macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[Dilli]

Considering many issues cropping up after installation of 10.15.4 catalina inspite of using patch 1.4 from our great saviour @dosdude1 which I have read on this forum and some got success because of newer unsupported macs and thanks to @jackluke who has provided great patches, of course my thanks goes to others too who contributed. No offence to anyone.

I have still not updated to 10.15.4 and am on 10.15.2. I have had no shutdowns or complaints.
My reason is since I have an old mid 2011 27inch imac which was dead for almost couple of years and Bought it back to life by replacing the graphics card to metal nividia gtx 760M. It was joy ever since.
Thanks to this excellent forum and great people in it who helped.

So I feel everything has a limit. Upgrading version after version may again kill the unsupported imac so I have apprehension whether this is really required.
After going through all patching, post install, again patching for hands off, continuity, and for Mojave Siri and audio issues which requires patching, I have got tired now.

So I decided to retain the existing versions and not update anymore. Like I said there is a limit to everything. This is just my opinion which I have posted.
I am enjoying my iMac 2011 running Catalina as well as Mojave both Os on my unsupported machine.

I realized even just for security updates the whole process of patching is required which is tedious.

I still enjoy reading all your posts and issues and solutions that are posted is information being soaked in.

cheers to all and be safe👍

 

[zfrogman]

I can't get video from zoom.
Do you believe that it is a problem of this patch?
I tried facetime and it worked fine!
Even when running zoom the camera green light appears but I have no video (in the video setting and inside the meeting).
I have a macbook pro mid 2010 17 inch.

Hi,
this is a known issue with Catalina and seems also for supported Macs. You can hear but cannot share or see the shared screen. I have tried using Zoom unsuccessfully with the issue described above since 10.15.2 without success on MBP 8,2 (2011). You can always use however Teamviewer in pretty much the same manner as has been my experience.

FYI: Keep in mind that the free version of Teamviewer must not be used commercially and beware that using Teamviewer with a VPN is flagged as Commercial use (including using on open airport/coffee shop/mall networks, etc.) and you will lose the free use (i.e. you pay for use). To recover non-commercial use, in that case, you have to go through a cumbersome admin process to regain free mode with proof of non-commercial use and can take 3-4 weeks. In other words for "in-home" use.

 

[Pluda]

In Parallels Desktop Preferences - Devices, make sure that the USB device is not already assigned to Your Mac; if it is, remove it from the list.

View attachment 903389

Hello, thanks for reply.
I already have make sure that nothing was assigned, no luck, my mac doesn’t even ask what i want to do with the usb stick.
The only difference between me and you is parallels version. You have 15.1.3 and I have 15.1.2.

 

[Pluda]

Hello, thanks for reply.
I already have make sure that nothing was assigned, no luck, my mac doesn’t even ask what i want to do with the usb stick.
The only difference between me and you is parallels version. You have 15.1.3 and I have 15.1.2.

Well, it must be some kind of trouble with parallels or my windows xp (guest os) installation.

I've just connected a displayLink adapter and parallels asked me where do I wanted to use it.
with any usb stick (tried with 4 different ones) it doesn't ask anything.

now I've managed access to usb's content with share folders (all disks) and Map Mac Volumes to Windows

 

[zfrogman]

Hi All,

Apologies in advanced for how elementary this question may come across...

I've got a 27" Late 2009 iMac, 11,1 with a swapped 1TB SSD and 8gb RAM and looking to run DosDude's patcher to it up to Catalina from El Cap. Main reason for doing this is to be able to run newer Adobe CC and Microsoft Office software as I am now working from home due to COVID.

My Mac does have a HD4850, and from everything i've read the OS install and patch look pretty straight forward (due to the hard work of everyone in this community). I've realize the video card is a non-metal card and that this shouldn't effect the install, however I have read a few posts on this thread that users were not able to install Microsoft Office or Adobe CC as a result of their video card not supporting Metal.

Before I go through the process, can anyone confirm successful Adobe/Microsoft installs on non-metal video cards, specifically the HD4850?

@air.man @dabrain13 @zfrogman @jackluke @absan85

Hi
I can confirm running successfully office and Adobe PS and Acrobat DC on MBP 8,2 on 10.15.4. After 10.15.4 install you will need to reinstall all patches from USB patcher install method (I was unsuccessful with Applications Patcher App as it hung on video patch install). Once done I no longer encountered app crashes in Office every time I tried to open an Office app. Hope this helps.

 

[Dilli]

Your 500GB SSD is dying. (Eventually it's going to unmount itself for the last time and never show up again.) How old is it? If it's still under warranty, you should pursue warranty replacement.

Its brand new ssd crucial 500gb. It is attached to the optical drive cable inside the iMac since Optical drive is removed. I noticed if the PC is cold and when I boot by pressing option key all drives show. Once temperature of machine crosses 40 degree C this SSD drive unmounts . I dont have any clue.

Is it to do with the power that the optical drive gets is less than the Sata connector of the logic board?

So I managed to update both partitions of Mojave and high sierra when the machine was cold by doing so overnight one by one and the following day and updates were installed. However when the CPU temp crosses 40 degrees the drive unmounts and is ejected.

 

[hvds]

Considering many issues cropping up after installation of 10.15.4 catalina inspite of using patch 1.4 from our great saviour @dosdude1 which I have read on this forum and some got success because of newer unsupported macs and thanks to @jackluke who has provided great patches, of course my thanks goes to others too who contributed. No offence to anyone.

I have still not updated to 10.15.4 and am on 10.15.2. I have had no shutdowns or complaints.
My reason is since I have an old mid 2011 27inch imac which was dead for almost couple of years and Bought it back to life by replacing the graphics card to metal nividia gtx 760M. It was joy ever since.
Thanks to this excellent forum and great people in it who helped.

So I feel everything has a limit. Upgrading version after version may again kill the unsupported imac so I have apprehension whether this is really required.
After going through all patching, post install, again patching for hands off, continuity, and for Mojave Siri and audio issues which requires patching, I have got tired now.

So I decided to retain the existing versions and not update anymore. Like I said there is a limit to everything. This is just my opinion which I have posted.
I am enjoying my iMac 2011 running Catalina as well as Mojave both Os on my unsupported machine.

I realized even just for security updates the whole process of patching is required which is tedious.

I still enjoy reading all your posts and issues and solutions that are posted is information being soaked in.

cheers to all and be safe👍

Very nice post!
I can only join you in thanking the knowledgeable and ingenious people who helped us across the hurdles of Catalina, and earlier macOSs already, for our older machines.
The hurdle for 10.15.4 was high but maybe less so than for 10.14.4. The first beta of 10.15.5 seems to go again smoothly. I'm quite confident that my MBP5,2 can make it to the last release of Catalina, maybe again a .6.
That may also be the last macOS upgrade then of my machine. But who knows, I already thought so for the last Mojave release.
I can say that Catalina is very stable for me, better than Mojave which gave me sleep/wake problems. But I do only simple things, like Photos, Affinity Photo, Xcode, some video conferencing; barely entertainment applications which may have more complex graphics needs.

 

[jackluke]

Hello, I just made a release of an external USB OpenCoreAPFSloader , anyone can install it on an external USB flash drive, so if after a macOS upgrade or PRAM reset or post-install patches returns to the stock default apple EFI bootloader, you can plug your USB device and OpenCore will be a bootable external volume.

My OpenCore customized setup is safe and harmless for any EFI mac, using this USBOpenCoreAPFSloader opencore will be installed on an external USB bootable device.

To this release I made also some new experimental additions to OpenCore menu:

- added an UEFI Shell
- added a GRUB Shell
- added a PassMark Memory Test

Other previous feature also included:

- apple efi shortcut commands (CMD+S, CMD+V , etc.) to press before volume selection
- EFI unhidden partition and the ResetNVRAM
- Platform Compatibility Check, SIP and AMFI fully disabled
- @parrotgeek1 LegacyUSBInjector.kext injected on any prelinkedkernel (to allow any stock macOS Recovery and BaseSystem.dmg to load with any IOUSB input devices and also external USB macOS installation)

Click here to download: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader.app.zip
Install also this (to skip the rEFInd pre-boot when using the USB external version): OpenCoreAPFSloaderupdate.app.zip

edit:
If you encounter an issue in making the USBOpenCoreAPFSloader , format first your USB drive as GUID scheme and HFS+, and rename from Finder your USB drive label to OpenCoreAPFSloader, I'll fix this later to use any USB drive label.

edit2:
Added the USB OpenCoreAPFSloader to the System Preferences Startup Disk as volume selector from any macOS system, also selectable from any macOS Recovery or Installer by clicking the finder menu and selecting Startup Disk (or from Utilities menu) and is also possible to use alt-option key after the power-on chime.

 

[mys7]

Hi! I installed Catalina on my mac pro 3.1 (with an upgraded GFX and some other stuff) thanks to the wonderful work of dosdude. Anyway i can't use my external webcam on non-apple apps (Skype, Zoom, even chrome or Firefox). I read it's SIP related. Is it possibile to find a workaround for this? I understood that is not possibile to re-enable sip because the system itself is patched. Thanks in advance

EDIT: i'm super sorry i found it this thread plessbd tccplus GOD BLESS YOU!

 

[Macschrauber]

Hi everyone,
I installed Catalina in my iMac 2009 but I want go back to Mojave, but in the middle of the instalation a prohibited signal appears and there it stays.

I looked csutil and nvram boot-args (look picture)

What can I do? Thanks!


Edit: Finally I boot from USB and apply patches with force cache and all works fine

You had a typo in no_compat_check

 

[jhowarth]

Hi,
this is a known issue with Catalina and seems also for supported Macs. You can hear but cannot share or see the shared screen. I have tried using Zoom unsuccessfully with the issue described above since 10.15.2 without success on MBP 8,2 (2011). You can always use however Teamviewer in pretty much the same manner as has been my experience.

FYI: Keep in mind that the free version of Teamviewer must not be used commercially and beware that using Teamviewer with a VPN is flagged as Commercial use (including using on open airport/coffee shop/mall networks, etc.) and you will lose the free use (i.e. you pay for use). To recover non-commercial use, in that case, you have to go through a cumbersome admin process to regain free mode with proof of non-commercial use and can take 3-4 weeks. In other words for "in-home" use.

At this point, it is almost an act of kindness if your computer won't let you run Zoom.

Thousands of Zoom recordings exposed because of the way Zoom names recordings

 

[Dilli]

@jackluke My current Catalina "csrutil status "shows the following is it ok? I am on 10.15.2

 

[s4keru]

Hi, yesterday I upgraded my MacBook 5,2 to Catalina without issues. Now I have the second one of the same model (5,2) which I wanted to upgrade. It was previously upgraded from El Cap to Mojave on HFS+ and now wanted to upgrade it to Catalina, so I just converted the drive with Mojave to APFS and it was completed successfully but now, when I try to install Catalina on it, it begins, reboots, start main install but when it get halfway through it, it stuck on 23 mins remaining, then it changens to calculating remaining time and then it stops and show mi error that it cannot install macOS on this computer. Tried multiple times and multiple things, date and time is set properly - what can be wrong?

 

[olrik77]

Pretty much what it says. When I tried to wake the MacPro from sleep in those instances, the monitor would never come back from black when the machine was supposed to wake. It appeared to be unresponsive and required a hard reboot. Fortunately that issue hasn't happened for quite sometime. My Energy Saver panel settings are just...View attachment 903391
and in the Desktop & ScreenSaver panel I set a hot corner to 'Put Display to Sleep'. Normally, I shove the mouse to that corner and wait for the machine to sleep on its own. I never bother to explicitly sleep it from the Finder menu.

Bonjour,

Curiously, this afternoon, after a long, long sleep, my machine wakes up without problem...I don't know why ?

But there are reasons that reason ignores !

To be continued...

Many thanks,

Serviteur,

 

[hvds]

@jackluke My current Catalina "csrutil status "shows the following is it ok? I am on 10.15.2


View attachment 903515

That is the correct setting - all seven items disabled.

 

[Charles Langlois]

I tried it, works, but if i choose the APP and then chose "all" permissions, it does nothing...
I need to choose (for Skype, for instance) add microfone, and then do it again to choose camera.

Wow! Yes, it works! Thanks!

 

[Dilli]

Hello, I just made a release of an external USB OpenCoreAPFSloader , anyone can install it on an external USB flash drive, so if after a macOS upgrade or PRAM reset or post-install patches returns to the stock default apple EFI bootloader, you can plug your USB device and OpenCore will be a bootable external volume.

My OpenCore customized setup is safe and harmless for any EFI mac, using this USBOpenCoreAPFSloader opencore will be installed on an external USB bootable device.

To this release I made also some new experimental additions to OpenCore menu:

- added an UEFI Shell
- added a GRUB Shell
- added a PassMark Memory Test

Other previous feature also included:

- apple efi shortcut commands (CMD+S, CMD+V , etc.) to press before volume selection
- EFI unhidden partition and the ResetNVRAM
- Platform Compatibility Check, SIP and AMFI fully disabled
- @parrotgeek1 LegacyUSBInjector.kext injected on any prelinkedkernel (to allow any stock macOS Recovery and BaseSystem.dmg to load with any IOUSB input devices and also external USB macOS installation)

Click here to download: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader.zip

edit:
If you encounter an issue in making the USBOpenCoreAPFSloader , rename from Finder your USB drive label to OpenCoreAPFSloader, I'll fix this later to use any USB drive label.

Could you make a youtube video. It would really help for a confused person such as me.
[automerge]1586015714[/automerge]

That is the correct setting - all seven items disabled.

Thanks I was worried.

 

[jackluke]

Could you make a youtube video. It would really help for a confused person such as me.

Just re-download the app from previous post (I fixed a minor issue), run it from Desktop or Applications or Downloads folder, plug an empty USB drive, then run the app and pick your USB drive label, it should make automatically the bootable usb drive, at the power-on hold alt-option key and from apple startup manager select the OpenCore label and opencore menu should show.

 

[Dilli]

Just re-download the app from previous post (I fixed a minor issue), run it from Desktop or Applications or Downloads folder, plug an empty USB drive, then run the app and pick your USB drive label, it should make automatically the bootable usb drive, at the power-on hold alt-option key and from apple startup manager select the OpenCore label and opencore menu should show.

Dont get me wrong, I meant in a different way just like Dosdude has his website you could also make one for yourself and post your hard work there . You have indeed helped in a great way and much more and I appreciate all that.

Since you mentioned, with your USB tool Catalina can be now installed in any external USB Drive and booted from it using option key right. The USB drive will be formatted in AFPS scheme. Will it make a bootable installer or will it launch the OS which would be installed on the usb drive.

 

[Meelas]

Hi Dosdude1 and JackLuke I was wondering if the patcher has no sound cards? reason I'm asking this is that I'm visually impaired and rely on VoiceOver, the issue is when I press cmdF5 it loads VoiceOver but there is no sound. So I'm wondering if the patcher removes the sounds drivers from the recovery?

 

[hvds]

Hello, I just made a release of an external USB OpenCoreAPFSloader , anyone can install it on an external USB flash drive, so if after a macOS upgrade or PRAM reset or post-install patches returns to the stock default apple EFI bootloader, you can plug your USB device and OpenCore will be a bootable external volume.

My OpenCore customized setup is safe and harmless for any EFI mac, using this USBOpenCoreAPFSloader opencore will be installed on an external USB bootable device.

To this release I made also some new experimental additions to OpenCore menu:

- added an UEFI Shell
- added a GRUB Shell
- added a PassMark Memory Test

Other previous feature also included:

- apple efi shortcut commands (CMD+S, CMD+V , etc.) to press before volume selection
- EFI unhidden partition and the ResetNVRAM
- Platform Compatibility Check, SIP and AMFI fully disabled
- @parrotgeek1 LegacyUSBInjector.kext injected on any prelinkedkernel (to allow any stock macOS Recovery and BaseSystem.dmg to load with any IOUSB input devices and also external USB macOS installation)

Click here to download: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader.app.zip

edit:
If you encounter an issue in making the USBOpenCoreAPFSloader , rename from Finder your USB drive label to OpenCoreAPFSloader, I'll fix this later to use any USB drive label.

Thank you jackluke.
Your OpenCore work has created an extra layer of flexibility - for me the LegacyUSB injector is especially important.
Just created an OpenCoreAPFSloader with your app, as an extra HFS+ partition on an external disk which has already all bootable installers for HS, Mojave, Catalina.
I used it to reset NVRAM just for a test, and then used it to boot into 10.15.5b1 on a USB SSD. All fine!
(I can select OpenCoreAPFSloader during boot with ALT/OPT. Can't seem to see it as System Settings - Startup Disk but I don't need it.)

 

[jackluke]

Thank you jackluke.
Your OpenCore work has created an extra layer of flexibility - for me the LegacyUSB injector is especially important.
Just created an OpenCoreAPFSloader with your app, as an extra HFS+ partition on an external disk which has already all bootable installers for HS, Mojave, Catalina.
I used it to reset NVRAM just for a test, and then used it to boot into 10.15.5b1 on a USB SSD. All fine!
(I can select OpenCoreAPFSloader during boot with ALT/OPT. Can't seem to see it as System Settings - Startup Disk but I don't need it.)

Yes, doesn't show on system preferences startup disk, I guess because when restoring the dmg the macOS Extended is not kept, instead if you check in DiskUtility any macOS installer has the format macOS Extended (not journaled), but at least I renamed the USB EFI Boot (I guess you can notice its label and icon).

Dont get me wrong, I meant in a different way just like Dosdude has his website you could also make one for yourself and post your hard work there . You have indeed helped in a great way and much more and I appreciate all that.

Since you mentioned, with your USB tool Catalina can be now installed in any external USB Drive and booted from it using option key right. The USB drive will be formatted in AFPS scheme. Will it make a bootable installer or will it launch the OS which would be installed on the usb drive.

My customised OpenCore version is meant especially to quickly disable -no_compat_check, csrutil and amfi, and to provide APFS volumes detection to non-APFS firmware machines.

Only thing still can't fix from OpenCore is patching or deleting the telemetry plugin to avoid the kernel panic on Core2Duo after a system upgrade.

But currently you can boot any stock macOS Recovery , OTA update installer and post-install patched macOS, you can boot also any stock macOS Installer but installation won't proceed because many frameworks, packages and machines whitelist are required to continue the installer, unless you spoof the machine to a supported one from OpenCore but this implies an high risk of unwanted firmware update.

The USB drive is formatted as macOS Extended (the format used by any macOS Installer), but for some reason when you restore it becomes "Journaled", but it works anyway.

 

[fabiojuniorr]

If all else fails, go to MR GPU MXM forum post 4921 and download the iMac OpenCore Loader.dmg.
Build an SD card or USB mem stick from the dmg using Balena Etcher and boot the Mac from that using Option key at power-up to use the keyboard backlight adjustment. Select Catalina Loader as the Startup Disk in Sys Prefs for future boots.

It might seem stupid but where do I find that forum?
Nevermind, I just found it, post #9771

 

[ShiryuX]

Dear all,

I have been following @dosdude1 since ever and always was successful with patching my systems until now. On my MacbookPro 5.5, I installed the new 1.3.5 patch and downloaded the new Catalina app. Once finished I was able to create a brand new USB flash boot drive. The 2 following options to upgrade to 10.15.4 did not work:
- installing after downloading and patching the new Catalina version results in a classic reboot without any update
- booting from the flash drive results in the "damaged Catalina version" and hence no ability to update either (tried the csrutil terminal command but tells me the system is unknown).

I hope you could assist as I ran out of options to try!

Thanks to all

Tried with the latest 1.4 patch with an original installer of Catalina from the App Store and still no luck!

Anyone has any ideas on how to update this machine?

Thx

 

[jackluke]

Hi Dosdude1 and JackLuke I was wondering if the patcher has no sound cards? reason I'm asking this is that I'm visually impaired and rely on VoiceOver, the issue is when I press cmdF5 it loads VoiceOver but there is no sound. So I'm wondering if the patcher removes the sounds drivers from the recovery?

You could try to use your machine /S/L/Prelinkedkernels/prelinkedkernel and copy it inside the /USBpatcher/System/Library/Prelinkedkernels/