macOS boot drive selection takes forever

[flygbuss]

Hej,

I have a problem with my cMP 5,1 (2 x 3,46).
If I boot with the opt key it takes up to 4 minutes until the boot options show up.
My boot drive is an OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 (latest firmware) which contains two startup disks.
But even if I pull the card and try to boot via SATA the behavior remains.
I tried several versions of mac OS, right now it's a HFS+ 10.8.5 and a APFS 10.13.6
The mac runs just fine otherwise and I have this issue for quite a while now. I avoided it by selecting the startup disk inside the OS before booting but 10.8.5 is of course not capable of showing an APFS drive nor a High Sierra partition. Any ideas?

Thanks a lot!

 

[crjackson2134]

Any ideas?

What bootrom version are you running?

 

[h9826790]

Use rEFInd

 

[flygbuss]

What bootrom version are you running?

MP51.0089.B00

 

[axrst]

I'm not sure but mabe you should update your bootrom. Did you see this topic? But don't do it before a (more specialist to this) member confirms that. Because I don't know if a newer bootrom works with older OSes.

 

[flygbuss]

I'm not sure but mabe you should update your bootrom. Did you see this topic? But don't do it before a (more specialist to this) member confirms that. Because I don't know if a newer bootrom works with older OSes.

Thank you!
I didn’t know that just a security update wouldn’t be sufficient for upgrading the 5,1 bootrom.
Thanks for the link!

 

[crjackson2134]

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions)

First things first.

Read the thread in the above link, and bring your BootROM up to date. It may not solve your issue, but it solved some booting issues I was having, so get that done 1st. You are several revisions behind.

 

[flygbuss]

I'm on 144.0.0.0.0 now but unfortunately that didn't help with my problem.
It's good to have the latest firmware though. And thanks for the hint with the 5,1 bootrom update behavior.
I was assuming it would be similar to the 6,1.

 

[crjackson2134]

I'm on 144.0.0.0.0 now but unfortunately that didn't help with my problem.
It's good to have the latest firmware though. And thanks for the hint with the 5,1 bootrom update behavior.
I was assuming it would be similar to the 6,1.

It’s not uncommon for a 1-2 minute bootup depending on your configuration, but 4 minutes seems a bit long to me.

Do you have any external USB drives attached when booting. Also, what GPU do you have?

If I boot with my EFI GPU and an SATA SSD as a boot drive (with all PCIe drives removed, and no USB devices), the system boots incredibly fast. Even faster if I remove all memory except 1 16GB stick.

It’s usually devices like that OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 that cause trouble, but you said you tried booting with that removed, so I’m not sure where to go next with this.

If you have an EFI GPU, I would suggest booting up in verbose mode. You can watch the process and see where it’s stalling.

 

[flygbuss]

It’s not u common for a 1-2 minute bootup depending on your configuration, but 4 minutes seems a bit long to me.

Do you have any external USB drives attached when booting. Also, what GPU do you have?

If I boot with my EFI GPU and an SATA SSD as a boot drive (with all PCIe drives removed, and no USB devices), the system boots incredibly fast. Even faster if I remove all memory except 1 16GB stick.

It’s usually devices like that OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 that cause trouble, but you said you tried booting with that removed, so I’m not sure where to go next with this.

If you have an EFI GPU, I would suggest booting up in verbose mode. You can watch the process and see where it’s stalling.

The booting itself is just fine, the problem is the time it takes until the boot drive manager shows up if you hold down the opt key. But you might be right, it could be one of the PCIe cards. I inly took out the OWC drive for testing and I use all the PCIe slots (avid audio card, caldigit usb 3.1 and the OWC Accelsior + GTX 680.
If have a flashed GTX 680 with Mac EFI.
Thanks for your help!

 

[flygbuss]

The booting itself is just fine, the problem is the time it takes until the boot drive manager shows up if you hold down the opt key. But you might be right, it could be one of the PCIe cards. I inly took out the OWC drive for testing and I use all the PCIe slots (avid audio card, caldigit usb 3.1 and the OWC Accelsior + GTX 680.
If have a flashed GTX 680 with Mac EFI.
Thanks for your help!

I did some more testing today and changed the CPU board to a single CPU board (5,1 with less Memory).
The boot sound was audible much faster (usually it takes ca. 20 seconds until the horn) and the boot drive selection showed up after 10 seconds.
I re-seated the memory on the dual CPU board after that and put it back in place.
That was kind of a success, the boot drive menu now shows up after 25-30 seconds.
No changes with the startup tone though, still around 20 seconds after I press the power button (Maybe this is because I use all the RAM slots with 8 x 4GB).
I ran the intensive AHT and nothing was found.
I did all the tests without any peripherals connected (mouse, keyboard and monitor only) and only the gpu (stock amd 5770) was installed. Bootdrive was an SSD in the first SATA slot.