Recently refurbished a 2008 MBP 4,1 and added a SSD. Thought I'd try @dosdude1 Catalina patcher which looks like it should work. Followed the process on the video and get to the part where it reboots and should go to a black screen with verbose output displayed to continue the installation - only it doesn't. The screen switches to black briefly and then drops back to mac OS Utilities again, apparently abandoning the installation. Has anyone else got this to work on one of these models?
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Catalina patcher on MBP 4,1
- Thread starter SecretSquirrel
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Yes. And I have an SSD too.
Is your drive APFS+?
That was my problem with my Mac Mini. The restore I made was originally for a hard drive, so under Mojave the Mini wouldn't boot. So, I upgraded to Catalina and that's when I realized (after Catalina not booting) that the drive wasn't APFS. I probably could have stayed on Mojave had I figured that out first.
Thanks @eyoungren - I followed his instructions and formatted the drive to APFS. You referred to APFS+, is that different to what I've done?
Probably not. I'm so used to typing in HFS+ that I may have added the plus in error.
I think APFS+ is the encrypted version of APFS. I'm not on an APFS system now so can't remember/check.
On Catalina the indexing of the Fotos-App might become a show-stopper. (like first Spotlight-indexing on ol' PPC)
There's a way to bring that indexing to a halt...
Link/thread i here #125 - about Face recognition / "photoanalysisd"
I don't know, if it's still relevant or if anything changed with CatalinaPatch etc since then, 'cause I stick with Mojave to keep 32bit and HFS+ alive.
There's a way to bring that indexing to a halt...
Link/thread i here #125 - about Face recognition / "photoanalysisd"
I don't know, if it's still relevant or if anything changed with CatalinaPatch etc since then, 'cause I stick with Mojave to keep 32bit and HFS+ alive.
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Thanks everyone - eventually got it to work.
From what I can work out, what was happening was that when the first phase of installation was done and the machine rebooted, it didn't see the new installation partition as a valid boot drive so booted off the USB drive again, leading back to the macOS utilities.
So when it was rebooting after the first phase, I pulled the USB drive, forcing it to continue from the ssd. What appeared to be a normal installation then took place (and took maybe 40 mins) and it then rebooted again, at which point I re-inserted the USB drive and booted from that to do a post-install of the patches. When that finished, it rebooted again, taking forever ( 15 mins maybe) but did then complete the setup as normal. Once Catalina was up and running, the Update Patcher utility showed an update was available, which I installed.
At first, the cpu was pegged at 80% with nothing running but after another 15 mins it settled down (Spotlight indexing no doubt) to 82% free. At Idle with nothing running it's around 15% cpu, 2Gb ram and 52 degrees C. The only thing I've found so far to not work is the back lit keyboard. Anyone know of a fix?
Many thanks to @dosdude1 and the other contributors for their amazing work 👍😁
From what I can work out, what was happening was that when the first phase of installation was done and the machine rebooted, it didn't see the new installation partition as a valid boot drive so booted off the USB drive again, leading back to the macOS utilities.
So when it was rebooting after the first phase, I pulled the USB drive, forcing it to continue from the ssd. What appeared to be a normal installation then took place (and took maybe 40 mins) and it then rebooted again, at which point I re-inserted the USB drive and booted from that to do a post-install of the patches. When that finished, it rebooted again, taking forever ( 15 mins maybe) but did then complete the setup as normal. Once Catalina was up and running, the Update Patcher utility showed an update was available, which I installed.
At first, the cpu was pegged at 80% with nothing running but after another 15 mins it settled down (Spotlight indexing no doubt) to 82% free. At Idle with nothing running it's around 15% cpu, 2Gb ram and 52 degrees C. The only thing I've found so far to not work is the back lit keyboard. Anyone know of a fix?
Many thanks to @dosdude1 and the other contributors for their amazing work 👍😁
2GB RAM - chapeau!
Another 4 gig RAM and a USB3-ExpressCard would be the ice on the cake ... 😊
I'd check, if that "photoanalysisd" still smokes up a bigger chunk of resources after the first scanning is done.
Having a tiny 12GB partition at the very end of the drive holding the Patcher-software (as with the USB-drive-version) is pretty reassuring, if ever any system-update should brick your running system and hence force another post-install patching procedure.
It has 4Gb already - I did check out the price of 4Gb sticks but they're still too expensive to justify. I have one of those usb3 cards in my 17, thinking about getting another. Good idea about the patcher software though! Does your backlit keyboard work?
Oh, cannot confirm that. My Catalina experience on the MBP4,1 was pretty short and more than a year ago.
With MojavePatch the backlit keyboard works fine.
Yout may try, if LabTick may help as a workaround ...
Thanks @bobesch I'll give it a go. For info, I haven't tweaked anything on this installation and I'm staggered at how well it works. The MBP is idling today at 94% cpu free and 38C (thank you istat menus). Not stressed at all by Catalina. 😁👍