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dougp59

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 3, 2016
28
19
HOW DO I ACCESS THE RECOVERY PARTITION WITH A WEB DRIVER GPU?
PROBLEM: If you have installed a new GPU that requires drivers to boot and you need to use the Recovery partition, your Mac Pro will go into an endless reboot cycle without ever reaching the desktop. If you do not have another GPU handy this may seem like an impossible situation.

SOLUTION:The answer is to not use the Apple supplied drivers and just rely on the EFI driver.
  1. Boot into Single User mode by holding "S" and "Command" keys during boot.
  2. You will see a black screen with a wall of text. At the text prompt type: sudo nvram boot-args="nv_disable=1"
  3. Press the "Return" key
  4. At the next text prompt type: reboot
  5. Press the "Return" key
  6. Hold the "Option" key as your Mac Pro reboots to choose the Recovery partition. Your Mac Pro will be running on the EFI drivers only.
  7. Do what you need to do in Recovery.
  8. Lastly, open the Terminal application. In the Terminal window type: sudo nvram boot-args="nvda_drv=1"
  9. Press the "Return" key
  10. The previous nv_disable command has now been removed and the Web driver has been activated. Reboot your Mac Pro and it should boot up normally.

    Courtesy of:http://www.macvidcards.com/recovery-partition-booting-with-maxwell.html
 
HOW DO I ACCESS THE RECOVERY PARTITION WITH A WEB DRIVER GPU?
PROBLEM: If you have installed a new GPU that requires drivers to boot and you need to use the Recovery partition, your Mac Pro will go into an endless reboot cycle without ever reaching the desktop. If you do not have another GPU handy this may seem like an impossible situation.

SOLUTION:The answer is to not use the Apple supplied drivers and just rely on the EFI driver.
  1. Boot into Single User mode by holding "S" and "Command" keys during boot.
  2. You will see a black screen with a wall of text. At the text prompt type: sudo nvram boot-args="nv_disable=1"
  3. Press the "Return" key
  4. At the next text prompt type: reboot
  5. Press the "Return" key
  6. Hold the "Option" key as your Mac Pro reboots to choose the Recovery partition. Your Mac Pro will be running on the EFI drivers only.
  7. Do what you need to do in Recovery.
  8. Lastly, open the Terminal application. In the Terminal window type: sudo nvram boot-args="nvda_drv=1"
  9. Press the "Return" key
  10. The previous nv_disable command has now been removed and the Web driver has been activated. Reboot your Mac Pro and it should boot up normally.

    Courtesy of:http://www.macvidcards.com/recovery-partition-booting-with-maxwell.html
This is true only for Mac EFI GPUs, no Maxwell or Pascal GPUs will work with Recovery without EFI.
 
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