To everyone experiencing the same issue as me, meaning a MacBook2,1 (Late 2006 or Mid 2007) that restarts by itself after 2 minutes on OS X El Capitan using Julian Fairfax’s osx-patcher: I have the solution! THANK YOU FOR READING:
I spent days trying to figure out how to get OS X El Capitan to work as it should on my Mid-2006 MacBook... and I finally found how to fix it. Since no one has published the solution so far, here it is.
This solution works at least for a MacBook2,1 (Late 2006 or Mid 2007). Since I don’t have other models, I’m not sure if it works for them, but feel free to try.
Why does the Mac restart by itself? Simply because the EFI (boot.efi) injected by osx-patcher is broken.
Here’s what I did (from start to finish):
To install OS X El Capitan, I used... a compatible MacBook. It may sound silly, but it was the only way for me to do it. When I tried installing it directly on my Late 2006 MacBook, it would restart after a few minutes (likely due to the EFI issue), or even with other versions of osx-patcher, the USB installer wouldn’t even boot. :/
So, I burned the OS X El Capitan installer with the latest version of osx-patcher (
https://gitlab.com/0403979/osx-patcher/-/archive/main/osx-patcher-main.zip), took the hard drive out of my Late 2006 MacBook, put it in my Mid-2009 MacBook Pro, plugged in the OS X El Capitan USB installer (with SIP disabled beforehand), and installed it normally on my hard drive (note that the trackpad and keyboard of the MacBook Pro don’t work here, so I used an external keyboard). Just before it restarted, I clicked the menu to open Terminal, typed "patch", selected "use an existing model", chose MacBook2,1, selected the partition, and it "patched" the OS X El Capitan installation. Then I shut down the MacBook Pro.
I removed the hard drive, put it back in the MacBook, and since I have multiple macOS systems in dual boot on this drive, I handled it this way, but it might be different for you. In any case, I had another partition with OS X Mountain Lion, so I booted into this partition and started editing the boot.efi files.
As I mentioned earlier, the boot.efi file provided with osx-patcher doesn’t work with El Capitan. So you need to download the other boot.efi file (
https://www.dropbox.com/s/akp2vdwaes0hf85/EC-EFI32-SIP-disabled-boot.efi-v3.zip?dl=1 - File designed for Macs with EFI32). Then, you need to replace the broken boot.efi file from osx-patcher with the working one we just downloaded.
You need to replace it in 2 locations (within your El Capitan partition): /Volumes/(your partition)/System/Library/CoreServices/ /Volumes/(your partition)/usr/standalone/i386/
Step 1: You need to change the flags for these 2 boot.efi files, so enter the following commands in Terminal:
cd /Volumes/(your partition)/System/Library/CoreServices/
sudo chflags nouchg boot.efi
cd /Volumes/(your partition)/usr/standalone/i386/
sudo chflags nouchg boot.efi
Step 2: Using Finder, go to the folder /Volumes/(your partition)/System/Library/CoreServices/; you’ll see a boot.efi file, take your new boot.efi and replace it in there.
Step 3: Do the same for /Volumes/(your partition)/usr/standalone/i386/
Step 4: Assign the correct owner to these two files. Use the terminal:
cd /Volumes/(your partition)/System/Library/CoreServices/
sudo chown root:wheel boot.efi
cd /Volumes/(your partition)/usr/standalone/i386/
sudo chown root:wheel boot.efi
Step 5: Change the flags back on the two boot.efi files:
cd /Volumes/Capitann/System/Library/CoreServices/
sudo chflags uchg boot.efi
cd /Volumes/Capitann/usr/standalone/i386/
sudo chflags uchg boot.efi
Then, boot into the El Capitan partition, and magically, there is no more kernel panic after a few minutes!
BONUS: How to update OS X El Capitan
Step 1: Do the update via the Mac App Store.
Step 2: Boot from the El Capitan USB installer (this is crucial, don’t do it on another partition, use the USB installer), and patch your El Capitan partition like you did initially.
Step 3: Repeat the steps to replace the two EFI files like we did earlier.
And there you have it, you now have a Late 2006 or Mid 2007 MacBook running El Capitan!
