macOS High Sierra (10.13) Unsupported Macs Thread

[K two]

I tried installing High Sierra today on my macbook pro5,4, the installer was created without problems but when I choose it on the boot selection I get the "NO" symbol, disabled sip but no joy. Any help?

Boot back into the USB patcher and install the recommended patches, select Force Cache Rebuild and restart.

 

[C Punkt]

Hi, I get the following error when trying to create the usb drive (also tried with other >8gb usb drives and other MacBook)

 

[K two]

Hi, I get the following error when trying to create the usb drive (also tried with other >8gb usb drives and other MacBook)

View attachment 1755584

A wise fellow once informed me that before starting on a unpatched Mac - Shut it down, wait 10 seconds, then turn it on holding CMD-r, whence in Recovery mode under Utilities run Terminal >enter csrutil disable then immediately restart. The clock should also be set to before Sept. 2019 prior to starting w/High Sierra installs.

 

[FlorisVN]

Hi, I get the following error when trying to create the usb drive (also tried with other >8gb usb drives and other MacBook)

View attachment 1755584

what helped for me sometimes, when using dosdude1 patcher tools, is to redownload the MacOS install app again, on a different location for example documents or downloads.
And then select it again and try restoring it again to a USB stick.

This always worked for me..

 

[Simmity]

Hello, I have recently installed OS X High Sierra on an early 2008 macbook pro (4.1). The installation went fine but I noticed that the trackpad is not working properly (no acceleration, right click or scrolling). The issue is identical as described by dosdude in the trackpad issues list for the macbook pro 5.2 model (detected as mouse instead of trackpad). I have already performed the post install twice including the clear cache selection but am unable to get it working. There are no issues with the trackpad in OS X El Capitan or Windows 10 in bootcamp. Note that the trackpad is also not working properly when using the USB installer (detected as a mouse). I have attached several screenshots with various details. Is there a known solution for this problem?

 

[BurnMyMac]

After installing macos 10.15 on an unsupported mbp 8,2 there was an updated patch which brought back brightness control with disabled AMD gpu. Unfortunatley Mainstage requires a Metal GPU... So I continue to use High Sierra. Now my question: Is it possible to get that patch running on High Sierra though that MacBook is still supported?

 

[nigelbb]

what helped for me sometimes, when using dosdude1 patcher tools, is to redownload the MacOS install app again, on a different location for example documents or downloads.
And then select it again and try restoring it again to a USB stick.

This always worked for me..

It took me number of attempts to instal High Sierra on my Mac Pro 3,1 running El Capitan using the dosdude1 patcher. I tried various USB sticks then a USB HDD. I had a copy of High Sierra that I had downloaded previously & even downloaded another version. Every time I would boot off the USB device & after the Apple logo it would stick at 100% on the progress bar on the grey screen.

Finally I was successful when I dug out an old Firewire disk which made the whole process so much quicker then I used the link under Tools in the patcher app to download a fresh copy of High Sierra. Then it all worked as advertised. I don't know whether it was the download or an issue with the USB devices. I did download & successful create a bootable USB stick with El Capitan so it may well have been a corrupt copy of High Sierra. The patcher app does a verify of the kit but as it completes in the blink of an eye it cannot be a very rigorous verification.

Today I will try installing Mojave which in previous attempts just hung on a black screen during the boot process. I will use the winning formula of a Firewire disk & downloading Mojave from within the patcher.

 

[nigelbb]

It took me number of attempts to instal High Sierra on my Mac Pro 3,1 running El Capitan using the dosdude1 patcher. I tried various USB sticks then a USB HDD. I had a copy of High Sierra that I had downloaded previously & even downloaded another version. Every time I would boot off the USB device & after the Apple logo it would stick at 100% on the progress bar on the grey screen.

Finally I was successful when I dug out an old Firewire disk which made the whole process so much quicker then I used the link under Tools in the patcher app to download a fresh copy of High Sierra. Then it all worked as advertised. I don't know whether it was the download or an issue with the USB devices. I did download & successful create a bootable USB stick with El Capitan so it may well have been a corrupt copy of High Sierra. The patcher app does a verify of the kit but as it completes in the blink of an eye it cannot be a very rigorous verification.

Today I will try installing Mojave which in previous attempts just hung on a black screen during the boot process. I will use the winning formula of a Firewire disk & downloading Mojave from within the patcher.

Unfortunately my Mojave installation failed again in just the same way as previously ie with a black/blank screen during the boot process. I may have to stick with High Sierra as I am reluctant to try Catalina as I have owned the Mac Pro since 2008 & there are bound to be old 32-bit applications knocking around on the disk.

I might just try a few other things before totally giving up on Mojave as my Mac Pro 3,1 is non-standard in a few ways. I have a 4GB GTX680 flashed to give a boot screen & it has 56GB RAM (6x8GB 2x4GB) plus a couple of PCI SATA III cards & a USB 3 card. I will try pulling the PCI cards & see whether that helps at all. I can swap some FB-DIMMs to bring it down to the supported total of 32GB (8x4GB). I do have another graphics card but it's a flashed 2GB GTX680 so may be no different to the 4GB card.

 

[LuisN]

Unfortunately my Mojave installation failed again in just the same way as previously ie with a black/blank screen during the boot process. I may have to stick with High Sierra as I am reluctant to try Catalina as I have owned the Mac Pro since 2008 & there are bound to be old 32-bit applications knocking around on the disk.

I might just try a few other things before totally giving up on Mojave as my Mac Pro 3,1 is non-standard in a few ways. I have a 4GB GTX680 flashed to give a boot screen & it has 56GB RAM (6x8GB 2x4GB) plus a couple of PCI SATA III cards & a USB 3 card. I will try pulling the PCI cards & see whether that helps at all. I can swap some FB-DIMMs to bring it down to the supported total of 32GB (8x4GB). I do have another graphics card but it's a flashed 2GB GTX680 so may be no different to the 4GB card.

Did you install the apfs patch? Without it it won’t boot

 

[nigelbb]

Did you install the apfs patch? Without it it won’t boot

What APFS patch? I'm not using APFS.

My issue is that I can create a patched installation kit of Mojave on an external disk but when I boot from that external disk I get the grey screen with the Apple logo the progress bar chugs across to 100% then the screen goes black & stays black.

 

[LuisN]

What APFS patch? I'm not using APFS.

My issue is that I can create a patched installation kit of Mojave on an external disk but when I boot from that external disk I get the grey screen with the Apple logo the progress bar chugs across to 100% then the screen goes black & stays black.

Sorry, I thought It stayed black AFTER installing on to disk.
I never had that problem so can't help. I have installed from High Sierra up to Catalina without major problems. Mine has a macvidcards GTX770 and 32GB ram. Maybe try to reset PRAM before booting from the installer?

 

[BurnMyMac]

After installing macos 10.15 on an unsupported mbp 8,2 there was an updated patch which brought back brightness control with disabled AMD gpu. Unfortunatley Mainstage requires a Metal GPU... So I continue to use High Sierra. Now my question: Is it possible to get that patch running on High Sierra though that MacBook is still supported?

Found the solution!!! Thanks to dosdude!

DeMux: A permanent fix for the MacBook Pro 2011 GPU - DosLab Electronics

A permanent fix to disable the defective dedicated AMD GPU on 2011 MacBook Pro models.

doslabelectronics.com

 

[K two]

What APFS patch? I'm not using APFS.

My issue is that I can create a patched installation kit of Mojave on an external disk but when I boot from that external disk I get the grey screen with the Apple logo the progress bar chugs across to 100% then the screen goes black & stays black.

What is shown in Terminal when csrutil status is run?

 

[benmuetsch]

Hello all,

today I updated my beloved mid-2009 17 inch Macbook Pro to High Sierra using @dosdude1 patcher, which went absolutely fine.
I was a really long user of El Capitan on this machine, which had really good performance but the compatibility issues started to evolve, so I updated to 10.12.6 some months ago, but I experienced a logic bord defect the last days (typical tanalum cap failure), which could happily be fixed, so I thought I give another update a go.

That was not really a good idea I guess.. overall performance is okay, but streaming / youtube performance decreased significantly.

I could watch Youtube Videos in 1080p with no issues, as well as 720p60, but that't not possible anymore, even 1080p30 is framedropping with the 9400M aswell as with the 9600M GT. Also the fans kick in heavily.

From my Mac Pro I know, that for example the GT 120 gotten also really bad in High Sierra, so it seems that the Tesla architecture is too weak..

Is there any workaround to speed things up a bit or do I have unexpected behaviour here?

Thanks in advance, Ben

Edit, forgot to mention:

- It's a 2.8 GHz T9600 processor
- Ram upgraded to 8GB
- 1TB Samsung SSD

 

[saudor]

That was not really a good idea I guess.. overall performance is okay, but streaming / youtube performance decreased significantly.

- 1TB Samsung SSD

did those same videos work fine before you upgraded? I've noticed that for some of the videos, youtube has changed their codec from h264 so even 1080p can put a load on the CPU as it's no longer hardware accelerated.

 

[benmuetsch]

Yeah, I tried it side by side. I have another 2008 Macbook Pro 15" Unibody with nearly the same specs still running El Capitan. Same Youtube Videos..

CPU utilization is in both cases high.. around 50% @ 1080p, but on El Capitan, the video playback is smooth, on High Sierra it stutters and glitches. Yesterday I tested clean installations in the 17" Model on a seperate SSD:

El Capitan: overall smooth OS GUI experience, good performance on Youtube
Sierra: overall quiet laggy and stuttering OS GUI experience but also good Youtube performance
High Sierra: overall nearly as smooth as El Capitan on macOS GUI, but horrible on Youtube

What is interesting on High Sierra: when watching Youtube 720p or 1080p AFTER a cold boot, the videos run very smooth for like 30 - 45sec and THEN start to glitch, afterwards they glitch all the time.. I really suspect Apple messed up the Tesla drivers...

As said.. I already knew this issue from my Mac Pro. I used a GT 120 for a while which was OK for my needs in El Capitan, but later upgraded to Sierra and High Sierra and the card is significantly slower in these OS than it was in 10.11.6

 

[benmuetsch]

Just for the record.. downgraded to Sierra, which was kind of annoying with all the Mail mboxes and Programs, but the computer runs perfectly fine again.

Youtube @1080p30 no issue at all, runs smooth even with Time Machine Backup of around 500 GB running in the background.

Anyone some ideas why this is happening? Over the weekend I tried even Mojave, which - OS-wise - runs surprisingly well on this old Macbook Pro, but the Youtube-performance is also way behind (1080p laggy).

Any ideas? Is it the High Sierra NVidia Tesla Driver which is messed up?

 

[K two]

Unwelcome news.

El Capitan and older Mac OS X are about to have a security certificate problem

If you’re still running El Capitan, or any version of Mac OS X prior to 10.12.1, then you’re about to run into problems with some popular security certificates. The reason, explained in…

eclecticlight.co

 

[Macschrauber]

Unwelcome news.

El Capitan and older Mac OS X are about to have a security certificate problem

If you’re still running El Capitan, or any version of Mac OS X prior to 10.12.1, then you’re about to run into problems with some popular security certificates. The reason, explained in…

eclecticlight.co

well you guys can install this root certificate by downloading

https://letsencrypt.org/certs/isrgrootx1.pem

works also on iOs, just tried my iPad 4 with 10.3.3, also by mail on iOs versions what refuse to open https from the letsencrypt site.

The letsencrypt site is protected with this certificate as well so download it before September, 30th or use another machine or set the date back.

 

[Hackintosh HD]

How to re-enable Instant GPU Switching / GPU Switching on the fly on MacBook Pro Mid 2009 (MacBookPro5,2)​

Background: As you may know, the classic first real "unibody" MacBook Pro Early/Mid 2009 (MacBookPro5,2) came with an integrated and a discrete graphics card, a nVidia GeForce 9400M (integrated) and a more capable nVidia GeForce 9600M GT. While both GPU hardwares are capable of instantly switching from one to the other, subsequently called "Instand GPU Switching" or "GPU Switching on the fly", Apple never integrated it into their OS releases before declaring the MacBookPro5,2 EoL. The feature was however implemented by third-party applications like gfxCardStatus, gSwitch, gpu-switch, until Apple broke the underlying OS mechanism in macOS 10.13.0 High Sierra. For more details, I'd like to refer to a 2019 macrumors post of mine.

After quite some research, I think I have now managed to reenable the MacBook Pro's "Instant GPU Switching" ability by a few rather simple steps at least on High Sierra and Mojave and I would like to share the following info with you.

Tested on: macOS 10.13 High Sierra, macOS 10.14 Mojave
Yet to be tested on (volunteers welcome!): macOS 10.15 Catalina, macOS 11 Big Sur
Works with: gfxCardStatus 2.5 by Cody Krieger (although the author, obviously unaware of this hack, lists the MacBook Pro 2010 series as his application's minimum requirement), gfxCardStatus 2.4.x (fork by Steve Schow)
Please note: In the following steps, I've used a High Sierra / Mojave installation stick generated by @dosdude1's High Sierra Patcher / Mojave Patcher to boot from to cleanly rebuild the system partition's kext cache. If you follow these steps, you also need to prepare one in advance!

Steps:

1. Download Apple's last security update for macOS 10.12.6 Sierra, Security Update 2019-005:
   

   wget https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/55/63/061-41803-A_87X0EHD65R/gt50wt0ye0twqkj227l9g7vw2ok4nl72a6/SecUpd2019-005Sierra.pkg -O /tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra.pkg

2. Expand the downloaded Security Update 2019-005 via the undocumented pkgutil switch "--expand-full":
   

   pkgutil --expand-full "/tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra.pkg" "/tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra"

3. Backup your current system's /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Content/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext to a safe location.
4. Delete your current system's /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Content/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext (before doing that, please make absolutely sure you have a working High Sierra / Mojave installation stick generated by dosdude1's High Sierra Patcher / Mojave Patcher to reboot from):
   

   sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Content/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext

   (do not touch AppleMuxControl2.kext, which exists since macOS 10.13.3 and is - to the best of my knowledge - not relevant here)
5. Copy AppleMuxControl.kext version 3.14.52b52 from Sierra's Security Update 2019-005 to /S/L/E/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns (in other words to the place where you've just deleted your system's current AppleMuxControl.kext):
   

   sudo cp -p -R /tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra/Payload/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/

6. Shutdown your system, reboot from your High Sierra / Mojave installation stick generated by dosdude1's High Sierra Patcher / Mojave Patcher (depending on whether you have High Sierra or Mojave, of course).
7. Once you've booted into your installation stick's installer, launch dosdude1's macOS Post Install from the Utilities window.
8. In the launched macOS Post Install utility, select "MacBookPro5,2" as your Mac model and your system partition under "Select Volume:", deselect all patches / patch options for your MacBookPro5,2, as we don't want to overwrite our modified AppleMuxControl.kext (this is important!). Select "Force Cache Rebuild" and click on Reboot.
9. On reboot, reset your MacBook Pro's NVRAM by using CMD + Shift + P + R (this is also important!).
10. After the NVRAM reset's reboot, log into High Sierra / Mojave, launch gfxCardStatus and now switch instantly between your nVidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT again!

Please note: In my experience, Instant GPU Switching can be blocked by either specific applications creating dependencies to the discrete GPU (specifically QT-based applications like Nextcloud Client …) or broken NVRAM settings. If you encounter difficulties with Instant GPU Switching, a reboot + a NVRAM reset is recommended.

Any feedback would be highly appreciated, of course!

 

[MacRep]

Hello.

Firstly many thanks to all of the people whom made this forum, and to @dosdude1 for all the work.

I`m experiencing glitches and color blocks with my nVidia GTX 660 card after the High Sierra installation. I´ve attached some captions.

Background:

I’ve made an update from el Capitán to High Sierra using @dosdude1 patcher. Everything OK with the standard ATI video card inside the MacPro.
Then I’ve updated High Sierra from 17G66 to version 17G14033 But I had a failure on installation update. I think some users reported that here. The ATI video card inside the MacPro.
Then I’ve installed the nVidia we drivers for that HighSierra version, again with the ATI inside. I think SIP disabled.
Then I´ve plugged in the nVidia 660. Everything seems ok. No login problems.

But some minutes later I’ve experienced glitches and heavy color blocks in Chrome, Finder and Cinema 4D.

Then I’ve tried the following with the help of the people of this forum:

Executed Script AMD uninstall by @dosdude1 (amdgpupatchuninst.sh): Some Failures econuntered on terminal
Executed Script AMD uninstall for 10.13.4 (amdgpupatchuninst10.13.4.sh) also by @dosdude1 : Some Failures econuntered on terminal
Set to nVidia web drivers system default: Failure
Disable SIP: (I have it disabled by default) Failure

Not sure what I have to do next... Any hints?

Many thanks again

 

[Macschrauber]

Seems the GPU Ram is damaged. If you can double check in a known working system you are sure.

 

[MacRep]

Many thanks for the reply. In El Capitan everything goes well with this video card, the problems started when I´ve upgraded to High Sierra.

Seems the GPU Ram is damaged. If you can double check in a known working system you are sure.

 

[MacRep]

Just a moments ago I´ve tried again with the "amdgpupatchuninst.sh" script and after a reboot the system behaves like when you do not have video card drivers (finder windows move slow, Cinema4D moves things on the interface very slowly). Also some applications tell me that I do not have a metal compatible video card installed.

So, I´ve unistalled the nVidia web driver and reinstalled it, but everything behaves the same.

Not sure if I´m applying well the script on the terminal, due terminal send back some errors...

According this Topic looks like the script is very "destructive" and there is not backwards trying to reinstall the nVidia webdriver.

 

[MacRep]

Update: I decided to make a fresh install one more time of the High Sierra system so before that, I've plug the ATI radeon on the system that comes with the MacPro and looks like the ATI graphic card HAVE acceleration, so I'm not sure what does the "amdgpupatchuninst.sh" ... I supposed that this script from @dosdude1 erased the drivers of the ATI video cards to avoid conflicts with the nVidia video cards... please anybody corrects me if I'm wrong.
Security Update 005: Gets stuck during installation. Maybe due I did not have APFS on my SSD drive (Please, confirm). So I forced restart.
Security Update 006: Looks like this version of the security update installed properly without APFS. Now in my system I have the number 17G14042. Now I'm going to install the nVidia drivers to this model 387.10.10.10.40.140

Note: After that security update I had to re-patch the system with the "post-install" patch generated by @dosdude1 on the high sierra install disk to have wifi enabled again.
Note2: After the plug of the nVidia graphic card, I did not see nothing in the screen, not even the apple logo and the process bar. Looks like it have relation about the login screen. So the system boots properly and the login is there but you wont see nothing on the screen. Just input your password and hit enter. Now change your login startup in system preferences to make automatic login to avoid black screen the next time you boot.