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applCore

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 3, 2011
193
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Has anyone had trouble installing 10.13 on a 2010 Mac Pro? This system is entirely supported, but it is not installing. I have succeeded in installing it on NON supported Mac Pros from 2009, but this 2010 issue is a mystery!
 
The installer prompts to shut down and hold the power button in as per usual. After doing as instructed and holding the power button in to get the fast blink + long chime for firmware / EFI update, the system then issues the normal chime (again, this is usual), but instead of going into the installation, it just goes right back to 10.12 and starts the installer again which has the same old shutdown + hold power prompt. I can do this 20 times and there is no difference. I have reset the NVRAM, no change.
 
The installer prompts to shut down and hold the power button in as per usual. After doing as instructed and holding the power button in to get the fast blink + long chime for firmware / EFI update, the system then issues the normal chime (again, this is usual), but instead of going into the installation, it just goes right back to 10.12 and starts the installer again which has the same old shutdown + hold power prompt. I can do this 20 times and there is no difference. I have reset the NVRAM, no change.
I had this issue with one of the betas that had a firmware update. I believe I downloaded it again and it worked.
 
Yeah, I tried that unfortunately. I have downloaded the last 3 betas and now the final release. Same results each and every time for this one. Thought maybe the NVRAM might be buggered up so I cmd-opt-p-r'd the crap out of it and still no joy.
 
@h9826790:
Boot ROM Version: MP51.007F.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.39f11

Thanks @jer2eydevil88, unfortunately I'm not running a RAID on this so it doesn't seem entirely applicable, but I guess it begs the question: Has your firmware updated?

The thing I can see here is that my boot ROM is not updated to the MP51.008X.B00 yet. Even my several firmware hacked 2009 systems show MP51.0084.B00 while my 2010 is not taking the firmware.

Do you think there is a way to use some hackintosh tools to manually check and place the payload in the EFI?
 
I managed to install High Sierra on a mid 2010 Mac Pro. It works, but on the whole I think it was better with Sierra.
 
@ashleykaryl on my other Mac Pros I'm seeing significant speed improvements with 10.13 and resolution of a host of issues vs 10.12. This Mac Pro has been plagued by issues that are very likely to be resolved with this update according to what I'm seeing on the other units.
 
I'm definitely not seeing any speed improvement. It's not unusable, but no way is it an improvement. On top of that my SSD boot drive had 105 gigs of available space, but after the "upgrade" that has now dropped to 71 gigs and becoming less all the time. That drive only has the OS and user library. Everything else, such as the iMovie library etc is stored on other drives.

It sounds to me like High Sierra doesn't like the mid 2010 series. This is an 8 Core model with an SSD on PCI and 32 gigs of ram.
[doublepost=1506521076][/doublepost]Another point before I forget. For some reason I cannot access the recovery drive unless I use a wired keyboard and mouse. If I simply press the option key at startup it simply doesn't appear as an option.
 
Hm, these have not been my experience on our other various Mac Pros. You may want to report these issues to Apple (bugreport.apple.com) as they seem to be very, very interested in issues at the moment such as these. It would be better to submit these sooner than later since those who submit issues earliest and closest to launch will receive the most attention @ashleykaryl.

Right now I can see that my primary goal for this upgrade must be to get the firmware to flash properly on this 2010 model.
 
Hm, these have not been my experience on our other various Mac Pros. You may want to report these issues to Apple (bugreport.apple.com) as they seem to be very, very interested in issues at the moment such as these. It would be better to submit these sooner than later since those who submit issues earliest and closest to launch will receive the most attention @ashleykaryl.

Right now I can see that my primary goal for this upgrade must be to get the firmware to flash properly on this 2010 model.

I had these problems with the GM version that I installed and sent all the info through the feedback app, so they have it all. When I do manage to reach disk utility through the recovery drive it refuses to repair the SSD, because it says it cannot be unmounted, so the whole situation is weird. Having just completed a fresh install, nothing has improved, so I think a clean install may be the only answer.
 
What graphics card do you have in the computer?

@chrfr ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB

@ashleykaryl sounds like it (although I've not had to do that at all on any of ours), or you might wait until the .1 update to just see if these are issues that are resolved. Who knows how long that will take, but I've seen .1s come out pretty quick before. I have a number of smallish issues myself right now in that probably will be resolved soon from what I'm thinking and I'm hoping to see some beta releases for a .1 soonish.
 
A clean install will probably take a good half day by the time I have it all sorted out, so that would be a pain. On the other hand I don't want to be left in a real mess if something goes wrong with these underlying issues. I have everything backed up on Time Machine, plus a copy of the system as it was on Sierra if really required.

It feels like a good idea to fully sort this out, rather than wait for patches that may or may not help. Previous upgrades have generally been far less dramatic, so I wasn't expecting all this troubleshooting.
 
Sorry to hear. Like I said, it has been an amazing upgrade to finally get this kind performance improvement on all of our Mac Pros so far.

The only real problem so far is this 2010 firmware issue. Oh, I have seen some odd graphical issues from a system update to the graphical subsystem, but I think that should be resolved and it's relatively minor at this point.
 
Sorry to hear. Like I said, it has been an amazing upgrade to finally get this kind performance improvement on all of our Mac Pros so far.

The only real problem so far is this 2010 firmware issue. Oh, I have seen some odd graphical issues from a system update to the graphical subsystem, but I think that should be resolved and it's relatively minor at this point.

You might want to check the color picker, which is pretty messed up. Skala Color doesn't even appear under High Sierra.
[doublepost=1506531396][/doublepost]@applecore Just a thought, but I wonder if that firmware upgrade is part of the problems I am seeing as well. Perhaps the firmware itself is the cause of our issues.
 
I'm experiencing a similar problem. I'm receiving a error screen on startup that something went wrong and to press a key or wait 20 seconds. This issue has continued for 5 restarts before I turned off the Mac Pro to research. Any ideas?
 
From memory there was something tricky that had to be done and it threw me a couple of times. It was only when I read the instructions carefully prior to restarting that I worked out what was wrong.
 
Well this is looking like great fun. I managed to get into recovery mode and erase everything before doing a clean install. 1 minute before the end a message pops up saying a reboot volume could not be created on my drive and that was it. No install. At the moment I'm having to wait for 3 hours and hope that the Time Machine restore goes smoothly.

error-install.jpg
 
Yikes. What is your firmware version now? Seems like you are having an EFI issue.
[doublepost=1506547088][/doublepost]And you know, not that I'm too keen on this since I want to obliterate HFS+ from existence, but you could install on HFS+ vs APFS. This reminded me of that.
 
I'm not sure at the moment, but I know I ran the firmware update before installing the GM version of High Sierra. The Time Machine restore has failed for some reason, so at the moment I am far from impressed by High Sierra. It's attempting another OS install, but if that doesn't work I guess I'll have to pull out the old SATA drive with Sierra and hope for the best.
 
Well this is looking like great fun. I managed to get into recovery mode and erase everything before doing a clean install. 1 minute before the end a message pops up saying a reboot volume could not be created on my drive and that was it. No install. At the moment I'm having to wait for 3 hours and hope that the Time Machine restore goes smoothly.

error-install.jpg

Is your PCIe SSD in APFS format? If yes, may be you can try HFS+ and let the installer auto convert it to APFS. If not, try the other way around.
 
Yes it was already recognised as APFS, but everything I tried was hitting a brick wall. It wouldn't let me repair the drive, because it said it was in use and couldn't be unmounted. If I partitioned it one half was healthy and the other apparently not. I tried the HFS+ trick as well, but no luck.

Eventually I tried to restart and it wouldn't let me choose that drive or any other, including Time Machine, so I got it to shut down. When it started up a warning sign appeared and then it booted into recovery mode after an extended period. Once there I was suddenly able to repair the drive, erase it and repair it again, so everything now checked out as being OK. I'm not going through a clean install again and hoping it will work this time. 11 minutes remaining...
[doublepost=1506552758][/doublepost]Update: It appears to have worked and I now have a completely clean install. I could have tried importing data from Time Machine, but I've decided to start from scratch and only install what I really need. I think I'll leave the rest for tomorrow at this point.
 
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