10.13 crashing on boot on 2009 MP

[Loa]

Hello,

My 2009 MP has been firmware updated (to a 5,1) for a long time now, running flawlessly. I installed 10.13 on my SSD (Vertex 4, connected to one of the two optical bays SATA ports), and when the install finished and rebooted, it crashed.

Now it crashes a second after showing the grey apple, giving me the message that the system was restarted because of a problem. It then attempts to boot again and fails, looping like this.

After booting from my back-up, I confirmed that the SSD was formatted to the new APFS format and that all of its content seemed intact. But it won't boot...

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[h9826790]

Hello,

My 2009 MP has been firmware updated (to a 5,1) for a long time now, running flawlessly. I installed 10.13 on my SSD (Vertex 4, connected to one of the two optical bays SATA ports), and when the install finished and rebooted, it crashed.

Now it crashes a second after showing the grey apple, giving me the message that the system was restarted because of a problem. It then attempts to boot again and fails, looping like this.

After booting from my back-up, I confirmed that the SSD was formatted to the new APFS format and that all of its content seemed intact. But it won't boot...

Any ideas?

Thanks

Try boot from the backup, reformat the SSD to HFS+ and clone the system back to the SSD (If this the is only SSD you have, you may clone the system to another HFS+ hard drive first, try to boot from it, and then clone it back).

IMO, it's better to avoid APFS.

 

[Loa]

Hmm. I didn't know I could avoid APFS. It didn't even ask me to change the format.

Ok. So you want me to clone the 10.13 SSD to a HSF+ device?
[doublepost=1529885188][/doublepost]The back-up is 10.12

 

[h9826790]

Hmm. I didn't know I could avoid APFS. It didn't even ask me to change the format.

Ok. So you want me to clone the 10.13 SSD to a HSF+ device?
[doublepost=1529885188][/doublepost]The back-up is 10.12

Yes, you can try that.

The latest 10.12.6 should able to read APFS properly. Good enough to clone all files to a HFS+ drive. My suggestion is to use Carbon Copy Cloner. This can make sure the target drive is also bootable.

 

[Loa]

Ok. I still have a spare HFS+ drive laying around. I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

Doing it now. Carbon Copy Cloner didn't ask question about bootability or the recovery partition. I'll see how it goes once it's done.

 

[crjackson2134]

Ok. I still have a spare HFS+ drive laying around. I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

Doing it now. Carbon Copy Cloner didn't ask question about bootability or the recovery partition. I'll see how it goes once it's done.

Please post back with results. Very interested to find out myself. BTW, what brand and model is the SSD that is on APFS and failing to boot?

 

[Loa]

Ok. Interesting problem. When using Carbon Copy Cloner (5.0.3) to clone the SSD with 10.13 on a regular HFS+ disc, it only copies 150GB of the 240GB that are actually on the SSD. There's a "Telemetry" folder and the "Users" folders. The rest of the system folders are not there.

I can see those files on the SSD using the Finder, but while CCC sees them in the list of files to copy, it doesn't copy them.

Any ideas as to why?


About the SSD: The SSD is an OCZ Vertex 4 that has served me well for years on many OSes. It was plugged on a cheap SATA3 card, but I placed it on a regular optical bay SATA2 port for the 10.13 upgrade to minimize incompatibilty issues.

 

[Loa]

Well, I cloned the 10.13 installation onto a HFS+ HDD and it did exactly the same thing: crash very early during boot, immediately after the grey apple appears.

Any ideas on what's going wrong?

 

[h9826790]

Well, I cloned the 10.13 installation onto a HFS+ HDD and it did exactly the same thing: crash very early during boot, immediately after the grey apple appears.

Any ideas on what's going wrong?

Up to this stage, I can only assume the upgrade process went bad and corrupted the whole OS.

It's time to restore from backup and update again. Or try a flesh installation if you really want the new OS.

 

[Loa]

Ok. Update. Reformatting the SSD to HFS+ and cloning the 10.12.6 back-up (from which I was running the computer) failed. The cloning went fine, but the mac would not boot from the SSD. Strangely enough, formatting that SSD into HFS+ again, but this time from a 10.13 recovery partition (!) and THEN cloning my back-up again, worked.

Right now I've booted from that SSD and everything works great in 10.12.6.

I think my next step will be to do a fresh install on one of my spare HDD.

All I want from the new OS is to be able to play WoW with a Metal GPU. I've heard reports that Metal GPUs on 10.12 could generate screen tearing (and that 10.13.4 fixes them). If that's not the case specifically with WoW, I'll gladly stay with 10.12!

 

[Loa]

Ok, new update with crucial info.

I installed 10.13 on a blank HDD and everything went flawlessly. 10.13 runs (and boots!) without a hitch. But on the first boot, once the desktop was up, I got a message telling me that it previously couldn't launch because of a kernel extension conflict.

Is there anyway I could know which one it is? Or even which kernel extension I installed?

Thanks.

 

[Loa]

Final update: there was simply no way to upgrade my 10.12 OS to 10.13. I probably installed a few components that were incompatible and the installer couldn't deal with them. I reformatted the SSD and did a fresh install. It's working great, but I have to migrate everything now... It will be a long day!


Update: I found the culprit: the SiliconImage 3132 drivers. As soon as I reinstalled them (and I mean the same second!), the mac crashed.

Sucks that I can't use my external enclosure anymore though!