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

[golimpio]

On 8/2/2020 at 4:30 PM, azeezsk said:

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.

 

39 seconds, from the Clover menu to the Login screen (verbose mode disabled) - XPS 15 9550 16GB / PM951 NVMe SAMSUNG 512GB

Edited August 4, 2020 by golimpio
Added ssd info

[golimpio]

There is a new update for VirtualSMC that includes a new plugin: SMCDellSensors.
From release notes: "Added a new plugin SMCDellSensors for Temp/FAN monitor/control".

I've quickly tested it and it's now possible to control the fan speed through apps like Macs Fan Control.
 

Spoiler

 

[blackatom]

I have a Dell 9550 i5 with an upgraded WD Black SN750 500gb and additional RAM.

I apologize if this has been answered before, but 71 pages of replies and search returned nothing.

I'm very experienced in Linux and have been a developer for 15 years, I'm no stranger to stuff like this.

I used https://internet-install.gitbook.io/macos-internet-install/preparing-your-installer to configure my USB drive and then copied the Clover configuration from the tutorial on Page 1 to have a bootable USB drive with clover installed.

 

I tried to install Catalina, but Clover hung constantly when trying to boot Catalina from the USB drive so I went back and tried Mojave.

 

• Initial booting via USB and clover to download and install MacOS on my SSD worked (Western Digital SN750 NVME).
• I rebooted via USB and Clover found MacOS on my SSD.
• I booted into that SSD installation and let Mojave run through it's installation until the first reboot.
• Here's where I'm stuck. That first reboot during installation.

I can no longer get to Clover through USB.

Even if I go to boot options (F12) and select my USB drive and UEFI I get stuck at either the Dell logo or a black screen. Even trying to boot Ubuntu via USB fails. I can get the Ubuntu bootloader to load Ubuntu from the USB, this results in a black screen as well. I've NEVER had USB booting fail like this before. There has always been the ability to boot ubuntu via liveUSB and reformat, install, do whatever, but now, I get nothing but a black screen.

How could Mojave's install screwed with booting even BEFORE hitting the UEFI partition on the SSD? And even the bootable USB?

[jwijesundra]

21 hours ago, blackatom said:

 Even trying to boot Ubuntu via USB fails.

Can you see ubuntu on the usb as an option to boot from? and then you choose it and boot fails? or you can't even see the option?

[azeezsk]

On 8/7/2020 at 8:07 PM, blackatom said:

I have a Dell 9550 i5 with an upgraded WD Black SN750 500gb and additional RAM.

I apologize if this has been answered before, but 71 pages of replies and search returned nothing.

I'm very experienced in Linux and have been a developer for 15 years, I'm no stranger to stuff like this.

I used https://internet-install.gitbook.io/macos-internet-install/preparing-your-installer to configure my USB drive and then copied the Clover configuration from the tutorial on Page 1 to have a bootable USB drive with clover installed.

 

I tried to install Catalina, but Clover hung constantly when trying to boot Catalina from the USB drive so I went back and tried Mojave.

 

• Initial booting via USB and clover to download and install MacOS on my SSD worked (Western Digital SN750 NVME).
• I rebooted via USB and Clover found MacOS on my SSD.
• I booted into that SSD installation and let Mojave run through it's installation until the first reboot.
• Here's where I'm stuck. That first reboot during installation.

I can no longer get to Clover through USB.

Even if I go to boot options (F12) and select my USB drive and UEFI I get stuck at either the Dell logo or a black screen. Even trying to boot Ubuntu via USB fails. I can get the Ubuntu bootloader to load Ubuntu from the USB, this results in a black screen as well. I've NEVER had USB booting fail like this before. There has always been the ability to boot ubuntu via liveUSB and reformat, install, do whatever, but now, I get nothing but a black screen.

How could Mojave's install screwed with booting even BEFORE hitting the UEFI partition on the SSD? And even the bootable USB?

I am no expert, but can suggest below, see if it works:

1. Try alternate USB ports and different USB drives.

2. Clover Repos by WMChris and XXXZC works like charm, try those repos. I think you can install Catalina, no need to stick to Mojave.

3. I am currently on OC Repo by XXXZC and currently doing pretty good. Boot time has certainly improved as compared to clover.

4. I used windows Explorer+++ to paste clover folder in the USB efi of above repost, it has worked so far.

 

[Krim404]

On 8/7/2020 at 6:07 PM, blackatom said:

I can no longer get to Clover through USB. 

Even if I go to boot options (F12) and select my USB drive and UEFI I get stuck at either the Dell logo or a black screen. Even trying to boot Ubuntu via USB fails. I can get the Ubuntu bootloader to load Ubuntu from the USB, this results in a black screen as well. I've NEVER had USB booting fail like this before. There has always been the ability to boot ubuntu via liveUSB and reformat, install, do whatever, but now, I get nothing but a black screen. 

How could Mojave's install screwed with booting even BEFORE hitting the UEFI partition on the SSD? And even the bootable USB?

 

as this also affect your ubuntu bootloader, you should take a look if you misconfigured anything in the BIOS, also clear the nvram. It's also possible you've a hardware failure.

[RainYuGG]

Thanks, 

https://github.com/xxxzc/xps15-9550-macos/releases

 

work well at 10.15.6
I just changed to the xxxzc's clover version (use ocquirks) from original
Clover: r5120

Bios: xps 9550 1.12.0 

I was confused at few drivers in the pkg first, but it also worked well. even better than original.

booted to the user login page with 50 seconds after clicking the button. (if from clover menu, it's about 30~35s)

all you need to do, just install clover 5120 and change your own SMBIOS.

 

 

I upgraded ssd and ram few years ago.

There's my device info

cpu: i5-6300hq

ssd: 970 evo 500g

monitor: 4k version

ram: kingston hyperX impact KHX2400C14S48G  

[hackedWifi]

[SOLVED]

I had to reinstall macOs since I tried every possible solution. I actually learned about OpenCore and read everything related to it. I am glad I did. Thanks to https://github.com/xxxzc/xps15-9550-macos/releases and @golimpio

Good afternoon everyone. I am facing the following issue on 10.14 Mojave. Clover version 40... 48.. and latest one DOES'NT not display the Mojave apfs partition when booting it. I havent used this Mojave since december 2019 and the last time I used it I remember updating to the latest CLOVER. Now that I tried to boot MacOs CLOVER is giving me that issue. It displays my LINUX partition just fine. I have already searched the web. I have verified that

/drivers64UEFI/ApfsDriverLoader.efi and HFSPlus.efi are there

I have tried to cp the /Volumes/EFI-backups/EFI/CLOVER from December. I have tried to copy the 10.14/CLOVER from wmcris repository. I have tried a lot of things. Nothings make clover show the Mojove partition. I don't have my USB boot flash drive. So any help is appreciated. I have ran out of ideas as to why CLOVER isn't showing the dang Mojave partition.

Edited August 30, 2020 by hackedWifi
Solved post.

[golimpio]

I've just upgraded to macOS Big Sur. Even though it's quite unstable at the moment (it rebooted twice in 3 hours), it does look promising, everything is working as it was in Catalina, no extra settings needed.

I'm running the latest OpenCore for this and I haven't tested it with Clover, and since this is a bit off-topic, I'm not going to extend much this comment at the moment.

The only trick I've done was to force the display to run at 48Hz as noted by xxxzc (I've tested and it didn't work without it). It was done using the normal MacOS software upgrade process, but it took a while and several restarts.
 

Spoiler

 

Edit 1: Part of the reason it was so unstable was because the firewall I was using (Lulu) isn't compatible with Big Sur yet. I've removed it and the system seems to be more stable now.
 

Edit 2: At this moment I think the issue is with my PM951 NVMe, Big Sur doesn't seem to like it  - All the KPs I experienced are related to it:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff800bb42d36): nvme: "Fatal error occurred. CSTS=0x1 US[1]=0x0 US[0]=0x2bf VID=0x144d DID=0xa802
. FW Revision=BXV77D0Q\n"@/AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IONVMeFamily/IONVMeFamily-557.40.7/Common/IONVMeController.cpp:5454

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by golimpio
Added a new note

[agrafuese]

Thanks go! You are a pioneer for our machine 

 

Hopefully, it's just a matter of a new patch being developed. Exciting news nonetheless.

[agrafuese]

Unrelated, but for anyone else still running Clover, the newest version (r5122) runs perfectly fine when combined with the newest kexts (I've updated all of them), and the supplemental Apple update. No problems so far that I can tell. Several of the kexts have new versions as of this week, so if you haven't updated them recently, you may want to check them out.

[BeatMag]

So I used the latest files from wmchris GitHub. Tried to install 10.15.6. Install fails towards the end where it attempts to reboot.

 

But if I used golimpio efi zip file from 2-3 pages back everything works fine.

 

Could someone explain to me how do I go about updating kexts? From the clover folder which sub folder do I need to update from? There are heaps of files?

 

Kexts/other?? 
or

drivers/UEFI???

 

do I just google them one by one and get the latest?

[golimpio]

11 hours ago, BeatMag said:

So I used the latest files from wmchris GitHub. Tried to install 10.15.6. Install fails towards the end where it attempts to reboot.

 

But if I used golimpio efi zip file from 2-3 pages back everything works fine.

 

Could someone explain to me how do I go about updating kexts? From the clover folder which sub folder do I need to update from? There are heaps of files?

 

Kexts/other?? 
or

drivers/UEFI???

 

do I just google them one by one and get the latest?

 

Usually just the kext folder: kexts/other

 

About how you get the new kexts, people do it in a few different ways. The most common is probably going to the Github and download the kext from their official release page, e.g.: https://github.com/acidanthera/Lilu/releases/latest

Some people will compile and build the kexts from source, because they say that's the most reliable way to do it.

 

There are tools that help you download those kexts in batch: https://github.com/headkaze/Hackintool 

And others will just build a script to automatically download all the new kexts at once.

I use Hackintool for checking if there is any new update and then I go to their officials repositories in Github and download each kext from there.

 

When you update a kext, you need to be aware of dependencies, for example, if you update Lilu, there are a few kexts that depend on it, so it's a good idea to update all the kexts related to it.

Dependencies information are usually on the "readme" file in the kext's repository (usually Github). For example, for Whatevergreen (https://github.com/acidanthera/WhateverGreen), you will find out that it depends on Lilu by reading the first line of the note.

Edited September 21, 2020 by golimpio

[BeatMag]

Thanks heaps for your explanation and help Golimpio!!!!!!!!

 

your a champion!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll try updating kexts in the efi zip you provided 2-3 pages back. And reinstall 10.15.6 properly. I was still testing.

[agrafuese]

I should take @golimpio's advice about hackintool... I usually just google all of the kexts and download from the original githubs (hint: I end up at acidanthera's page for 70% of the kexts, haha). Anyway, welcome to our little club, @BeatMag ! One of us is usually rambling about how to keep this laptop updated, and sometimes we're even a little bit helpful in the process  Cheers!

[Mr.C]

Successfully updated kexts, clover and OS to the latest releases.

 

Kexts versions:

AirportBrcmFixup (2.0.9)

AppleALC (1.5.2)

BrcmPatchRam (2.5.4)

CPUFriend (1.2.1)

FakePCIID (1.3.15)

Lilu (1.4.7)

NoTouchID (1.0.4)

VirtualSMC (1.1.6)

VoodooI2C (2.4.4)

VoodooInput (1.0.7)

VoodooPS2 (2.1.4)

WhateverGreen (1.4.2)

Clover:

from 5120 to 5122 via installer

 

OS:

from 10.15.6 to 10.15.7 via normal software upgrade

 

 

Didn't face any issue yet

[agrafuese]

Same here! Just came in to post about it too  3 reboots, per usual.

[agrafuese]

I ran into an issue with my 9550 recently, not related to hackintosh, but I wanted to share it with everyone because it is a non-OS related issue.

 

I was having a problem (again) where waking from sleep on battery (not plugged in) was causing a reboot. Last time this happened, I discovered a solution to the problem within macOS. However, the fix wasn't working this time.

 

I just so happened to be booted into Win10 last night, and when I closed and opened the lid, it also rebooted. So I knew something was wrong somewhere deeper than the OS level.

 

Turns out the fix is to re-update the BIOS. Once I did this, everything worked perfectly, both in macOS and Win10. My BIOS (or something firmware-related) must have become slightly corrupt, and it was causing issues with sleep/wake. This is a known problem with many Dell laptops, not just ours.

 

So, if you're having trouble with your system rebooting when you wake from sleep (on battery), and you've already tried my previous fixes within macOS (here and here), then try re-updating your BIOS, and most likely it will be working again.

[agrafuese]

Question for those of you running OpenCore and VirtualSMC 1.1.6 - 

 

When you first boot into macOS (login screen) with power plugged in, do you hear the plugged-in chime as if you just plugged the power in?

 

It does this for me, but I am using Clover, so I don't know if that is the reason, or if there is something wrong within the SMC kexts. VirtualSMC 1.1.4 doesn't give me this problem. It's a very minor issue, but it gets annoying after a while.

 

 

[golimpio]

On 9/28/2020 at 3:13 AM, agrafuese said:

I ran into an issue with my 9550 recently, not related to hackintosh, but I wanted to share it with everyone because it is a non-OS related issue.

 

I was having a problem (again) where waking from sleep on battery (not plugged in) was causing a reboot. Last time this happened, I discovered a solution to the problem within macOS. However, the fix wasn't working this time.

 

I just so happened to be booted into Win10 last night, and when I closed and opened the lid, it also rebooted. So I knew something was wrong somewhere deeper than the OS level.

 

Turns out the fix is to re-update the BIOS. Once I did this, everything worked perfectly, both in macOS and Win10. My BIOS (or something firmware-related) must have become slightly corrupt, and it was causing issues with sleep/wake. This is a known problem with many Dell laptops, not just ours.

 

So, if you're having trouble with your system rebooting when you wake from sleep (on battery), and you've already tried my previous fixes within macOS (here and here), then try re-updating your BIOS, and most likely it will be working again.

Thanks for the tip... I had this issue a few weeks ago and somehow switching between Clover+Catalina and OC+Big Sur, the sleep issue was gone. Then today it was back again and I've tried your solution to re-apply the BIOS and it worked well, it saved me some hours

Edited October 2, 2020 by golimpio
grammar

[BeatMag]

Hi all,

 

So I freshly installed 10.15.6 with golimpio's EFI.zip, Thanks again golimpio!.

Then I proceeded to update the Kexts in Kexts/Other folder (updated all the ones that I could find).

Then I upgraded Clover by running clover_r5122.pkg and just installed with ESP and UEFI option set only. Nothing else. This was all done on the Catalina Install USB.

Then I just copied my Clover folder from USB onto my old Clover folder on my SSD.

So everything seems working.

So I proceeded to update to 10.15.7 via system updates

Everything worked after a few reboots

 

Question

1) I just wanted to ask whether I upgraded Clover correctly??? I had trouble following some of the guides about upgrading Clover, I couldn't ever make the install go into an upgrade mode. So I decided to only install Clover with no other options.

 

2) The other thing is that, 10.15.7 seems to load abit slower compared to 10.15.6 on the progress bar loading screen, is this normal??????

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by BeatMag

[agrafuese]

51 minutes ago, BeatMag said:

1) I just wanted to ask whether I upgraded Clover correctly??? I had trouble following some of the guides about upgrading Clover, I couldn't ever make the install go into an upgrade mode. So I decided to only install Clover with no other options.

 

Along with the ESP and UEFI checkboxes, you want to make sure that you are ticking the boxes that correspond with whatever UEFI drivers are currently installed. If you look at golimpio's zip and go into the Clover/drivers/UEFI folder, you'll see all of the *.efi files in there. Compare the clover installer checkboxes with what you see there (they will be in a variety of subcategories, so this can take some patience to sort through). These get updated with new releases of Clover sometimes, so it's best to use the newest versions. There are a few in the folder that are not in the Clover installer, so simply make sure to drag those into the new Clover/drivers/UEFI folder when installation is done. I think golimpio and I have slightly different setups, but you should end up with approximately 12 *.efi files in that folder, give or take a few. I'm attaching a screenshot here of what mine looks like. The blue labels indicate the driver files that are not included in the Clover installer - i.e. the ones I have to put in manually after install is complete.

 

Secondly, you want to make sure that you are bringing over everything in the old Clover/ACPI/patched folder to the new one each time. These typically don't change now that our setups are generally pretty established. They are not included in Clover's installation process, so you have to do it manually.

 

Anything else would be custom to your personal setup. If you don't already have your serial numbers sorted out for iCloud in your config.plist, you'll want to do that. golimpio's config.plist has them taken out for security reasons. Everyone needs their own unique numbers. You can do a search to find out how to do this if you don't already know (I can't remember the exact steps now, been too long).

 

1 hour ago, BeatMag said:

2) The other thing is that, 10.15.7 seems to load abit slower compared to 10.15.6 on the progress bar loading screen, is this normal??????

 

I haven't noticed a difference, but I boot using verbose mode so I can see if anything weird happens. It probably distracts me from noticing a difference, but I also don't see it hanging on any messages, so I can't think of a reason why it would be slower other than more processes to initiate (?). How slow are we talking anyway? A couple seconds or more than 30?

[BeatMag]

A few seconds slower. Progress bar kind of goes to 70% and gets stuck for a few seconds. Before it was loading and it just didn't get stuck.

 

I will try to do the Clover r5122 update again.

I didn't select any UEFI drivers, I guess I would be still using the old ones from the EFI.zip.

When upgrading Clover, should the clover app say Install or Upgrade? 

I select my USB Catalina Install stick and Clover app doesn't seem to detect its an upgrade. So it only offers to reinstall for me. Is this how its suppose to be?

 

I'll try again and re install clover on the USB stick, but this time i'll select the UEFI Drivers we have.

 

EDIT: Reinstalled Clover r5122 again. Not all UEFI Drivers were listed in Clover install , so I just chose whatever matched.

 

It loading even slower now hahaha. Maybe first time caching....

 

 

Edited October 3, 2020 by BeatMag
update

[BeatMag]

I've just been reading up on serial numbers and uuid's.

Which numbers should i generate again?

I just realisesd I'm using Golimpio's Serial number that was shared in the EFI.zip file.

 

Which tools are you guys using to generate the system profile??

 

[golimpio]

On 10/3/2020 at 2:00 PM, BeatMag said:

I've just been reading up on serial numbers and uuid's.

Which numbers should i generate again?

I just realisesd I'm using Golimpio's Serial number that was shared in the EFI.zip file.

 

Which tools are you guys using to generate the system profile??

 

I use Hackintool. Another popular app for this is Clover Configurator. Hackintool will generate all the numbers for you, then you just need to copy and paste them to your config plist.

Edited October 6, 2020 by golimpio