[GUIDE] Dell XPS 15 (9550) Mojave 10.14 / 10.15 Quick Installation

[golimpio]

I think a few people commented about the fans being working full time in the past and the system being noisier than before. I'm wondering if that's something related to the battery, since the 9550 is getting old and some of us already replaced the battery:

 

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-9550-gets-really-hot-on-left-side-and-fans-working-overdrive/td-p/6022680

My laptop gets hot on the left side, even when there is nothing consuming a lot of CPU. It's probably normal I guess. Its SSD was "dead" another day, and I thought I've lost it, so I just removed it and inserted it again, and it came back to life. When it happened, the system was too hot and it had frozen twice in that day (the high temperature was related to the software I was using though, which was demanding a lot from the CPU). The SSD issue might be related to the heat in my case.

On the software side, what I have noticed on 10.15.x is that video are demanding more than before, which is normal IMO since each new OS is supposed to take advantage of new hardware or at least, perform better on new hardware.

[Mr.C]

On 1/22/2020 at 6:27 PM, golimpio said:

I think a few people commented about the fans being working full time in the past and the system being noisier than before. I'm wondering if that's something related to the battery, since the 9550 is getting old and some of us already replaced the battery:

 

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-9550-gets-really-hot-on-left-side-and-fans-working-overdrive/td-p/6022680

My laptop gets hot on the left side, even when there is nothing consuming a lot of CPU. It's probably normal I guess. Its SSD was "dead" another day, and I thought I've lost it, so I just removed it and inserted it again, and it came back to life. When it happened, the system was too hot and it had frozen twice in that day (the high temperature was related to the software I was using though, which was demanding a lot from the CPU). The SSD issue might be related to the heat in my case.

On the software side, what I have noticed on 10.15.x is that video are demanding more than before, which is normal IMO since each new OS is supposed to take advantage of new hardware or at least, perform better on new hardware.

 

I figured out what was my problem. The Firevalult kexts cause the weird keyboard issue and the allocation problem. Today I will try to clean install catalina again, dont know if Firevault is working without the proper kexts from the Advanced folder. 

 

Battery: in macos my battery status indicating that the condition is around 50% which is awful but in the other hand windows 10 does treat it well. For example if I watch a movie in macos battery percentage often drops significally to 0% but in windows there is no such issue. 

[golimpio]

I'm wondering if an external gpu would considerable improve the video/graphic performance for this particular laptop, I guess if the external GPU is recognized by MacOS then we'd have a boost in performance for graphic/video apps (as it should) and this would extend the life of XPS 9550.

Some people have tried it in the past and it didn't work well, but I've recently read in another forum (not sure if I can post the link here) that someone succeed in using an eGPU with a XPS 13 9370.

 

Tested laptops:

- Dell XPS 13 9370 (i7 8550u)
- Dell XPS 15 (?)
- HP Elitebook 850 (i7 8550u)

eGPU:

- eGFX Breakaway Box for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs | Sonnet

- Graphic card: AMD RX 580

If anyone is interested, just google: "[Guide] How to use eGPU with any laptop equipped with Thunderbolt 3", unfortunately I don't have an eGPU for testing it.

It's not perfect, not plug'n'play, but it should work when plugged at boot time, and you should be able to unplug the eGpu without crashing the system. If this is true, it'd be good enough for me.

Anyone has a positive experiene with an eGPU on a Dell XPS 15?

Thanks!

[agrafuese]

@golimpio I know that you aren't using 10.14.6 anymore, but do you have working internal mic? I recently noticed mine does not work (I just get white noise on playback/etc). Also, have you noticed any erratic behavior from the trackpad when clicking+dragging since moving to the acidanthera kexts? I've noticed that half the time, the click "releases" randomly as I drag. This isn't a problem in windows, so I know it isn't a physical hardware problem.

[golimpio]

3 hours ago, agrafuese said:

@golimpio I know that you aren't using 10.14.6 anymore, but do you have working internal mic? I recently noticed mine does not work (I just get white noise on playback/etc). Also, have you noticed any erratic behavior from the trackpad when clicking+dragging since moving to the acidanthera kexts? I've noticed that half the time, the click "releases" randomly as I drag. This isn't a problem in windows, so I know it isn't a physical hardware problem.

 

About the mic, it was working a couple of weeks ago when I tested answering a phone call from the laptop (I haven't used it since then and also I haven't tested the quality/noise level - I'll have to double check this). As for the trackpad, yes, I've noticed that it's less reliable when clicking and dragging (I've noticed this when I started testing VoodooInput), gestures seem to be alright.

This week, I've removed VodooInput and I put back the VoodooI2C.kext and it seems to be more reliable (but I don't think I2C has nothing to do with it, because it shouldn't matter for this trackpad right?).

I thought VoodooInput was responsible for the magic trackpad emulation only and the click+drag would be part of VoodooPS2, but looking at the VoodooPS2 github, it says: "New VoodooPS2Trackpad emulates Magic Trackpad II using macOS native driver instead of handling all gestures itself. This enables the use of any from one to three finger gestures defined by Apple...".

So I'm not sure if I was using it correctly, by mixing VoodooPS2 + VoodooInput, right now, I'm confused about the purpose of VoodooInput.

[agrafuese]

Thanks - I do remember I2C feeling better on the trackpad, but that's the one that was causing my kernel panics when combined with PS2, so I'm kind of out of luck with that scenario. The internal mic isn't crucial, and I can probably wait until I upgrade to Catalina... I just really haven't wanted to. Not because of the hackintosh, but because the OS hasn't appealed to me yet. Even a friend of mine who runs it on his brand new MBP isn't very happy with it so far. Mojave is just such a solid build for me, and I don't want to mess that up unless I have a really good reason to.

 

EDIT: I just tried using acidanthera's newest VoodooInput + PS2, and it was even worse than what I was using before! The trackpad was so unstable that I couldn't even double-click without the cursor shooting all over the place.

Edited January 29, 2020 by agrafuese

[agrafuese]

@golimpio Just something else I noticed, not sure it means anything... Apparently, one of these kexts (possibly VoodooInput) is using the I2C framework or something, because I do NOT have I2C installed, but I just noticed a line that said something about VoodooI2C. (Side note: for some reason, I can't find my system boot log anywhere to show you what I saw... it doesn't appear in the Console app, and doesn't seem to be written in any file that I've searched (not even in the ASL files), so I can't give a direct quote of the line, sorry.)

 

 

[golimpio]

5 hours ago, agrafuese said:

@golimpio Just something else I noticed, not sure it means anything... Apparently, one of these kexts (possibly VoodooInput) is using the I2C framework or something, because I do NOT have I2C installed, but I just noticed a line that said something about VoodooI2C. (Side note: for some reason, I can't find my system boot log anywhere to show you what I saw... it doesn't appear in the Console app, and doesn't seem to be written in any file that I've searched (not even in the ASL files), so I can't give a direct quote of the line, sorry.)

 

 

There is one issue open on VoodooI2C side that might be related to what you said: https://github.com/alexandred/VoodooI2C/issues/228
- Migrate VoodooI2C to VoodooInput #228

There are a couple of notes that I didn't notice on the latest release for acidanthera/VoodooPS2 (I haven't noticed that VoodooPS2 no longer provide support for Magic Trackpad 2 simulation):

- Experimental support for four-finger pinch and spread gestures (very unstable)
- Magic Trackpad 2 simulation moved to VoodooInput project

I have just updated to 10.15.3 to start testing it and so far I have no trackpad... but for 10.15.2 it took me a few reboots to get it back for some reason.
 

[golimpio]

There is something weird with my external mouse (wireless microsoft mouse / usb), it's hard to explain but the cursor moves correctly as expected, and I can click on things as expected. But MacOS doesn't seem to be aware of its position before I click something.

For example: it doesn't show the tooltips when I have mouse over buttons and menus. And also I cannot select a menu option when the mouse is over it, it behaves like if the mouse cursor wasn't on the top of the menu item (I can see that the mouse is there, but the OS isn't aware of it), same for an app icon on the dock, no tooltip, I have to click first then MacOS will be aware of the mouse. This is happened with previous Dell firmware and the new one, also happens on 10.15.2 and 10.15.3 (I didn't have this issue last week), so it might be something I've done/installed... or hardware issue (mouse).

The biggest issue for me is that I have dock and menu hidden and since MacOS doesn't seem to be aware of the mouse position on screen, it doesn't show the hide menu or hide dock, like if the mouse wasn't there.

Edited January 30, 2020 by golimpio

[agrafuese]

That is very odd, indeed. Do you have the ability to try a different mouse and see if you still have these problems? My initial thought is maybe it has something to do with the usb dongle (especially being MS). I doubt this story is related, but I noticed that one of my usb external hard drives loses connectivity after it has been plugged in for a bit, but all of my other external hard drives are fine. It's almost as if there is something in the hardware that is less effective than the others (they are all the same version of USB) - like something in the electrical components/power management (I have no idea what I'm talking about, lol). So, maybe there is something similar happening with the usb dongle for your mouse?

[golimpio]

11 hours ago, agrafuese said:

That is very odd, indeed. Do you have the ability to try a different mouse and see if you still have these problems? My initial thought is maybe it has something to do with the usb dongle (especially being MS). I doubt this story is related, but I noticed that one of my usb external hard drives loses connectivity after it has been plugged in for a bit, but all of my other external hard drives are fine. It's almost as if there is something in the hardware that is less effective than the others (they are all the same version of USB) - like something in the electrical components/power management (I have no idea what I'm talking about, lol). So, maybe there is something similar happening with the usb dongle for your mouse?

Odd indeed. I have tried it in a couple of real macs (with different MacOS versions) and I got the same odd result. It's safe to assume that the issue is the mouse (or receiver). I had no idea that a malfunction mouse would cause this kind of behaviour.

So it seems that this is not related to our setup or any new update/kexts I've done/tested recently, which is kind of good news.

I have a keyboard connected to the same usb receiver, so if I keep the receiver connected and use only the keyboard (turning the mouse off), the trackpad goes back to normal (when the mouse is on, the trackpad also has this weird behaviour). So I guess I'll have to find a cheap bluetooth mouse

[Tikakan]

Good morning fellow Dell xps 15 9550 users. 

My system is a i7 9550, with the latest BIOS version 1.13.1 from 6.12.2019, Samsung 970 Evo SSD, 1080 display and 32GB of RAM. 

 

I would like to get my mojave install back to live, as mentioned in my earlier post I had a working 10.14.6, except for the eventual boot hang, that vanished after a reboot.

 

Stupidly I updated the whole clover folder in my EFI partition and after a few reboots the system had kernel panics at boot. 

Either the slide error or a kernel cache 0x9 error was shown. 

 

I tried to replace the updated clover folder with a backup, but I had no luck with that measure. 

 

I would be really thankful for any clues, how I can fix that boot issue. 

 

Best wishes from Vienna, 

 

Tikakan

[agrafuese]

I'm guessing you'll say no to this, but do you still have your original USB thumbdrive installer? At one point, I did the same thing as you, and also had problems rebooting, so I ended up booting back in with my USB installer and restoring the backup that way. Theoretically, unless you put some custom kexts in /L/E or accidentally did something to your hard drive partition scheme in the process, you SHOULD be able to boot back in from a FULL Clover EFI backup. I say "FULL", because if you didn't save the entire EFI folder structure, then you may be out of luck unless you go through every single file and figure out exactly what is keeping you from booting successfully. Otherwise, maybe try to find the old version of Clover that you had (most versions are retroactively available), and then try to use the files in wmchris' repo.

[Regi Yassin]

On 1/31/2020 at 3:54 PM, Tikakan said:

Good morning fellow Dell xps 15 9550 users. 

My system is a i7 9550, with the latest BIOS version 1.13.1 from 6.12.2019, Samsung 970 Evo SSD, 1080 display and 32GB of RAM. 

 

I would like to get my mojave install back to live, as mentioned in my earlier post I had a working 10.14.6, except for the eventual boot hang, that vanished after a reboot.

 

Stupidly I updated the whole clover folder in my EFI partition and after a few reboots the system had kernel panics at boot. 

Either the slide error or a kernel cache 0x9 error was shown. 

 

I tried to replace the updated clover folder with a backup, but I had no luck with that measure. 

 

I would be really thankful for any clues, how I can fix that boot issue. 

 

Best wishes from Vienna, 

 

Tikakan

just use efi shell to edit files

 

fs0:

cd EFI/CLOVER

edit config.plist

 

or copy the files from the working one. you just need to check the location first

 

Edited February 3, 2020 by Regi Yassin

[Tikakan]

Hi, 

 

I generated a new catalina boot stick, following the 10.15 guide from @wmchris and it produces sadly the same slide error, no matter what I put in to slide=x. 

 

Any one who can help me with that memmap calculation issue? 

 

Thanks, Tikakan 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Tikakan

[golimpio]

11 hours ago, Tikakan said:

Hi, 

 

I generated a new catalina boot stick, following the 10.15 guide from @wmchris and it produces sadly the same slide error, no matter what I put in to slide=x. 

 

Any one who can help me with that memmap calculation issue? 

 

Thanks, Tikakan 

 

If you're having trouble calculating the slide, one workaround is to copy the `AllocFix.efi` file to `EFI/CLOVER/drivers/UEFI`.

You could probably set the `slide` to `0` in that case. It's not the ideal, but it might work until you figure it out the correct slide number.

 

You'll find the `AllocFix.efi` file in the project folder: `DellXPS15-9550-OSX/10.15/CLOVER/drivers/UEFI/other`

 

[Tikakan]

@golimpio

 

Wow! That fixed my issue. Thank you very much for the nudge in the right direction. 

 

Now to figure out why it needs the fix all of a sudden. 

 

Best wishes Tika 

 

Edit:

 

Weirdly

enough the Laptop is working fine for a few reboots, then it starts to get Kernelpanics. is this related to the AllocFix.efi? I updated clover to 5103 and some kexts applealc, lilu, whatevergreen, voodoops2 and virtual smc to the newest versions. It booted fine a few times and then after I migrated my data from the backup it panicked with a kernel dump panic. If I choose safe mode it boots to desktop. 

 

I could get a debug zip folder and the memmap. According to my calculations, slide=149 should work...

 

Still very confused,

 

Best wishes.

 

Tikakan

 

 

memmap.txt

debug_15843.zip

Edited February 7, 2020 by Tikakan

[golimpio]

17 hours ago, Tikakan said:

@golimpio

 

Wow! That fixed my issue. Thank you very much for the nudge in the right direction. 

 

Now to figure out why it needs the fix all of a sudden. 

 

Best wishes Tika 

 

Edit:

 

Weirdly

enough the Laptop is working fine for a few reboots, then it starts to get Kernelpanics. is this related to the AllocFix.efi? I updated clover to 5103 and some kexts applealc, lilu, whatevergreen, voodoops2 and virtual smc to the newest versions. It booted fine a few times and then after I migrated my data from the backup it panicked with a kernel dump panic. If I choose safe mode it boots to desktop. 

 

I could get a debug zip folder and the memmap. According to my calculations, slide=149 should work...

 

Still very confused,

 

Best wishes.

 

Tikakan

 

 

memmap.txt

debug_15843.zip

 

I don't have a solution for your issue unfortunately, but have a look at some posts above, people were having kernel panic with some versions of voodoops2 and filevault. 

I have attached my clover in case you want to compare. I'm running MacOS 10.15.3 and the latest BIOS.

 

Another alternative is trying a different project and see if it works better for you:
- https://github.com/xxxzc/xps15-9550-macos

CLOVER.zip

[agrafuese]

Have any of you all experienced USB 3.0 issues in 10.14.6 or 10.5.x? I previously disregarded a connection stability issue that I was having with an external USB 3.0 drive because I thought it was the drive itself, but I just plugged in a different 3.0 drive yesterday that wouldn't even mount. Unfortunately, I can't test it on the Windows side, because it is HFS and I don't want Windows doing something stupid if I plug it in), but it does power up just fine on my other (genuine) mac. I am suspicious that it is a USB 3.0-only problem because when I plug it into a (non-powered) USB 2.0 hub, it works just fine. So, it isn't a power issue, and it isn't an issue with the drive itself. I believe it has something to do with the SS USB feature not working properly via the kexts/etc. Anyone else?

[golimpio]

7 hours ago, agrafuese said:

Have any of you all experienced USB 3.0 issues in 10.14.6 or 10.5.x? I previously disregarded a connection stability issue that I was having with an external USB 3.0 drive because I thought it was the drive itself, but I just plugged in a different 3.0 drive yesterday that wouldn't even mount. Unfortunately, I can't test it on the Windows side, because it is HFS and I don't want Windows doing something stupid if I plug it in), but it does power up just fine on my other (genuine) mac. I am suspicious that it is a USB 3.0-only problem because when I plug it into a (non-powered) USB 2.0 hub, it works just fine. So, it isn't a power issue, and it isn't an issue with the drive itself. I believe it has something to do with the SS USB feature not working properly via the kexts/etc. Anyone else?

I've experienced some issues. When I plug the usb receiver for my mouse/keyboard on the left side, it doesn't work properly, the mouse keeps jumping like if it lost signal for a moment (this doesn't happen when it's plugged the right side usb). Also I can't copy a large amount of data from a usb connected drive (ssd), it stops before finishing. This isn't related to 10.15.x, I've been experiencing these issues since 10.13.x.

The time machine seems to work fine though (an external non ssd drive connected to the usb).

[agrafuese]

Is it possible that your time machine is USB 2.0 and everything else is 3.0?

 

I happened to notice in the original post of this thread that there was a change log mentioning that USBInjectAll.kext was taken out of the repo a few years ago. When looking up general hackintosh fixes for USB issues, many sources pointed at doing custom injection of hardware values into USBInjectAll. So, I wonder if there is any hope of fixing some of these problems that way by going back to USBInjectAll. I see that this repo currently uses a different USB related kext, so I wonder if the two would conflict...

 

Anyway, golimpio, if you want stability for now, I recommend getting a simple usb hub (this is the one I use). It should fix your problems, as like I mentioned, I believe it "converts" the 3.0 to 2.0 as it passes through the hub, making connections more reliable. Not a "proper" fix, and it will likely slow transfer speeds, but it is a bandaid at least.

Edited February 9, 2020 by agrafuese

[hackedWifi]

On 12/23/2019 at 1:05 AM, golimpio said:

what SMBios are you using? I am trying to get 2560x1440 to work on my laptop but I only have the 19260002 available. I am using MacBookPro15,3. But I cant change the default 1920x1080. Any inputs will be appreciated.
I've attached my clover here, just in case it can be helpful somehow. Drivers are a bit different, but the main reason is because of the slide value.

My config.plist is also slightly different because I need support for an external 4K monitor (connected to a displayport) and the only way I've found to have it scaled nicely to 2560x1440 HiDPI (60 Hz) was by changing my display to HD540 instead of HD530. The side effect is that I get a black screen after sleep and I couldn't fix it on 10.14.x and 10.15.x. But for me, proper scaled resolution for my external monitor is more important.

 

[golimpio]

On 2/9/2020 at 6:46 PM, hackedWifi said:

 

 

MacBookPro13,3 (Mac-A5C67F76ED83108C)

 

I can get HiDPI 2560x1440 60Hz if I change the ig-platform-id to 0x19260004. The side effect is that I can't get the internal display to sleep, it wakes up to black screen.

 

If you find another way to get this resolution at 60Hz, please share 

 

[joevt]

7 hours ago, golimpio said:

 

MacBookPro13,3 (Mac-A5C67F76ED83108C)

 

I can get HiDPI 2560x1440 60Hz if I change the ig-platform-id to 0x19260004. The side effect is that I can't get the internal display to sleep, it wakes up to black screen.

 

If you find another way to get this resolution at 60Hz, please share 

 

have you tried SwitchResX? Set "Scale resolution base" to the number of pixels of your display. Add scaled resolutions for the modes that you want if they don't exist. For example, if you want "Looks like 2560 x 1440" then there should be a "5120 x 2880" scaled timing.

 

[golimpio]

2 minutes ago, joevt said:

have you tried SwitchResX? Set "Scale resolution base" to the number of pixels of your display. Add scaled resolutions for the modes that you want if they don't exist. For example, if you want "Looks like 2560 x 1440" then there should be a "5120 x 2880" scaled timing.

 

 

I've tried it, it gave me 2560x1440 but not at the correct refresh rate and it doesn't look as good as the original from MacOS (without SwitchResX), it's like when you have 2560x1440 without proper HiDPI, it's uncomfortable to look at the screen. I might have done something wrong though.