Imac stuck in recovery after using OCLP

[Kash mclain]

Hello I need help. My situation is that I have a 2009 imac 10,1 that's latest supported version of macOS was high sierra. So I used OCLP to root to big sur which was successsful., but then I wanted to try to do the same process again to update its OS to sonoma and it failed and blacked screened me and would flash back and forth between a white outlined image of a mouse and then a driver of some kind. And now all I can do is boot into recovery mode but now it won't reinstall big sur bc It waS installed with OCLP which is no longer on the computer bc you wipe it to install so now i can't recover my imac and I don't know if there's a way to recover it using my time marine backup of of a thumb drive bc I can't reinstall an OS so I'm lost on what to do now

 

[headlessmike]

When installing Sonoma on an older Mac that like yours, you need to use a USB keyboard and mouse connected through an external USB 2.0 or 3.0 hub to finish the installation. Bluetooth won't work until you install root patches once the system is running and connecting a USB keyboard or mouse into the machine won't work either because USB 1.1 (which most keyboards and mice use) support needs a patch as well.

 

[Kash mclain]

When installing Sonoma on an older Mac that like yours, you need to use a USB keyboard and mouse connected through an external USB 2.0 or 3.0 hub to finish the installation. Bluetooth won't work until you install root patches once the system is running and connecting a USB keyboard or mouse into the machine won't work either because USB 1.1 (which most keyboards and mice use) support needs a patch as we

Ok but the problem is that I accidentally deleted the sonoma download that I as applying bc I restored the drive without making sure I selected the correct option when restoring in disk utility so instead if restoring from my thumb drive which is what I was trying to test. I accidentally overwritesd the thum drive with OCLP and the sonoma download so now I'm stuck

When installing Sonoma on an older Mac that like yours, you need to use a USB keyboard and mouse connected through an external USB 2.0 or 3.0 hub to finish the installation. Bluetooth won't work until you install root patches once the system is running and connecting a USB keyboard or mouse into the machine won't work either because USB 1.1 (which most keyboards and mice use) support needs a patch as well.

 

[Kash mclain]

?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

You can use another Mac to create a USB Installer of Sonoma, then generate and overwrite the OCLP EFI on the USB flash drive.

After that, you can plug the USB flash drive, plus a USB keyboard & Mouse to your iMac 10,1 to do a clean install.

 

[Kash mclain]

Will this work even tho my imac is stuck in recovery mode with no way to access files or re install macOS bc even if I downloaded high sierra which is the last macOS supported on this imac . I have no way of accessing the download to build a new disk drive with high sierra on it where I can then attempt to use OCLP to build a new boot installer for sonoma

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Will this work even tho my imac is stuck in recovery mode with no way to access files or re install macOS bc even if I downloaded high sierra which is the last macOS supported on this imac . I have no way of accessing the download to build a new disk drive with high sierra on it where I can then attempt to use OCLP to build a new boot installer for sonoma

Can you open your iMac to replace the internal drive with a blank one?
After that, if you boot the iMac up with the USB installer, do a tripple PRAM reset, will it be stuck with Recovery mode again?
Blank SSD and USB installer are supposed to be prepared on another Mac.

1. It's supposed to be easy to remove the internal drive of an iMac 10,1
2. The Recovery mode is supposed to be adhere to an issue (file system or something) on the internal drive. So when you remove or wipe out the drive, Recovery issue is supposed to be removed as well.
3. With no OS file on the internal drive, and after a PRAM reset, the iMac is supposed to search for a bootable device first internal, then external (USB), if it can find bootable files on the USB installer, it will start reading the files from there and boot.

If you have no way to create a USB installer, then I suggest you get help from another person who owns a working Mac computer. Creating the Mac OS USB installer from a Windows PC is a little more complicated, but doable as well. Search on Hackintosh forums for the how-to. I own several working Macs so I never bother to study or try this method.