macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[twinboys]

If the question mark appears with only in the internal drive it probably is the cable, although I find strange that you can copy the external to the internal drive. Search for "macbookpro 8,1 drive cable" in EBAY. They sell for about 5 or 6 US$

I apologize LuisN that I wasn't able to articulate clearer. (1) I put the Crucial SSD in an external case and plug it into the the USB connector. (2) I rebooted from the original HDD to make sure macOS can read the external drive prior to me reformatting it. (3) I then rebooted from the dosdude1 High Sierra USB drive and installed the macOS onto the external Crucial SSD. (4 ) Once done, I shut down and replaced the internal HDD with external SDD which now has a dosdude1 installed High Sierra OS. (5) When I rebooted, it was showing the "Flashing folder with Question mark".

I took your recommendation and purchase another Hard Drive Flex Cable. I'm scheduled to receive it this coming Friday and once putting everything back together, I'm hopefully for a successful macOS install on the SSD. I'll report back on my status. I want to thank you again for your patience in helping me.
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another thing you can try is boot into the patcher macOS Catalina and up at the top the Apple Logo click on that and set your ssd as the start up disk then try and boot into High Sierra or just keep your ssd in and remove the hdd and try to install macOS Catalina on it but make sure it is formatted APFS

I took your advice and installed High Sierra on the SSD but on the next reboot I recieved the "Flashing folder with Question mark" again. I took LuisN recommendation and purchase another HDD Flex Cable. I'll let you know how it turned out. Thanks

 

[Surenmunoo]

Help, created a new patched usb to update from 10.15.4 to 10.15.5 but install fails after 6 minutes of starting showing "there was an error installing please restart and try again"
MacBook Pro early 2011

 

[TimothyR734]

Help, created a new patched usb to update from 10.15.4 to 10.15.5 but install fails after 6 minutes of starting showing "there was an error installing please restart and try again"
MacBook Pro early 2011

Are you using the latest Catalina Patcher 1.4.4
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Does anyone know how we can get this to work in Catalina

 

[Sasparilla]

Just brought my Mac Pro 5,1 over to Catalina on a new main drive, used Time Machine to restore data. The patched install was so smooth - totally amazed me. Thank you to everyone in this thread for the work they put in on this.

 

[1jak0]

Back in Mojave days I remember an HybridModePatch for light and dark theme, you guys knows if it's available for Cat??

 

[TimothyR734]

Light and Dark mode works in Catalina its been fixed

 

[b251]

I upgraded my iMac 9,1 today from Mojave to Catalina. As i've already patched the ROM of my Mac for native APFS compatibility, my Mac doesn't need the APFS patch supplied with the post install tool. I removed the checkbox for "APFS Patch" but nevertheless it got installed. I think this is a bug in the Catalina Patcher. How to remove the APFS patch after being applied by the post install tool? As my Mac supports APFS natively I don't need the EFI shell at boot and want to get rid of the boot time delays connected with it. I used Mojave without the APFS patch too.

 

[jrhager84]

How are y'all patching to 10.15.5? Do you patch the *update* or do you have to download the full 10.15.5 again?

 

[b251]

I downloaded a full copy and installed it over Mojave.

 

[jrhager84]

Ah. I have Catalina 10.15.4 already installed. Hmmmm
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Does choosing 'download' in the patcher download the 10.15.5 version? I am showing no available updates (being on 10.15.4) so I am not sure if the 'full download' will be 10.15.4 again. Thanks!

 

[b251]

I upgraded my iMac 9,1 today from Mojave to Catalina. As i've already patched the ROM of my Mac for native APFS compatibility, my Mac doesn't need the APFS patch supplied with the post install tool. I removed the checkbox for "APFS Patch" but nevertheless it got installed. I think this is a bug in the Catalina Patcher. How to remove the APFS patch after being applied by the post install tool? As my Mac supports APFS natively I don't need the EFI shell at boot and want to get rid of the boot time delays connected with it. I used Mojave without the APFS patch too.

I found a workaround for my issue: Just change the default boot volume from "EFI boot" to "Macintosh HD" and the EFI shell will disappear and the Mac will boot from the APFS volume natively. I think @dosdude1 should fix this issue in the post install tool so that the "APFS Patch" will not get installed if not selected.

 

[TimothyR734]

Ah. I have Catalina 10.15.4 already installed. Hmmmm
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Does choosing 'download' in the patcher download the 10.15.5 version? I am showing no available updates (being on 10.15.4) so I am not sure if the 'full download' will be 10.15.4 again. Thanks!

The Catalina Patcher only downloads point releases or supplemental updates so yes it will download 10.15.5.02

 

[jrhager84]

Ah. Ok. I looked around and it didn't seem to indicate. I'll get that started. Is there a reason the 10.15.5 update doesn't j just show up in the app store updates like the Mojave patcher used to do?

 

[TimothyR734]

macOS 10.15.6 Dev beta3 is out

 

[LuisN]

I upgraded my iMac 9,1 today from Mojave to Catalina. As i've already patched the ROM of my Mac for native APFS compatibility, my Mac doesn't need the APFS patch supplied with the post install tool. I removed the checkbox for "APFS Patch" but nevertheless it got installed. I think this is a bug in the Catalina Patcher. How to remove the APFS patch after being applied by the post install tool? As my Mac supports APFS natively I don't need the EFI shell at boot and want to get rid of the boot time delays connected with it. I used Mojave without the APFS patch too.

Mount EFI partition and delete everything in it. Reboot

 

[1jak0]

Light and Dark mode works in Catalina its been fixed

I know, but that patch got rid of the annoying transparency in the menu bar

 

[Surenmunoo]

Are you using the latest Catalina Patcher 1.4.4
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Does anyone know how we can get this to work in Catalina

Yes I have tried the latest version as well, that version does the install but I cannot log into the Mac it says that the user cannot be logged in at this time error hence looking at another option, so basically I cannot log into my Mac anymore

 

[TimothyR734]

Yes I have tried the latest version as well, that version does the install but I cannot log into the Mac it says that the user cannot be logged in at this time error hence looking at another option, so basically I cannot log into my Mac anymore

Do you have FileVault turned on ?
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I know, but that patch got rid of the annoying transparency in the menu bar

well if you don't like transparency you could go into /System/Preferences /Accessibility /Display and turn on reduced transparency
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installed 10.15.6 Dev Beta 3and for those who changed your icons to the Big Sur icons the only one that changed back to the original was Safari the rest didn't change

 

[okebaja]

Installing Catalina with the patcher was a breeze. However, I now need to do a full restore of a backup of about two weeks ago. Rebooted in recovery, only to find out that I have no network connectivity in recovery. This means I cannot restore from my time machine, I cannot even do a fresh install since it requires an internet connection (at least, that's what it is telling me). How can I enable or restore network connectivity in recovery mode?

The other thing I tried is Migration Assistant. However, every time, after a few seconds, Migration Assistant stops responding and the screen rotates back to user login. How can I work around this? I just need *some* way to go back to a previous backup. Thanks!

 

[Surenmunoo]

Do you have FileVault turned on ?
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well if you don't like transparency you could go into /System/Preferences /Accessibility /Display and turn on reduced transparency
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installed 10.15.6 Dev Beta 3and for those who changed your icons to the Big Sur icons the only one that changed back to the original was Safari the rest didn't change

Ended up formatting the ssd and loaded a fresh version worked out, thanks

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Icon change?

Does anyone know an obvious way to change the Catalina volume icon (for instance, to sit on the Desktop)? I have a legacy disk with Catalina that used to be Mojave. It has a customized icon. I also have a brand new disk with the same version of Catalina, but its icon is generic. SIP is disabled, and I've just run sudo mount -uw / + sudo killall Finder... The icon won't change. Am I missing something? As a matter of fact, I've even booted up from my previous Mojave disk (now Catalina) and applied its own customized icon to the brand-new Catalina disk. Oddly enough, the icon wouldn't stick, although a hidden .VolumeIcon file was created at the disk root level that actually contains the icon, but it isn't used by the system as such.

 

[TimothyR734]

Icon change?

Does anyone know an obvious way to change the Catalina volume icon (for instance, to sit on the Desktop)? I have a legacy disk with Catalina that used to be Mojave. It has a customized icon. I also have a brand new disk with the same version of Catalina, but its icon is generic. SIP is disabled, and I've just run sudo mount -uw / + sudo killall Finder... The icon won't change. Am I missing something? As a matter of fact, I've even booted up from my previous Mojave disk (now Catalina) and applied its own customized icon to the brand-new Catalina disk. Oddly enough, the icon wouldn't stick, although a hidden .VolumeIcon file was created at the disk root level that actually contains the icon, but it isn't used by the system as such.

You mean your hdd/ssd on the desktop I have those and to add it on the desktop it under Finder/Preferences once on the desktop right click-get info highlight the icon at the top left corner of the one you will be replacing then drag the one you want to use to the highlighted one light or dark

 

[Dilli]

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updated many of the icons in Catalina

Have you updated Big Sur on iMac or you have just installed icons and wallpaper on Catalina. Is it possible to update imac Mid 2011 to Big Sur having upgraded metal GPU

 

[PeterHolbrook]

You mean your hdd/ssd on the desktop I have those and to add it on the desktop it under Finder/Preferences once on the desktop right click-get info highlight the icon at the top left corner of the one you will be replacing then drag the one you want to use to the highlighted one light or dark

As I said, the sort of mechanism that you describe used to work up to Mojave. It doesn't seem to work in Catalina. Perhaps the script you provided will change the icon of the Startup Manager, but, quite certainly, it doesn't work for the Catalina HDD icon on the Desktop. It will work just fine for Mojave, High Sierra or earlier iterations of Mac OS X/mac OS, but not for a newly installed Catalina.

 

[TimothyR734]

Have you updated Big Sur on iMac or you have just installed icons and wallpaper on Catalina. Is it possible to update imac Mid 2011 to Big Sur having upgraded metal GPU

No I have not upgraded waiting patiently for the Big Sur patcher and yes it is possible but it’s a lot of work without the Patcher
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There is an app I use also called liteicon that works