macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[Flacko]

@Flacko , for your mac pro 3,1: did you have to mess with EFI fixes, etc? and the APFS ROM Patcher? I have a lot of experience making hackintoshes and boot EFI, but I never had to mess with it on a real mac: I posted earlier that Catalina and Mojave don't work post install: I get through the black install screen, then on the grey loading bar after reboot, it's stuck at ~90%.

I'm not too clear on what exactly to do, and my cursory checks don't confirm my issue is related to EFI boot, etc. Thanks for any input.
[/QUOTE]
I used the APFS ROM update tool so the cMP3.1 uses APFS natively. This has worked well for me but there are risks you can brick the machine. I have had to edit the EFI as outlined when in error I applied the software APFS fix during an update. Easy to forget to untick the box! My cMP3.1 is using Mojave at the moment but did run Catalina well. It is no longer my main machine. I would suggest you only try to update using one graphics card. There have been reports of issues like yours when trying to install with a metal card and say a GT120 installed at the same time. I would try just the GTX780 first and use the install to this machine option. Just to make sure, you have both power leads connected to the graphics card.

 

[joevt]

If you have a legacy GPU and a metal support GPU, then don't the legacy drivers get installed which ruin the metal GPU?

 

[jhowarth]

Hi all, and @dosdude1

Firstly thanks for your work on the macOS catalina patcher - I've successfully used it on a 2010 macbook pro. I have a problem with another computer: I'm trying to get it working on a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1.

I can install from USB, it goes through the whole process (the black screen install), then after reboot to the grey progress bar only loads to ~80/90% and stalls out. I can't see anything via verbose mode, when the grey screen is loading. I even tried a fresh install to a blank drive (reformatted) - nothing working: do you have any tips for me to investigate the problem? I appreciate any input.

Spec wise I have: GTX 780 and the original graphics card in there too so I can see a boot screen, 24GB of Ram, upgrade to handoff capable Wifi/Bluetooth hardware, a bunch of hard drives in there (including one IDE drive I had laying around and SSD for boot) and a BluRay drive. Also a USB3 PCIe card.

I should mention that I tried with Mojave as well - same problem. Previously I had High Sierra Working (I think from @dosdude1 software too, but I can't remember how I did it. Any clues???
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@Flacko , for your mac pro 3,1: did you have to mess with EFI fixes, etc? and the APFS ROM Patcher? I have a lot of experience making hackintoshes and boot EFI, but I never had to mess with it on a real mac: I posted earlier that Catalina and Mojave don't work post install: I get through the black install screen, then on the grey loading bar after reboot, it's stuck at ~90%.

I'm not too clear on what exactly to do, and my cursory checks don't confirm my issue is related to EFI boot, etc. Thanks for any input.

You should pull the non-metal graphics card and just leave the GTX 780 installed. As pointed out by others, the presence of the non-Metal card will trigger the installation of the legacy video patches that in turn will break acceleration on the Metal card.

After that, reinstall patched Catalina created with the current Catalina Patcher 1.3.0 in order to purge out the legacy video patches. Since you haven't run the APFS ROM patcher on your machine, you'll want to use the default setting for installing the APFS boot patch. While you won't have the boot selector, the patched Catalina installer will autopatch and reboot without it.

 

[SystemHasFailed]

Hello, can bad memory cause Catalina or any other OS to not install ?

Yes, in fact my son's 2017 Macbook Pro stopped doing any upgrade patches or OS installs. Otherwise it appeared to be running fine. It's built in diagnostic was passing.. but when a more comprehensive test was run at the genius bar it showed ram failures all over the place.

Thank goodness for Applecare..

 

[finch13]

You should pull the non-metal graphics card and just leave the GTX 780 installed. As pointed out by others, the presence of the non-Metal card will trigger the installation of the legacy video patches that in turn will break acceleration on the Metal card.

After that, reinstall patched Catalina created with the current Catalina Patcher 1.3.0 in order to purge out the legacy video patches. Since you haven't run the APFS ROM patcher on your machine, you'll want to use the default setting for installing the APFS boot patch. While you won't have the boot selector, the patched Catalina installer will autopatch and reboot without it.

If you try to boot with just the GTX780, you can't see the boot options screen
I am installing into a blank drive, from a USB
I made the USB with both my graphics cards installed
I have 10.11 on another drive internally so I can get into something running if needed...
What exactly is the process using the dosdude tool - need I re-make the boot USB but this time with some options checked? the one I have now is just made without any changes to the options when building it.
but how to get to USB boot without a mac flashed card?
Thanks for the hints @jhowarth

 

[jhowarth]

If you try to boot with just the GTX780, you can't see the boot options screen
I am installing into a blank drive, from a USB
I made the USB with both my graphics cards installed
I have 10.11 on another drive internally so I can get into something running if needed...
What exactly is the process using the dosdude tool - need I re-make the boot USB but this time with some options checked? the one I have now is just made without any changes to the options when building it.
but how to get to USB boot without a mac flashed card?
Thanks for the hints @jhowarth

Boot under the 10.11 volume and, with the patched Catalina usb installer inserted, use Startup Disk to select that as your boot disk. When you reboot, it should boot from the patched Catalina usb installer. After the installation, the Catalina disk will already be set as the startup disk and it should boot from it.

 

[Flacko]

If you try to boot with just the GTX780, you can't see the boot options screen
I am installing into a blank drive, from a USB
I made the USB with both my graphics cards installed
I have 10.11 on another drive internally so I can get into something running if needed...
What exactly is the process using the dosdude tool - need I re-make the boot USB but this time with some options checked? the one I have now is just made without any changes to the options when building it.
but how to get to USB boot without a mac flashed card?
Thanks for the hints @jhowarth

Dosdude1 has included an option in the installer that helps those without the Boot options screen. I use this method with a cMP5.1 and RX580. When you run dosdude1’s patcher you select “install to this machine” instead of making a usb installer. Then just follow the screen instructions. This is also much quicker than the usb method.

 

[finch13]

Dosdude1 has included an option in the installer that helps those without the Boot options screen. I use this method with a cMP5.1 and RX580. When you run dosdude1’s patcher you select “install to this machine” instead of making a usb installer. Then just follow the screen instructions. This is also much quicker than the usb method.

just about to do that... and... now the download button in catalinapatcher doesn't work... maybe apple moved the file??

 

[GDMSR]

just about to do that... and... now the download button in catalinapatcher doesn't work... maybe apple moved the file??

I have just re-downloaded the Catalina Patcher, and the button to Download Catalina is working.

 

[Larsvonhier]

...
I (of course) bypassed Migration Assistant and again booted on the external partition for the post-install patches even though it was mentioned that the patches would be applied automatically after installation. First impressions were good, with the feeling that Catalina was smoother if not faster than Mojave. I tried Migration Assistant from Utilities only to have the same issues as others, i.e. being logged out after a few seconds timeout without being able to complete the process and being frozen when logging back in, like in an eternal loop nightmare.
So I manually imported the Users, Applications and Library/Application Support directories from my backup. The install started beachballing a lot, quite obviously for permissions issues as it would lag and suddenly be Ok.
...

Interesting, I shied away from manually copying the User Account contents - as this was a real work machine and not only an experimenter´s platform.
But nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if we can somehow get the Migration Assistant up and running again or if (by some change on Apple´s side) it will be usable again in Catalina updates to come...

 

[deeveedee]

This issue is resolved by installing AppleHWSensor.kext. See my follow-up question a few posts later in this thread.

Thanks to the Catalina Patcher, macOS Catalina is running perfectly on my HackBookPro6,2. While inspecting IORegistryExplorer, I noticed that IOHWControl is not loaded under GFX0 (it is loaded for High Sierra and Mojave). I'm not sure if this is actually a problem (doesn't appear to be based on the laptop's behavior). Has anyone upgraded their MBP6,2 to Catalina and if so, is IOHWControl loading under GFX0? See attached screen shots showing IORegistryExplorer dumps for Catalina and Mojave.

 

[finch13]

I have just re-downloaded the Catalina Patcher, and the button to Download Catalina is working.

tried it with my VPN set to USA too - no luck. I'm located in Germany.
This is the latest app - tried redownloading catalina patcher from the dosdude1 website.
@dosdude1 any idea??
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Boot under the 10.11 volume and, with the patched Catalina usb installer inserted, use Startup Disk to select that as your boot disk. When you reboot, it should boot from the patched Catalina usb installer. After the installation, the Catalina disk will already be set as the startup disk and it should boot from it.

I'm on 10.11 and I can't seem to select the catalina USB as a bootable drive... doesn't show up in the startup drive preference pane. I tried blessing with terminal - nothing.
This is a USB that I was successful in booting previously, made right from the catalina patcher.
So now I try to either make a new one or install directly to my second drive...
but the download catalina button isn't working (see previous post). ugh.

 

[GDMSR]

doesn't show up in the startup drive preference pane

Not sure if this is relevant, but if your Mac is a cMP, the USB stick needs to be in one of the built-in USB 2.0 ports, and not in a PCI USB card, if it is to be used for booting.

 

[deviant]

Be happy this mess doesn’t run natively on your machine. Why even trying to install it on unsupported Macs... 😂

 

[nikibelame]

Hi Everyone,

I have managed to install Catalina on a 'doubly unsupported' MacBook 4.1 ( early 2008 ). I wasn't able to find much info online so went for my own DIY approach. Has anyone else succeeded in doing this? If so it would be interesting to compare notes ( method to install , how well Catalina runs on a MB 4.1 ).

Thanks.

Best Wishes

S

How did you do it? I have a black MacBook early 2008 4.1. I managed to get the installer work with that extra prelinkedkernel and I get into the installer. I format the disk, start installing (short installation 9 minutes), on 4 minutes from the end it reboots and I get the error sign. I suppose it wants to restart to continue the long installation but I can't manage to fix that..

You might have a solution for that please?

best

N

 

[deeveedee]

Thanks to the Catalina Patcher, macOS Catalina is running perfectly on my HackBookPro6,2. While inspecting IORegistryExplorer, I noticed that IOHWControl is not loaded under GFX0 (it is loaded for High Sierra and Mojave). I'm not sure if this is actually a problem (doesn't appear to be based on the laptop's behavior). Has anyone upgraded their MBP6,2 to Catalina and if so, is IOHWControl loading under GFX0? See attached screen shots showing IORegistryExplorer dumps for Catalina and Mojave.

I figured out that AppleHWSensor.kext which is present in /S/L/E in my Mojave install is missing from my Catalina install. I installed AppleHWSensor.kext from Mojave into /L/E in Catalina and IOHWControl is now loaded (see attached screenshot).

Did I miss an option to install this in the Catalina Patcher (was this the LegacyUsbVideoSupport.kext that I didn't install) or is this missing (maybe intentionally) from Catalina Patcher?

 

[Macbookprodude]

This issue is resolved by installing AppleHWSensor.kext. See my follow-up question a few posts later in this thread.

Thanks to the Catalina Patcher, macOS Catalina is running perfectly on my HackBookPro6,2. While inspecting IORegistryExplorer, I noticed that IOHWControl is not loaded under GFX0 (it is loaded for High Sierra and Mojave). I'm not sure if this is actually a problem (doesn't appear to be based on the laptop's behavior). Has anyone upgraded their MBP6,2 to Catalina and if so, is IOHWControl loading under GFX0? See attached screen shots showing IORegistryExplorer dumps for Catalina and Mojave.

hi, I have a native MacBook Pro and for some reason when I tried running the EFI Apple hardware test it knocked out my intel HD4000 graphics kext - when I look at system profiler it states the Nvidia is the main graphics running, while the intel HD4000 shows - Kext not loaded - how do I reload and or reinstall the kext ?

 

[Marty56]

per chance I swapped an SSD from an MacBook Pro 2009 running Catalina to an iMac 2010 which is said not to support Catalina due to Graphics Problems.
It booted and is running fine no problems.

I do not understand this.

 

[ASentientBot]

per chance I swapped an SSD from an MacBook Pro 2009 running Catalina to an iMac 2010 which is said not to support Catalina due to Graphics Problems.
It booted and is running fine no problems.

I do not understand this.

Are you sure it's not a 2009 iMac (these had nVidia Tesla and should work okay)? What graphics card does it have?

Also, Mojave/Cat will boot on a Radeon 5xxx, it just won't run very well and will look like "reduce transparency" is turned on, due to a lack of acceleration. If you try to do anything at all intensive, you'll see why it's labeled as unusable.

 

[Marty56]

Are you sure it's not a 2009 iMac (these had nVidia Tesla and should work okay)? What graphics card does it have?

Also, Mojave/Cat will boot on a Radeon 5xxx, it just won't run very well and will look like "reduce transparency" is turned on, due to a lack of acceleration. If you try to do anything at all intensive, you'll see why it's labeled as unusable.

I am 100% sure. No color problems, everything seems to work. Although a bit slow.
Working
- Pages and numbers
- Safari playing Youtube
- Chrome playing Netflix
- Notes, Reminders,
- Mytourbook (Java App)
- Mail, Contacts, Calendar
- Finder
- iCloud
- Musik, Podcast
- SSD Fan Control
- One Note
- VS Code
- Terminal
- Activities
- Dark mode

Partially working
- Fotos (no display of year, months, ...)
- Maps not working. Map is displayed entirely black. Also in Fotos

Not Working
- Mylio (too bad)
- Kodi

 

[finch13]

Not sure if this is relevant, but if your Mac is a cMP, the USB stick needs to be in one of the built-in USB 2.0 ports, and not in a PCI USB card, if it is to be used for booting.

yeah, it's in one of the front ports.
too bad I can't make a new one with catalina patcher - see my previous post - can't download the installer
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View attachment 888068

Well this is weird...

I am able to download it from a high sierra virtual machine on my windows PC

but it doesn't work on El Capitan on my mac pro.

WTF.

 

[0134168]

yeah, it's in one of the front ports.
too bad I can't make a new one with catalina patcher - see my previous post - can't download the installer
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Well this is weird...

I am able to download it from a high sierra virtual machine on my windows PC

but it doesn't work on El Capitan on my mac pro.

WTF.

What doesn´t work? The patcher?

 

[finch13]

What doesn´t work? The patcher?

the download button, gives the error "could not locate the correct entry..." I posted a pic of the error earlier. anyway I got it downloaded with my virtual machine.

 

[0134168]

Again… What doesn´t work then? You have the patcher downloaded.

 

[kteboyle]

Hi,
I tried to install the most recent catalina patcher on my MacBookPro8.1 (2011), but I received a message "The volume "Catalina" does not appear to contain a valid copy of macOS Catalina. Are you sure you want to apply patches to this volume?" when I was doing post-install, which means my Catalina doesn't work properly. I don't know what is the problem. Can someone help me with this? Thanks!

I also have this problem, and the recommended patches did not install. @dosdude1 Any idea what we can do to fix this? I did run the Patch Updater, and there are no remaining patches to install, and it does look like many (but not all) of the recommended patches are installed in this view. Are we going to have ongoing issues?