the image below you can see my boot screen before I choose which drive to boot from. The 'Catalina' drive is the one with your EFI and the 'Catalina 2' is my cloned disc.

I can boot into Catalina with your EFI so that is fine as far as it goes. However, if I choose the 'macOS Installer' option I get the black screen with Apple logo.

I am not sure why the EFI appears on that screen. It wasn't there before.


 

elixir

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delete this NVRAM Boot-Args: "agdpmod=pikera" and "vsmcgen=1"
 

vanquish

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Thanks. I tried that but it is still the same. :(

The only consistent difference between my system and others who have the same motherboard etc is the graphics card. I can't see why that would be a problem since my card is compatible with BigSur but perhaps it is a possibility?
 

elixir

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Thanks. I tried that but it is still the same. :(

The only consistent difference between my system and others who have the same motherboard etc is the graphics card. I can't see why that would be a problem since my card is compatible with BigSur but perhaps it is a possibility?
can you do more test again? try to enable all the kernel patches, except for the mtrr you need to enable either alrgrey pat fix or shaneee pat fix. (there are i think a total of 45 patches)
yeah i noticed that you have the older gpu but that should not be the case.
 

vanquish

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This doesn't seem to be moving along. Nothing I try seems to work. Constantly stuck at the black screen and apple logo. Yet it boots into Catalina just fine.

Long shot but is there anything in the bios I should be changing?
 

vanquish

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Interesting thing. As nothing was working I thought I would just do a clean install of BigSur? I created the boot USB with BigSur, copied your EFI to it and tried to boot from the USB stick.

At first, it would not get past the Aorus bios logo. So I went into the bios and disabled CSM. It then booted to the drive selection window and showed the USB stick with the BigSur icon.



I noticed there was a huge delay before I could use the mouse or keyboard to select it. Not sure if that is relevant. On selecting it I just got a window showing a circle with a diagonal line through it and support.apple.com/mac/startup url.

I checked the EFI folder on the hard drive I am trying to upgrade/install BigSur on and noticed there was now a bunch of OpenCore text files. The times on them coincided with each attempt to run the BigSur upgrade and I assume were generated in the background whilst all I could see was the black screen with apple logo?

The interesting part is at the bottom of each of these files it shows this:

\SystemConfiguration\\com.apple.Boot.plist, DP: 0
00:052 00:001 AAPL: [EB:#KF] ()
00:053 00:001 AAPL: [EB|#MBA:CL] ()
00:054 00:001 AAPL: [EB|#MBA:NV] (npci=0x2000 alcid=11 shikigva=16 agdpmod=pikera slide=142)
00:055 00:001 AAPL: [EB|#MBA:KF] ()
00:056 00:001 AAPL: [EB|#MBA:OUT] (npci=0x2000 alcid=11 shikigva=16 agdpmod=pikera slide=142)
00:057 00:001 AAPL: [EB|`CSR:S] csr-active-config = 0x00000040
00:058 00:001 AAPL: [EB|#OPT:BM] 0x84100
00:059 00:001 AAPL: [EB|`OPT:LXF] 'LF (\\CB9D2DFD-E897-4A4E-A144-D127A9106E9D\\System\\Library\\CoreServices\\PlatformSupport.plist)
00:060 00:001 AAPL: [EB|`LD:LF] FIO: 0, DIR: 1, P: \\CB9D2DFD-E897-4A4E-A144-D127A9106E9D\\System\\Library\\CoreServices\\PlatformSupport.plist, DP: 0
00:062 00:002 AAPL: [EB|`G:CS] } Ok(0)
00:100 00:037 AAPL:
00:101 00:001 AAPL: ***********************************************************
00:102 00:000 AAPL: This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform!
00:103 00:001 AAPL: ***********************************************************
00:105 00:001 AAPL: Reason: Mac-F4208CC8
00:106 00:000 AAPL: Sleeping for 30 seconds before exiting...

Perhaps that gives a clue as to what may be going on here?
 

Shaneee

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Code:
00:101 00:001 AAPL: ***********************************************************
00:102 00:000 AAPL: This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform!
00:103 00:001 AAPL: ***********************************************************
00:105 00:001 AAPL: Reason: Mac-F4208CC8

The SMBios you are using it incompatible. Switch it to iMacPro1,1 or MacPro7,1
 

elixir

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my system is using iMacPro1,1 fyi
 

vanquish

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Ok got BigSur up and running. I had to use a spare SSD formatted to macOS extended journaled. Nothing else would work.

The only problems I have now are my apple id won't work for AirDrop and messenger, etc. I can put my details in, I get sent a code to my phone but when I enter that on the computer it says it cannot connect to the server. I had the same issues with Catalina and despite changing the serial numbers more times than I care to count it never worked.

WiFi doesn't work without HeliPort running, but everything else seems to work at the moment.
 

elixir

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Ok got BigSur up and running. I had to use a spare SSD formatted to macOS extended journaled. Nothing else would work.

The only problems I have now are my apple id won't work for AirDrop and messenger, etc. I can put my details in, I get sent a code to my phone but when I enter that on the computer it says it cannot connect to the server. I had the same issues with Catalina and despite changing the serial numbers more times than I care to count it never worked.

WiFi doesn't work without HeliPort running, but everything else seems to work at the moment.
glad you made it :)

I have PM you the hardware details to make the Airdrop, AppleID up and running, once you have that specific hardware you can refer to this link and look for "fixing iServices" and/or other items that you want to enable:)

 
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