MP 1,1-5,1 RefindPlus|OpenCore by MyBootMgr

[JedNZ]

What is the difference between Soft-Bless and Firm-bless in this procedure?

Soft bless runs RefindPlus for one instance - the next boot after that ignore RefindPlus and boots back to your normal OS.

Firm Bless runs RefindPlus perpetually.

The last installation step in Dayo's guide is to go to System Preferences Startup Disk and select the "startup disk" then reboot. It wasn't clear to me which disk he meant by that..or why we need to do this step? I actually only have the option to select my Catalina Disk (the Mojave one doesn't appear), or another backup partition I have out there is also showing. But anyway, I just want to understand the purpose and ramifications of this last step.

My understanding of this is that your intentioned OS boot drive will be set as the default in the OpenCore picklist (with an * before the pick list number), so if you want OpenCore to start the default OS immediately, or after the set delay, or if you hit Enter/Return it will automatically boot that OS. I believe that when you use the EnterRecovery utility, it runs the Recovery partition of the default OS that you set.

That's all fine, but I definitely don't want that volume to be the default in OC Boot Picker...I want it to be Catalina, hopefully while still leaving Mojave in drive bay 1 as my last ditch fallback. I don't know if I'm making sense here, but just looking for advice how to set it up so that OC will by default boot to the Catalina drive..and then I will change the OC config to not even wait for me, but to always just boot to that default volume. just not sure how to make sure its the Catalina one that will be the default and not the Mojave one.

As above, just ignore what order the OS drives appear in the Picklist - if you set your default OS in SystemPreferences then it will have an * before it in the OC Picklist, and simply pressing Enter/Return will run it - no having to hit a number.

I'm using 4k monitor. OC BootPicker is able to handle hiDPI, which basically makes everything a little bigger, but rEFInd seems to use native 4k resolution and all the fonts are tiny. Is there any way for me to scale it or change it so that everything will be bigger, including the fonts and icons?

I have a different anomaly going on with my 4K screen (DisplayPort 1.2). My screen resolution is very low (maybe 960x600?) so not only does the RefindPlus GUI look massively huge, it's also scaled horizontally and looks awful. I'm yet to work out how to change this.

Curating your own OC setup (e.g. OC_CATOTA)

Check out the Preamble > Overview at the very start of the Guide at post #1.

This package includes one additional OpenCore instance in OC_ALT. You will need to bulld and patch further OpenCore instances (See Post #11), put into a separate OC_XZY folder and add Manual Stanzas in your /EFI/BOOT/overrides/override.conf file if you require more.

 

[Dayo]

SoftBless uses the --nextonly parameter which means only the next reboot will use the new boot option. After that the location that has previously FirmBlessed will be booted.

Summarised in the pertinent dialogue box:

 

[Dewdman42]

On the question about FirmBless I was wondering what the actual detailed difference is, not the easy user explanation which I already read on the dialog. Someone said bless command as --nextOnly or whatever...that makes sense...

Regarding Windows on a partition, that sounds great. I have read some comments all over the place on this forum about MS Windows deciding to mess with the boot loader during update or something, and I want to make sure I am will not be at risk of that happening, that's part of why I was asking if its ok to install Windows on a partition, rather then being on its own physical disk. Still yes, its ok?

Regarding the questions about HDD slowness for the EFI partition, I don't feel like I got the answer I need to know. Is that going to make OSX or Windows run any slower, or will this just effect the boot up process?

 

[Dewdman42]

Regarding all the other questions I'll have a look into some of the inferences that have been made to see if I can get rEFInd looking better. Thanks.

 

[Dewdman42]

SoftBless is explained at:

MyBootMgr: RefindPlus|OpenCore

Thanks for the feedback. No idea why blessing would not take. I presume you followed the EFI Mode instructions although this was on a USB Stick. Only suggestion is to try to bless from Terminal. To SoftBless: sudo bless --setBoot --mount '/Volumes/EFI' --file...

forums.macrumors.com

SoftBless uses the --nextonly parameter which means only the next reboot will use the new boot option. After that the location that has previously FirmBlessed will be booted.

You can try the FirmBless command and check the result with the dumpallbootvars command from https://gist.github.com/joevt/477fe842d16095c2bfd839e2ab4794ff

Thanks for this explanation

The previous step was to Firm Bless RefindPlus.
This step uses Startup Disk preferences panel to Firm Bless the macOS partition that you want to boot - but the trick here (I am totally guessing!) is that OpenCore intercepts the Firm Bless so that Refind Plus remains as the Firm Blessed boot option and the macOS that Startup Disk attempted to Firm Bless becomes a setting in OpenCore (probably some non standard EFI NVRAM variable? - I'm too lazy to check) which Open Core will boot automatically for you or at least select as the default boot option (I could be wrong - I haven't used this stuff).

The above is kind of what I am wondering about...how the bless and the system pref startup action work together to ensure that I will be booting through my other Scratch disk EFI with the default OC volume set to Catalina. I'm just wanting to understand exactly what is being done under the covers when I follow those steps.. its a big foggy to me right now. The good news is, it seems to work, I was just hoping for a little more understanding of what I have put on my computer.

Did you select Mojave or Catalina in the last step with Startup Disk preference panel?

I had been waiting for a response from my earlier question about that step before restarting..and I did not do it during the soft bless phase of the procedure. The instructions from Dayo say to use soft bless mode for a while to test out OC setup...but doesn't say to actually go into System Prefs to change startup disk yet. So I needed to make sure to have the OC bootpicker show up and give me a chance to choose which volume to boot to, Catalina or Mojave at that point.. I do remember there was no asterisk next to either one, but Mojave was the first on the list (as opposed to when I did OC with CDF's guide, Catalina was the first one on the OC Boot Picker list).

Dayo's guide says to do the SystemPrefs selection after doing the FirmBless. So this is the step I was wondering why we do it. I can gather now that at least one reason is that it configures the NVRAM so that OC will treat Catalina as the "default". but I don't know what else that step does...would like to understand better.

I have since selected my Catalina disk in SystemPrefs, (the Mojave disk did not even show up in System preferences as being available). And now the asterisk appears next to my Catalina disk in BootPicker, as desired. I then reconfigured config.plist to tell OC not to wait around for a response, just go straight to the default volume (Catalina) and it works.

Where RefindPlus is located, there is the refind.conf file. You can read the items there and see if there's an option to hide certain partitions (maybe dont_scan_volumes). Or hide everything (scanfor manual) and use manual stanzas (menuentryexamples at end of the conf file) for the OpenCore items.


Probably. You could always try replacing it with a manual stanza (described in the refind.conf file).

Thanks, I'll try to go learn more about rEFInd configuration then to see if I can figure out how to hide certain icons, change the icons, rename the text below the icons, etc..

I thought RefindPlus had a HiDPI mode? In the debug log, it says "- HiDPI Detected ...Scale Icons Up".

I couldn't find anything in the debug log left on EFI about HiDPI. Its definitely not getting scaled up here. The OC boot picker screen was (which I'm not using now). But the rEFInd screen is just straight high resolution at 4k..no scaling.

Windows should be easy to install, legacy mode. You can use iPartition.app to create a partition (Type: "Windows FAT or NTFS Data", Format it as ExFAT). Use iPartition to set that partition as "Visible in Windows" and set it as "Active". You can make up to 3 other partitions on that disk as "Visible in Windows". , Run the Windows installer, erase the new partition as NTFS and install.

Coriolis Systems

I will plan to look at Dayo's other guide about installing Windows...but I am just wanting a little bit of clarification about Windows before I do anything, because I have seen there are different ways to install windows, and people have bricked their machines or gotten weird problems if they didn't do it the "right" way...so I want to confirm what is the "right" way to do it when I am using rEFInd and OC like this...particularly also if I am not putting Windows on its own dedicated drive....which is GREAT to hear that I can do that...but I want to make sure I'm not doing it the wrong way that would get me into trouble later.

My understanding of this is that your intentioned OS boot drive will be set as the default in the OpenCore picklist (with an * before the pick list number), so if you want OpenCore to start the default OS immediately, or after the set delay, or if you hit Enter/Return it will automatically boot that OS. I believe that when you use the EnterRecovery utility, it runs the Recovery partition of the default OS that you set.

Thanks for this information..that is another detail I was wondering about..how recovery mode chooses the recovery partition from Mojave or the one from Catalina. It sounds like you're saying that when we use SystemPrefs to choose as startup drive (in my case I could only choose the Catalina drive for some reason when I did that)...but anyway, that sets up something NVRAM...which OC then uses to determine the default boot volume...but also...that is how CMD-R will send us to the appropriate recovery volume. Good to know thanks!

I have a different anomaly going on with my 4K screen (DisplayPort 1.2). My screen resolution is very low (maybe 960x600?) so not only does the RefindPlus GUI look massively huge, it's also scaled horizontally and looks awful. I'm yet to work out how to change this.

Interesting. I saw that rEFInd has a "resolution" parameter that can be set and presumably on my system its at a 4k resolution right now. So maybe if I set that to a lower resolution it will scale the whole thing down for me?

Curating your own OC setup (e.g. OC_CATOTA)

Check out the Preamble > Overview at the very start of the Guide at post #1.

Yea I'll take a look at that Preamble..thanks. Curating my own OC setup is what I will have to do for Windows and BigSur I guess...

I'd love to put custom icons on my OC and OC_ALT also..right now they are displayed as globes...rather then with an "X" for OSX or something else for Windows, etc. I guess now is the time to start hitting the rEFInd resources to learn how to custom configure it.

Many thanks again to Dayo for creating these applescripts, they are super helpful and in general this process has helped me to learn more about how the chained-bootloader approach works...not totally understood 100% yet...but getting there. I'm very happy that with this setup I will be able to easily reboot to VMM mode for updating Catalina, will be easily able to install windows on a partition, will be able to easily install Big Sur (waiting until I hear more success stories) on another partition and try it out...and will easily be able to boot Mojave totally natively without OC.

Thanks everyone for your responses...

 

[Dayo]

I have a different anomaly going on with my 4K screen (DisplayPort 1.2). My screen resolution is very low (maybe 960x600?) so not only does the RefindPlus GUI look massively huge, it's also scaled horizontally and looks awful. I'm yet to work out how to change this.

Can you attach a log and indicate the pixel dimensions of the screen as well as your GPU model?

 

[Dewdman42]

possibly found a bug in ConfigFactory. I tried to setup my OC_ALT so that its exactly like OC, except with VMM enabled. I answered the questions to match that...but the config.plist inside OC_ALT is being generated with VMM disabled. I have tried to redo this numerous times, always comes out the same if I inspect both config.plist files, VMM is disabled.

I tried to look at the AppleScript to see if I could figure out why, but couldn't find a problem...

 

[Dewdman42]

another question I have is that the boot log shows a timestamp that is 6 hours ahead of my local timezone...and the debug log files created inside EFI (which we're in debug mode), are timestamped 6 hours in the future.. hehe. Is there any way to fix that or is that just a matter of the boot loader can't know about timezones so that's that?

 

[Dewdman42]

Looking at RefindPlus log file, I see the following

15:582   0:057  Set Screen Resolution:
 15:671   0:088    - BestMode: GOP Mode[0] @ 3840x2160
 18:281   2:610    - Switch to GOP Mode[0] ...Success
 18:312   0:030  Screen Resolution Set

 18:342   0:029  INFO: Implemented Graphics Output Protocol

 18:390   0:048  INFO: Implement Text Renderer ...Success

 18:420   0:029  Setup Screen...
 18:450   0:029  Prepare for Graphics Mode Switch:
 18:478   0:028    - HiDPI Not Detected ...Maintain Icon Scale

So the question is how I can get rEFInd to detect that I want HiDPI scaled boot screen? It correctly detected my 4k monitor, and looks like it switched to GOP mode, whatever that is... However...everything is tiny, its not scaling it. (RX580 in case that matters)

i did answer that question in ConfigFactory as "yes" for whether I am using Retina/HiDPI.. but somehow its not scaling it anyway.

I'm in DEBUG mode still for both rEFInd and OC. Also...even after manually adjusting the conflig.plist to turn on VMM...its not actually on when I check with sysctl, I don't know if that is because its in DEBUG mode?

Will try to change to RELEASE mode shortly....

At this point I don't know what I'm doing wrong... have been trying to follow the instructions very precisely...but VMM isn't on on OC_ALT and HiDPI scaling is not being used.

 

[Dayo]

I answered the questions to match that...but the config.plist inside OC_ALT is being generated with VMM disabled.

I know what you mean. A fix will be in the next release. EDIT: You can't set VMM Spoofing with the ConfigFactory Tool if you have GPU Acceleration on. Just the way it is set up. EDIT of the edit: You can. There was a bug in MyBootMgr 063. Solution below applies for this version. A fix will be in the next version.

Copy the config file from OC across and manually edit the VMM if you want things like this.

the debug log files created inside EFI (which we're in debug mode), are timestamped 6 hours in the future.

The debug logs are not timestamped in the future. They are timestamped to GMT. No change planned on this for now.

I did answer that question in ConfigFactory as "yes" for whether I am using Retina/HiDPI.. but somehow its not scaling it anyway.

It is not scaling for the reason written in the log. RefindPlus does not use that ConfigFactory item at this time and tries to detect HiDPI itself . This does not work because your screen does not qualify as HiDPI as per RefindPlus params which is that the horizontal resolution should be at least 1921px:

HiDPI Not Detected ...Maintain Icon Scale

I see you may have more than 1921px so something to look into later. Whatever the case, it is not detecting 1921px or greater.

PS, you are not using rEFInd. You are using RefindPlus.
RefindPlus is based on rEFInd and they are very close but are not the same thing.

 

[Dewdman42]

Thanks for the response. Yea 4k monitor...which RefindPlus detected.....but for some reason didn't qualify the monitor as HiDPI.

Back on the VMM note, I did try to manually edit the config.plist inside OC_ALT (next time I will just copy the one from OC, but same difference)....anyway...when I boot through that into OC/Mojave...and then use sysctl to very VMM...its still not there....

Unless the second icon on the RefindPlus boot screen is somehow not launching OC_ALT for some reason.. I will try to manually edit OC config.plist to see if it works there..

I'm still in DEBUG mode in case that is the thing blocking it?

 

[Dayo]

Thanks for the response. Yea 4k monitor...which RefindPlus detected.....but for some reason didn't qualify the monitor as HiDPI.

Why are you reading the log item below as meaning it was detected?

HiDPI Not Detected ...Maintain Icon Scale

I also wrote that it did not detect it. Except if you meant it detected a monitor but did not detect it was HiDPI?
If so, yes, that is the case.

I'm still in DEBUG mode in case that is the thing blocking it?

No. I would have flagged this otherwise. Debug and Release are the same apart from the logging.

 

[Dewdman42]

a few lines above the HidPi line there is a line that says it detected 3840x2160. That's what I mean when I say it detected correctly that my monitor is 4k.

I do not understand why it is determining that HiDpi is not detected...or what I could do to get it to be detected and scaled as HiDPI.

I tried to change both of the config.plist files to VMM enabled but upon booting into Mojave...sysctl doesn't detect it. This is strange. That was working perfectly when I was doing it manually with cdf's guide.

Config.plist looks like this:

            <key>Cpuid1Data</key>
            <data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==</data>
            <key>Cpuid1Mask</key>
            <data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAA==</data>

Then after booting......

 nvram 4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102:opencore-version
4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102:opencore-version    DBG-063-2020-11-02

and

sysctl machdep.cpu.features
machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 PCLMULQDQ DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1 SSE4.2 POPCNT AES PCID

 

[Dayo]

Now that you have OpenCore active, please refer to the main OpenCore Thread for help on how to activate VMM or on other other OpenCore configuration items.

 

[Dewdman42]

I already know how to do that... But that's not the point. First I'm trying to use your wonderful package to setup my machine, I want to move beyond doing manual setup with CDF's guide. I'm only mentioning it to try to figure out why, with your setup, its not working?

secondly, your solution should be setting Cpuid1Mask, same as what I learned how to do manually on that other thread. However...it worked over there and over here and now using your setup...its not working.. the VMM enable is not working.

Is that something that will only work when I do the firm bless and switch to using my catalina as startup disk?

 

[Dewdman42]

I know what you mean. A fix will be in the next release. You can't set VMM Spoofing with the ConfigFactory Tool if you have GPU Acceleration on. Just the way it is set up.
Copy the config file from OC across and manually edit the VMM if you want things like this.

On this point..do you feel that turning off GPU acceleration on that OC_ALT would generally just be a good idea also? The only reason I will ever use OC_ALT is to get software updates.. So if that will result in a cleaner identification of my machine because HDWAR acceleration is not hacked....then it might make sense for me to just use your default OC_ALT setup.

 

[Dewdman42]

Is that something that will only work when I do the firm bless and switch to using my catalina as startup disk?

I tried firmbless and restart disk switch to Catalina...didn't make any difference. VMM not enabled.

I will now try to use your approach GPU Acceleration also disabled in the OC_ALT

 

[Dewdman42]

I tried to install OC and OC_ALT using no manual customizations...just the values exactly as configured by ConfigFactory...with the ALT disabling GPU acceleration and enabling VMM. Doesn't work. It doesn't config VMM on and the ALT version does other weird stuff like disable the thing I need for dual processor, etc.

Fraid to say...these AppleScripts need more work.

However at least they are good at setting up the RefindPlus framework in place, so I will try to proceed manually from here, I'll try to use the config.plist which I created with cdf's instructions...and that actually worked perfectly fine, but I want to use it in conjunction with RefindPlus.

thanks

 

[Dewdman42]

Alright here is one problem with ConfigFactory I just found. The reason VMM is not working is because you have the wrong value generated for Cpuid1Data.

This is what you have generated by default for when VMM is disabled:

<key>Cpuid1Data</key>
<data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==</data>
<key>Cpuid1Mask</key>
<data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==</data>

However, the Cpuid1Data field should be this:

<key>Cpuid1Data</key>
<data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAA==</data>
<key>Cpuid1Mask</key>
<data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==</data>

Then to turn on VMM, the Cpuid1Mask should be set to the same value, (with a 'C')

<key>Cpuid1Data</key>
<data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAA==</data>
<key>Cpuid1Mask</key>
<data>AAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAA==</data>

For now I am just going to use the config.plist I created manually following CDF's instructions, it works perfectly and then your stuff is good for generating and setting up the RefindPlus framework, so I will continue to use that.

I still need to figure out why HiDPI isn't working right and how to hide some icons...but at least for now I can easily boot with VMM off normally and VMM on occasionally to run updates.

regards

 

[joevt]

Regarding Windows on a partition, that sounds great. I have read some comments all over the place on this forum about MS Windows deciding to mess with the boot loader during update or something, and I want to make sure I am will not be at risk of that happening, that's part of why I was asking if its ok to install Windows on a partition, rather then being on its own physical disk. Still yes, its ok?

In macOS, you can dump all the disk info with the attached script, backup all your EFI partitions (they are small - just copy the entire partition to your user folder), do the Windows install, and compare to see what it did.
For nvram variables, use the dmpstore > dmpstore.txt command in the EFI Shell. Though I don't know if you can trust the result while using OpenCore?

sudo ./dumpvols.sh > dump1.txt 2>&1

Regarding the questions about HDD slowness for the EFI partition, I don't feel like I got the answer I need to know. Is that going to make OSX or Windows run any slower, or will this just effect the boot up process?

The speed of macOS and Windows is not affected by what EFI partition you use. They rarely if every need to access the EFI partition.

another question I have is that the boot log shows a timestamp that is 6 hours ahead of my local timezone...and the debug log files created inside EFI (which we're in debug mode), are timestamped 6 hours in the future.. hehe. Is there any way to fix that or is that just a matter of the boot loader can't know about timezones so that's that?

Also different are the file creation and modification dates for logs and screenshots. At least they can be ordered relative to each other (so you still know which is the latest file even if some have a weird date like tomorrow).

Edit: script moved to https://gist.github.com/joevt/a99e3af71343d8242e0078ab4af39b6c

 

[Dewdman42]

I'm not daring enough to use the EFI shell yet. ;-)

Anyway, not sure what you are suggesting to discover with that? Dayo has some excellent instructions on that other thread about installing Windows using a VM first to run the Windows installer... the only thing is his instructions involve using a whole drive, rather then a partition on a drive. Which doesn't have to be a big deal, but I read some comments on this forum about people who setup dual boot systems and then at some point a windows updater may have written outside the partition into a boot sector of some and kind of screwed things up. I don't really remember the details of what I read now, but I am just wanting to make sure I don't run into any kind of weird problem like that.

I guess at this point all the drives in my box were partitioned with GUID. So if I have to somehow use MBR, then again, I don't know how I would do that as a FAT partition on one of these, might be better to just buy another drive and format it purely the windows way with MBR and FAT on top. Yea?

 

[startergo]

MBR and FAT on top. Yea?

You can't do MBR with FAT. It is either/or. The Apple way is a hybrid partition when installed on the same drive (at least on older macs). When a hybrid parturition is created Windows cannot see the EFI partition. As far as it is concerned it is an MBR drive (even though it is not hence it is called hybrid).

 

[JedNZ]

As mentioned above I'm having issues with the RefindPlus resolution. It looks like it might be 1024x768 or 1280x1024 scaled to fit 16:9 (so stretched laterally/horizontally - optically it all looks fat and wide). Photo attached.

Below is a (partial) RefindPlus log that includes all the info about Graphics, GOP and resolution.

15:172   0:023  Read Config...
 15:198   0:025  Detected Overrides - Read Config...
 15:250   0:051  Adjust Default Selection...
 15:271   0:021  Initialise Screen...
 15:297   0:025  Check for Graphics:
 15:322   0:024    - Seek Console Control
 15:368   0:046      * Seek on ConsoleOut Handle ...Success
 15:394   0:025    - Assess Console Control ...ok

 15:418   0:024    - Seek Universal Graphics Adapter
 15:443   0:024      * Seek on ConsoleOut Handle ...Unsupported
 15:469   0:025      * Seek on Handle Buffer ...Success
 15:493   0:024      ** Examine Handle[00] ...Success
 15:518   0:024      *** Select Handle[00] @ 640x480
 15:543   0:024    - Assess Universal Graphics Adapter ...ok

 15:569   0:025    - Seek Graphics Output Protocol
 15:618   0:049      * Seek on ConsoleOut Handle ...Success
 15:644   0:025    - Assess Graphics Output Protocol ...NOT OK!

 15:668   0:024  Validate Replacement GOP for ConsoleOut Handle:
 15:693   0:024    - Seeking Firmware GOP Handles ...Success
 15:744   0:050    - Found Candidate Replacement GOP on Firmware Handle[01]
 15:768   0:024      * Evaluating Candidate
 15:793   0:024      ** Valid Candidate : Width = 1280, Height = 1024

 15:843   0:050  INFO: Provide GOP on ConsoleOut Handle ...Success

 15:893   0:049  Query GOP Modes (Modes=5, FrameBufferBase=80000000, FrameBufferSize=0x0):
 15:919   0:025    - Mode[00] ...Success @  1280x1024  ( 1280 Pixels Per Scanned Line, 8bit BGR Pixel Format )
 15:968   0:049    - Mode[01] ...Success @   640x480   (  640 Pixels Per Scanned Line, 8bit BGR Pixel Format )
 16:018   0:050    - Mode[02] ...Success @   800x600   (  832 Pixels Per Scanned Line, 8bit BGR Pixel Format )
 16:068   0:049    - Mode[03] ...Success @  1024x768   ( 1024 Pixels Per Scanned Line, 8bit BGR Pixel Format )
 16:151   0:083    - Mode[04] ...Success @  1280x960   ( 1280 Pixels Per Scanned Line, 8bit BGR Pixel Format )

 16:205   0:053  Set Screen Resolution:
 16:229   0:024    - BestMode: GOP Mode[0] @ 1280x1024
 16:261   0:031    - Switch to GOP Mode[0] ...Success
 16:285   0:024  Screen Resolution Set

 16:310   0:024  INFO: Implemented Graphics Output Protocol

 16:341   0:030  INFO: Implement Text Renderer ...Success

 16:363   0:022  Setup Screen...
 16:410   0:046  Prepare for Graphics Mode Switch:
 16:434   0:024    - HiDPI Not Detected ...Maintain Icon Scale

 16:460   0:025  INFO: Running Graphics Mode Switch

 16:485   0:024  Refresh Screen:
 16:510   0:024    - Get Banner
 16:590   0:079    - Scale Banner
 16:643   0:053    - Clear Screen
 16:675   0:031    - Show Banner

 16:709   0:033  INFO: Switched to Graphics Mode

My GPU is a Sapphire Pulse RX590 8GB - it has a single BIOS (so doesn't have a bios switch). I connect to a Samsung U28E590 28" 4K display via DisplayPort cable with DisplayPort 1.2 setting and with Freesync on. It has a pixel density of 157PPI. I get the same result regardless of which DisplayPort I connect from on the back of the GPU (it has 2x DP).

Does anyone know what I need to change/set in order to get the ratio right for my setup?

 

[Dewdman42]

You can't do MBR with FAT.

It is either/or.

either or what? Please explain, I am not that knowledgable. What does Windows require? What can I put into my Mac if its all on one drive vs if I am trying to shared a drive with other APFS volumes?

The Apple way is a hybrid partition when installed on the same drive (at least on older macs). When a hybrid parturition is created Windows cannot see the EFI partition. As far as it is concerned it is an MBR drive (even though it is not hence it is called hybrid).

how do I create a "hybrid"?

 

[Dayo]

Does anyone know what I need to change/set in order to get the ratio right for my setup?

Look at the "banner_scale" config setting in RefindPlus. It is currently set to "fillscreen" which stretches the background as needed as the provided banner is based on my monitor dimensions.

You can try to change banner_scale to "noscale" which will crop the banner if it too big or show it with a border if it too small. Alternatively, create a banner image that fits your monitor and use this instead. The current banner is in the overrides images folder. (EDIT: Will add this to the "Other Considerations" Section).

To reiterate, In order to use this setup, all users need to familiarise themselves with the configuration settings for rEFInd (for RefindPlus) and with those for OpenCore as if they were separately installing each one themselves (Links are in Post 1 and copies of the documentation for both are provided with MyBootMgr).

This process might generate queries and stuff which should be directed to relevant forums to allow maintaining focus on the actual mechanics of the MyBootMgr process here.