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

[jwijesundra]

On 5/27/2020 at 1:08 PM, agrafuese said:

Nice man! I haven't been keeping up on Mac news lately, but I had a feeling this morning that Apple was going to drop an update for Catalina soon  I'll probably give it another few days before I get bored enough to update it, haha. Keep us posted if you notice anything strange. It's probably good that the battery health button doesn't work, I don't want to know what mine would say (Catalina already tells me that I need to replace my battery soon, bah!).

 

9550 has a history of battery bloating and damaging the trackpad so be careful!

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/XPS-15-9550-Battery-Swollen-and-Trackpad-lifted-Just-when-I-need/td-p/5124034

[phaberest]

38 minutes ago, jwijesundra said:

9550 has a history of battery bloating and damaging the trackpad so be careful!

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/XPS-15-9550-Battery-Swollen-and-Trackpad-lifted-Just-when-I-need/td-p/5124034

Yeah, I had to replace mine in February 2019 and got the bigger 97Wh one from the XPS 15 9570 'cause it bloated. I'm afraid it won't last much, but I have to admit i stress it a lot.

[Mr.C]

On 6/1/2020 at 1:46 AM, phaberest said:

What are your temps? Did you try to do a repaste recently?

 

 

yeah, did it last month, thermals were find. I have other issues now (not macOS related) that I need to fix first

 

On 6/1/2020 at 3:15 AM, golimpio said:

I'm using ComboJack for the audio, it's not perfect, sometimes I have no sound on the headphone. I'm using a script from:
- https://github.com/hackintosh-stuff/ComboJack

It installs it to "/usr/local/bin", so you don't have to mount the system in r/w.

When I have no sound, I usually kill the ComboJack process (sometimes I have to do it a few times before it works again):

sudo killall ComboJack

When it doesn't work, I just put the laptop to sleep and when it wakes up, the audio is back to normal.

I haven't tried FileVault yet, but it's good to know that it can work on this laptop.

 

 

seems interesting. Ive installed from the 10.15 branch Additional folder, maybe that is outdated. I mounted the system in r/w in order to rebuild the kernel cache.

[golimpio]

34 minutes ago, Mr.C said:

 

yeah, did it last month, thermals were find. I have other issues now (not macOS related) that I need to fix first

 

 

Is it something easy (safe ) to do for this laptop? I've done it in the past for desktops, but I never tried for laptops.

[Mr.C]

58 minutes ago, golimpio said:

 

Is it something easy (safe ) to do for this laptop? I've done it in the past for desktops, but I never tried for laptops.

 

yes, it is easy but you need a proper screwdriver. This tutorial shows how to replace the fans but it will obvious how to disasseble the heat pipe:

link

 

[golimpio]

I've just installed the new 10.5.5 supplemental update, which address some security issues, mainly: "a security flaw that could allow an application to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges."

No kext update or clover update needed.

The update was done in 3 phases, so if you don't have Clover set up for booting from the last partition it booted before, make sure you select the "install partition" and keep on eye on the install process.

In my case, at the second boot I had to select the "install partition" again on the Clover boot menu (otherwise it would have booted from the main macos partition and I'd have missed the update), then the 3rd boot was done from the main macos partition (this last boot took ~15 more minutes to finish installing the updates).

I don't think it changed anything besides the security fixes, it's too early to say though. So far, everything looks the way it was before.

Don't forget to disable the hibernation. I'm not sure if the ComboJack script needs to be re-applied, since in my case it's not on the system partition.
 

[agrafuese]

On 6/1/2020 at 1:22 AM, jwijesundra said:

9550 has a history of battery bloating and damaging the trackpad so be careful!

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/XPS-15-9550-Battery-Swollen-and-Trackpad-lifted-Just-when-I-need/td-p/5124034

 

Thanks for the heads up. I saw this a while back, but it's hard to know if this will happen to me, because I bought my 9550 used and I don't know if the original owner ever changed the battery at any point in its lifetime. I imagine the laptop itself is 3-4 years old now, but I'd probably have to open it up and look at the battery label or something to know if it's the original battery. Last time I did the battery test in BIOS, it said it was fine, but I don't know if that's helpful in monitoring for potential bloating... I would imagine macOS's tests are no more helpful in that regard either, right? I think the issue with mine relates to hold charge, but I could be wrong. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

[agrafuese]

On 6/3/2020 at 12:04 AM, golimpio said:

I'm not sure if the ComboJack script needs to be re-applied, since in my case it's not on the system partition.

 

My impression was that it shouldn't be overwritten by system updates since macOS is protecting the /usr/bin tree instead (versus the /usr/local tree), but I could be wrong. That whole set of rules confuses me. I was much more accustomed to being able to break my system if I wanted to (joking ).

 

It's funny how robust the last few supplemental updates have been, while the point updates almost seem simple by comparison.

Edited June 5, 2020 by agrafuese
clarification

[golimpio]

10 hours ago, agrafuese said:

 

My impression was that it shouldn't be overwritten by system updates since macOS is protecting the /usr/bin tree instead (versus the /usr/local tree), but I could be wrong. That whole set of rules confuses me. I was much more accustomed to being able to break my system if I wanted to (joking ).

 

It's funny how robust the last few supplemental updates have been, while the point updates almost seem simple by comparison.

 

Yes, it feels like there are much more things being installed on the supplemental updates than on the normal ones

And I guess you're right, it shouldn't overwrite it. But by it being a "system" partition, the main idea is that Apple can replace the whole thing, without messing up with our files in the "data" partition. But in this case, since it's an "alien" file, it shouldn't be touched.

I don't know if people are still doing it nowadays, but many years ago we used to create partitions for our stuff (home) and smaller partitions for the system, so we could upgrade the OS without touch our data (if needed), but I don't do it anymore for linux. Nothing replaces proper backups  

[agrafuese]

Finally updated to 10.15.5 last night, and it went fine. I made sure to update to latest Clover (now r5119) and any kexts first. Apple combined the supplemental update into the point release, so it's just one step now for a full update if you are coming from 10.15.4 or lower.

 

A good number of our kexts have been updated since @golimpio posted his EFI folder. I don't know if any of them are important updates for us, but here is a list of the ones that have new versions:

 

AppleALC.kext

Lilu.kext

VoodooI2C.kext

VoodooI2CHID.kext

VoodooPS2Controller.kext

WhateverGreen.kext

As well as the SMC package (VirtualSMC.kext and associated SMC kexts)

[P4R4DiSi4C]

Hey guys,

 

Thank y'all for the details. I've got my first Hackintosh working smoothly.

Catalina 10.15.5 with the EFI shared just above by @golimpio and the updated Kext shared also just above my post by @agrafuese

 

Everything looks to be working fine, I just need to check what to do to be able to login to my Apple account without any ban issue.

I also have a problem where my FN key doesn't work. All my function keys are working normal but if I press FN to do F1 the visual keyboard just doesn't seem to recognize my FN key, any way to resolve this guys ?

Cheers

 

 

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm talking about my Fn toggle in my XPS 9550 keyboard. It's not being recognized so I can't do any F1-F12. But my brightness, audio ... are working since I don't need to press Fn.

Edited July 11, 2020 by P4R4DiSi4C

[golimpio]

17 hours ago, P4R4DiSi4C said:

Hey guys,

 

Thank y'all for the details. I've got my first Hackintosh working smoothly.

Catalina 10.15.5 with the EFI shared just above by @golimpio and the updated Kext shared also just above my post by @agrafuese

 

Everything looks to be working fine, I just need to check what to do to be able to login to my Apple account without any ban issue.

I also have a problem where my FN key doesn't work. All my function keys are working normal but if I press FN to do F1 the visual keyboard just doesn't seem to recognize my FN key, any way to resolve this guys ?

Cheers

 

 

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm talking about my Fn toggle in my XPS 9550 keyboard. It's not being recognized so I can't do any F1-F12. But my brightness, audio ... are working since I don't need to press Fn.

I've been using the same SmUUID for a long time, but I've seen some people reporting to be using several UUIDs without issues with their apple account, so probably if you just generate your own UUID you should be fine. But always double check it, I might be wrong.

As for the Fn keys, I never had any issue as far as I remember. I actually use Fn keys (F1,F2,...) primarily, and press the "Fn key" to access the audio/brightness/etc. (I've done it through the Fn lock key - pressing: <Fn>+<Esc>, also without issues). Sorry I can't be more helpful with your questions.

[P4R4DiSi4C]

15 hours ago, golimpio said:

I've been using the same SmUUID for a long time, but I've seen some people reporting to be using several UUIDs without issues with their apple account, so probably if you just generate your own UUID you should be fine. But always double check it, I might be wrong.

As for the Fn keys, I never had any issue as far as I remember. I actually use Fn keys (F1,F2,...) primarily, and press the "Fn key" to access the audio/brightness/etc. (I've done it through the Fn lock key - pressing: <Fn>+<Esc>, also without issues). Sorry I can't be more helpful with your questions.

Yeah all good for iMessages, iCloud etc.. Got SMBIOS with this tool: https://github.com/corpnewt/GenSMBIOS

 

 

For the FN keys here is what is happening:

1) Without touching the FN ESC, my F1 to F12 keys seem to be mapped to correctly (F1 is mute, F2 is sound -, F3 is sound +...)

2) If I do FN ESC, my F1 to F12 keys seem to be mapped to default Mac hotkeys ? (F1 is brightness -, F2 is brightness +...)

 

It isn't a normal behaviour right ?

 

Cheers

[Rajveer86]

I was interested in moving my Hackintosh over to OpenCore and found xxxzc's repo with both Clover and OpenCore EFIs for the XPS 15 9550. I moved over to that repo's Clover EFI, and then over to OpenCore afterwards. The Clover repo has many differences to wmchris's however everything that was working before still looks to be working the same, and again after moving to OpenCore. I also cleaned Clover files using this guide before booting OpenCore for the first time https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/tree/master/clover-conversion. I thought I'd just mention it here if anybody else was also interested in moving over to OpenCore.

Edited July 12, 2020 by Rajveer86

[golimpio]

4 hours ago, P4R4DiSi4C said:

It isn't a normal behaviour right ?

 

it doesn't look normal to me, I haven't experienced this behaviour.

[P4R4DiSi4C]

12 hours ago, golimpio said:

it doesn't look normal to me, I haven't experienced this behaviour.

Well it was Karabiner messing with my FN keys, working great now.

Does your F5 (Pause / Resume) key works tho ?

[golimpio]

12 hours ago, P4R4DiSi4C said:

Well it was Karabiner messing with my FN keys, working great now.

Does your F5 (Pause / Resume) key works tho ?

Yes, it works fine without any additional software.

[agrafuese]

On 7/12/2020 at 1:01 PM, Rajveer86 said:

I was interested in moving my Hackintosh over to OpenCore and found xxxzc's repo with both Clover and OpenCore EFIs for the XPS 15 9550. I moved over to that repo's Clover EFI, and then over to OpenCore afterwards. The Clover repo has many differences to wmchris's however everything that was working before still looks to be working the same, and again after moving to OpenCore. I also cleaned Clover files using this guide before booting OpenCore for the first time https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/tree/master/clover-conversion. I thought I'd just mention it here if anybody else was also interested in moving over to OpenCore.

 

Thanks for this information, @Rajveer86 . Have you noticed any improvements on kext loading since switching over? I read that OC does that better than Clover. I am somewhat interested in that, because I am so tired of the trackpad kext not loading randomly.

 

Perhaps related news, I just noticed that the newest version of Clover (r5120) released today has some OpenCore efi components implemented into it. I'm not familiar enough with OC to know what those components do, but perhaps someone here is more familiar and can evaluate? Release notes as follows:

 

Quote

This release includes OcQuirks.efi and OpenRuntime.efi copied from OpenCore project.
OcQuirks.plist embedded into config.plist and present in Clover GUI as separate menu to tune settings on the fly.
Kernel patching includes pattern for Big Sur.

 

[golimpio]

Updated to 10.15.6 (through the normal MacOS update process)
No issues so far (but it's been just a few hours).
Clover: r5119
Kexts were already updated, but I don't think there is any special requirement for this update.

 

Spoiler

 

Edited July 28, 2020 by golimpio
Using spoiler tag as recommended

[golimpio]

8 hours ago, agrafuese said:

 

Thanks for this information, @Rajveer86 . Have you noticed any improvements on kext loading since switching over? I read that OC does that better than Clover. I am somewhat interested in that, because I am so tired of the trackpad kext not loading randomly.

 

I've tested this specific OC setup a couple of weeks ago and it worked [almost] fine for me. I didn't test it enough to tell if there is any significant improvement though.

My issue was with the battery indicator, after a few minutes using it, the indicator went red as if the battery was almost fully discharged. It was only the indicator though, since the laptop didn't turn off  (I was monitoring the battery with another app [coconutBattery] to make sure the battery was not discharged).

It was a bit annoying, so I decided not to keep testing it. It might be something related to my setup or perhaps some bug triggered because my battery is too old.

There is a nice Python script to automatically update all the kexts (it's part of the xxxzc's release), which is helpful for when you decide that it's time to update your kexts, I've tested it a few times and it worked well.

I've used the same UUID's from my clover plist, so it was very easy to test it, without causing any issues with Messages/iCloud/etc, everything worked as it was working in Clover (except for the battery issue).

Edited July 18, 2020 by golimpio
grammar

[golimpio]

8 hours ago, agrafuese said:

Perhaps related news, I just noticed that the newest version of Clover (r5120) released today has some OpenCore efi components implemented into it. I'm not familiar enough with OC to know what those components do, but perhaps someone here is more familiar and can evaluate? Release notes as follows:

I'm running the r5120 now. As for the OcQuirks, it seems to be a replacement for AptioMemoryFix and all the OsxAptioFix. So, in my case, it replaced the OsxAptioFix3Drv.efi. For people using the original drivers from the repository, it will replace the AptioMemoryFix-64.efi and OsxAptioFix3Drv.efi.

All the details are in their github page:
https://github.com/ReddestDream/OcQuirks

I didn't need to change any settings, I've just replaced the drivers and it worked fine.

Edited July 18, 2020 by golimpio
grammar

[Rajveer86]

On 7/17/2020 at 7:16 PM, agrafuese said:

 

Thanks for this information, @Rajveer86 . Have you noticed any improvements on kext loading since switching over? I read that OC does that better than Clover. I am somewhat interested in that, because I am so tired of the trackpad kext not loading randomly.

 

Perhaps related news, I just noticed that the newest version of Clover (r5120) released today has some OpenCore efi components implemented into it. I'm not familiar enough with OC to know what those components do, but perhaps someone here is more familiar and can evaluate? Release notes as follows:

 

 

 

Sorry for the late reply. Actually my experience was that on the first few boots, the trackpad driver wasn't loading, however I think this was my fault. Basically after every Clover/Kext change that I used to make, trackpad used to fail and I had to rebuild the kext cache, reboot and it would be fine.

 

The same thing happened on first boot with OpenCore, so I rebuilt the cache. Then when I rebooted it worked, until I rebooted a 2nd time again. I rebuilt the cache again, which worked on 3rd reboot until I rebooted a 4th time. This kept happening, so I rebooted a few times without doing anything and eventually it seemed to work fine. It doesn't happen anymore, so I think maybe after doing a rebuild just try rebooting a few times till it works. Seems to work fine now for me.

[agrafuese]

2 hours ago, Rajveer86 said:

 

Sorry for the late reply. Actually my experience was that on the first few boots, the trackpad driver wasn't loading, however I think this was my fault. Basically after every Clover/Kext change that I used to make, trackpad used to fail and I had to rebuild the kext cache, reboot and it would be fine.

 

The same thing happened on first boot with OpenCore, so I rebuilt the cache. Then when I rebooted it worked, until I rebooted a 2nd time again. I rebuilt the cache again, which worked on 3rd reboot until I rebooted a 4th time. This kept happening, so I rebooted a few times without doing anything and eventually it seemed to work fine. It doesn't happen anymore, so I think maybe after doing a rebuild just try rebooting a few times till it works. Seems to work fine now for me.

 

Ah yeah, that sounds pretty typical as the trackpad kext needs to "register" after a few failures. wmchris explained the logic behind it once before, but I can't remember the specific reasons. Glad it seems to be working well for you, though.

[agrafuese]

On 7/17/2020 at 7:06 PM, golimpio said:

Updated to 10.15.6 (through the normal MacOS update process)
No issues so far (but it's been just a few hours).
Clover: r5119
Kexts were already updated, but I don't think there is any special requirement for this update.

 

Confirmed here as well. Restarts 3 times... thought it was going to fail on the first one because I saw what I thought were some error messages from Lilu about memory, but it didn't seem to cause any issues.

[azeezsk]

Hi, could someone confirm the best boot time achieved, in my case its around 30 seconds on nvme 500gb ssd dual boot with win 10, which I think is slow.

Edited August 2, 2020 by azeezsk