macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[Alex-Microsmeta]

Hi there,

I'm getting nuts with my mbpro late 2011 (8,1) with Catalina 15.4.
My fans are almost all the time spining hard, the computer becomes to hot.
Activity Monitor says WindowServer is always at 65%, 70%, 80% CU usage.

Anyone facing the same issue? Is there a workaround to this?
Will upgrade to 10.15.15 fix this?

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)
2,4 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 3000 2048 MB - it is 512 from factory

Thanks!

Yes, it was the same on my Macmini 2010 (macmini4,1). I discovered that ejecting USB pendrives and unused USB drives fixes my issue. CPU goes from 100% to 4-10% IDLE and the temperature from 85*c to 50°. Someone here explained to me that the system is trying to index all the files. It does this issue only after booting. I wait some minutes waiting that the CPU goes down a little then I eject unused USB devices. There is also a terminal script to block mounting these devices every time it boots, but you must know the exact name and referral.

 

[Pluda]

Yes, it was the same on my Macmini 2010 (macmini 4.1). I discovered that ejecting USB pendrives and unused USB drives fixes my issue. CPU goes from 100% to 4-10% and the temperature from 85*c to 50°. Someome here explained me that the system is trying to index all the files. It does this issue only after booting. I wait some minutes waiting that the CPU goes down a little then I eject unused USB devices. There is also a terminal script to block mounting these devices every time it boots, but you must know the exact name and referral.

Thanks!
I don't have any usb attached...

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

Thanks!
I don't have any usb attached...

Also external usb partitions FAT32 AFPS NTFS HFS+ ? You can also try to disable spotlight indexing on specific fields from preferences panel

 

[Pluda]

Also external usb partitions FAT32 AFPS NTFS HFS+ ? You can also try to disable spotlight indexing on specific fields from preferences panel

View attachment 919424

Thanks again

No, I don't have anything connected to my Mac, I've only my ssd hard drive and also no Spotlight active. In fact it is totally inactive using this terminal command

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

I've noticed this a long ago, but was thinking it had something to do with Safari, when developing and using web inspector it usually turns on the fans, but with Chrome it was fine. Now it is almost every time and doing nothing special.

Also, I did not install any software or whatever, it is the same Mac, the same software...

at the time of the print screen WindowServer was as 57% (and fans are blowing), but most of the times it goes up to 80%...

 

[RogueB]

Hello to all,

A successful installation of 10.15.5 (final release) on MacBook Pro 5,2 (mid 2009), with Samsung EVO 860 SSD, flashed APFS ROM, 8 GB RAM, and active GPU NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT.

Used Jackluke’s CatalinaOTAswufix script (big thanks for the script) to induce the software updater to recognize new software version. The OTA-downloaded update (final 15.5.5, incremental) was about 2.9 GB. The installation itslef required steps no different than used to install incremental 15.5.5 betas.

Start to download update (see above); while downloading OTA softawre, run second enhancing script (see CatalinaOTAswufix). Let the dowbload complete and allow computer to auto-reboot; installation will proceed until 2nd auto-reboot, to additional installation steps. Finally, on 3rd self-restart, press "option: key to select the USB installer thumb-drive created with Dosduded1’s patcher version 1.4.3 ( another great thank-you!)

Apply patches, as auto selected, or manually selected, per your computer model needs.
I do apply (auto-preselected) patches manually, to ensure that I can select “Force Cash Rebuilt” option, at end of the patching process.

My experience was similar to that of poster ‘hvds’ (see post 10,980 above). His machine, and set up, is near identical to mine. I do not have OpenCoreBooter on my machine, unlike hvds, but that should not affect general installation process.

All transparencies and graphic acceleration (patched by ASentinetBot and hetestit (?)) are functional (Thanks again to all - if I missed crediting someone, it was not intentional in any way)

One more note, ‘hvds’ noted in his installation report, that his computer stalled somewhere during process. I have experienced similar issue with incremental updates, and in same manner as ‘hvds’, I powered down the machine, turned Mac back on, and installation proceed without problem. Actually, after one of the stalls, I rebooted directly into the USB thumb-drive installer (press option key on reboot), then applied patches, force-rebuilt-caches, and allowed patcher to auto-estart. That extra step also resulted in installation of fully functional 10.15.5 beta (Although, I had to reapply patches again, at very end of incremental update)

Hope this information may be of help.

Thank you to all involved, for the incredible effort to keep our “orphaned” machines working.

 

[coasterOneEightThree]

While waiting for @dosdude1's new patcher (no complaining, just a description of my condition ), I was able to update OTA to 10.15.5 with the help of @jackluke's CatalinaOTAswufix script, also.Thank you guys for all of your great work, I can't stress it enough!
[automerge]1590689684[/automerge]
By the way:

Apparently there is a big bug in 10.15.5 regarding bootable backups / clones. Read more here -> ...

As I understand it, incremental backups are not affected. It only affects backups created for the first time under 10.15.5 on an empty hard disk, formatted with APFS.

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

Thanks again

No, I don't have anything connected to my Mac, I've only my ssd hard drive and also no Spotlight active. In fact it is totally inactive using this terminal command

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

I've noticed this a long ago, but was thinking it had something to do with Safari, when developing and using web inspector it usually turns on the fans, but with Chrome it was fine. Now it is almost every time and doing nothing special.

Also, I did not install any software or whatever, it is the same Mac, the same software...

at the time of the print screen WindowServer was as 57% (and fans are blowing), but most of the times it goes up to 80%...

View attachment 919445

It is very annoying I know... When my kernel_task works normally this ten years old mac mini it is still perfect, but without my workaround is useless. I'm sorry than I cannot help you to fix.

 

[hwojtek]

A successful installation of 10.15.5 (final release) on MacBook Pro 5,2 (mid 2009), with Samsung EVO 860 SSD, flashed APFS ROM, 8 GB RAM, and active GPU NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT.

Exactly the same procedure used on a Mac Pro 5,1 and - as expected - a flawless victory.

EDIT: too early. I lost audio. No "Built-in audio" input not output are present anymore.

EDIT2: OK, two (sic!) reinstalls of "Legacy Audi patch" later (first from the dosdude1-modified 10.15.5 installer and second from the patch updater app) I got my built-in audio back.

 

[jlovell]

I see. It looks like replacing Catalina with Mojave is the only way to get full video acceleration for my Mid-2009 MBP then. Is that right?

So, this doesn't appear to be the end of the story. After a bit more experimenting, I can report the following:

• Hardware-accelerated decoding does in fact "work" in Catalina, by following the instructions in post #7232 and copying the AppleVADriver.bundle and AppleGVA.framework directories from High Sierra. Confirmed using IINA, and toggling the hardware decoding preference between disabled (HW decoder reports "no") and auto (HW decoder reports "videotoolbox"). It seems fragile though: only one video program can be open at a time, otherwise no accelerated decoding is possible.
• Neither the 9400M nor the 9600M GT in the Macbook Pro 5,3 is capable of doing hardware accelerated decoding of a 1080p60 H264 stream in real time. In fact, the software decoder in IINA (ffmpeg under the hood, I think) is able to decode in real time, so enabling hardware acceleration is actually detrimental for this hardware.

I'm actually really surprised at this: I thought these Nvidia cards, which have Purevideo VP3, were capable of full hardware accelerated decoding of H264. I managed to get the 9600M GT to (just about) handle a 720p60 video, but it can only manage <1s of a 1080p60 video before it overflows and has to start dropping frames. The 9600M GT can however handle a 1080p30 stream, with a noticeable reduction in CPU usage (60% -> 25%).

This behaviour also occurs on Mojave, which suggests that it's not worth downgrading to 10.14.6 if you want/need hardware accelerated decoding for these Nvidia cards.

I'd be really interested to see if anybody else here with a 9400M or 9600M GT has been able to get hardware accelerated decoding of 1080p60 H264 video on earlier versions of OS X. I don't have an installation of El Capitan any more, which was the last version to support the MBP 5,3. If anybody else does, could you check whether you can play back this video resolution with GPU acceleration?

 

[jettie1767]

I'll probably need to update the Patcher. I expect to have time to do so in the next couple days.

Thanks! I'm getting the same error at the 4-minute mark on an iMac 27 late 2009. Tried re-downloading and re-creating the usb installer and still the same issue.

 

[Lycestra]

Just chiming in on my continued success with my Mac Pro 2009 (4,1).
- Dual CPU (8 core) 2.26GHz (original) with 32GB RAM
- Flashed to 5,1
- Boot ROM 144.0.0.0
- MSI RX560 GPU ("officially" supported low end, no boot screen or filevault)
- secondary optical: bluray
- USB-C in a PCIe card
- - requires internal power, pulled from a hard drive slot via an extension cable
- Upgraded internal WiFi/Bluetooth for 802.11ac and BT4.2.
- - original no longer supported in Cat without copying kext from Mojave with every update
- SSD disk (not NVMe yet, maybe never)
- secondary spinning-rust disk running 10.12, and has Parallels
- - to install/update, uses the VM loophole
- - pull the Cat drive, connect on USB, boot 10.12, boot Cat in Parallels, run updates
- Had run up to Catalina fully natively. Now needs -no_compat_check boot-arg
- for my own sanity, hyper-threading disabled via official nvram parameters. s'okay

No modifications to the software, nothing particularly unique in hardware. Just updated to 10.15.5 without issue. Only complaint on this machine continues to be power use, tho new GPU cut that in half (typical). Really happy with this machine.

 

[dosdude1]

Just released version 1.4.4 of Catalina Patcher, which fixes the compatibility issues with version 10.15.5 of Catalina. You can now use this version to update your system to 10.15.5.

 

[Vinc26]

? Thank you !

 

[mys7]

you're the man ??

flawlessly updated my 15.4 with the "install on this mac" option. smooth ?

 

[K two]

installed, perfectly

 

[eVasilis]

Just released version 1.4.4 of Catalina Patcher, which fixes the compatibility issues with version 10.15.5 of Catalina. You can now use this version to update your system to 10.15.5.

Thank you so much!

 

[pinchu71]

New version number 1.4.4 of dosdude1,
thanks so much!

 

[Blackriton]

I successfully update my MacPro 3,1 to 10.15.5 with Dosdude new patcher. No problems so far and big thanks !!!!!

 

[hvds]

I successfully update my MacPro 3,1 to 10.15.5 with Dosdude new patcher. No problems so far and big thanks !!!!!

Also here on MBP5,2 installed 10.15.5 with patcher 1.4.4 to external SSD, fully automatic. Thank you dosdude!
Used a bootable USB installer.

Night Shift patch reapplied with Patch Updater, also Arduino patch done, all working fine.

(MBP5,2 17" mid 2009, 2.8GHz Penryn T9600, Nvidia 9600M GT, 8GB, APFS ROM patch applied, Samsung SSD 840/860 EVO with APFS. Catalina 10.15.5)

 

[joevt]

I tried installing 10.15.5 on my MacPro3,1

I ran 1.4.4 of Catalina Patcher.

1)
For the first time I tried the install from /tmp method ("Install to This Machine"). It copied the installer to /tmp, then started the installer, which did stuff for several minutes, then restarted into Ubuntu. Boot0080 was set to an installer on my Catalina Preboot APFS partition but my MacPro3,1 ROM doesn't have APFS support. If I am not supposed to use this method, then shouldn't there be a warning? The next Boot nvram variable (Boot0000) is set to Ubuntu - I guess that's why it booted that. Could the installer be made to setup the APFS patch? I set my APFS booter manually to point to the installer in Preboot. When I boot into the installer, it starts installing immediately (there's no menu to access Disk Utility or Terminal) - I guess that's expected for this method. There was no mouse cursor either so I had to wait for the Restart to occur after a minute. The installer appears to have correctly installed the APFS patch and set it as the next boot. Now my MacPro3,1 is running 10.15.5

2)
When the installer first restarted, I think it removed my maxmem boot-arg. Things run super slow without that boot-arg (an issue of having 64 GB of RAM). Please fix the patcher so it doesn't remove stuff from boot-args or so it at least keeps the maxmem boot arg. I did notice that the installer in the Preboot did have maxmem=64512 set in the boot plist file, but because it's not in the nvram, all my macOS installations are affected. I guess I should change the boot plist for all of them.

The bless command has the "--options" option which can let you pass options to an efi boot loader - I haven't checked if boot.efi passes the boot option to the kernel as a kernel flag.

 

[Vinc26]

I just made a small donation here: http://dosdude1.com/catalina/
I don't say that to show that I'm nice; I say that to encourage everyone to concretely thank all the work done!
Thanks again!

 

[Claw87]

Hi!
first of all big thanks to everyone making it possible to install latest Mac Os on older Macs.
I‘m working with my MBP5.1, having updated the Rom yesterday for usage of APFS. My question is now, if need to apply the “APFS Patch“ from the post install patcher by dosdude, or not. Any problems/differences, if I do apply the patch allthough having updated the Rom?

 

[hvds]

Hi!
first of all big thanks to everyone making it possible to intakl latest Mac Os on older Macs.
I‘m working with my MBP5.1, having updated the Rom yesterday for usage of AFPS. My question is now, if need to apply the “AFPS Patch“ from the post install patcher by dosdude, or not. Any problems/differences, if I do apply the patch allthough having updated the Rom?

No need to install the APFS Patch un this case.
It wouldn‘t harm, just give some verbose text output while booting.
Congratulations to installing the APFS ROM patch. I have it on my MBP5,2 since a while. Another of dosdude‘s gifts to us.

 

[timthomason]

Thank you dosdude1

 

[crescentmoon]

Just released version 1.4.4 of Catalina Patcher, which fixes the compatibility issues with version 10.15.5 of Catalina. You can now use this version to update your system to 10.15.5.

I went to the link and only 1.4.3 was there.....
[automerge]1590745740[/automerge]

Just released version 1.4.4 of Catalina Patcher, which fixes the compatibility issues with version 10.15.5 of Catalina. You can now use this version to update your system to 10.15.5.

I got it... had to refresh the page to get 1.4.4 to show ....