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I have been trying to install macOS Catalina on virtual box foloowing this tutorial:

https://techsprobe.com/install-macos-catalina-virtualbox-windows/

When getting to the step of having to actually install catalina the virtual machine boots into an EFI shell

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The same person who wrote the tutorial wrote a supposed fix:

https://techsprobe.com/how-to-fix-efi-internal-shell-on-macos-catalina-on-virtualbox/

The fix adds an ISO file which contains parts of an apple file system which is loaded via a startup.nsh file which you create in the shell.

enter image description here

The fix itself however does not work either. Now I have no idea about how EFI shells work or how "fs#" relates to loading files from the apfs ISO. Here is the startup.nsh file as well as the error associated with trying to run it:

enter image description here

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Now like I said I dont have much of an idea of how EFI works or whats going on here in general, so feel free to educate me.

Holmes
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  • just type exit to get into BIOS and start the boot manually using `Boot Maintenance Manager -> Boot From File` - see [this post](https://superuser.com/questions/1235970/stuck-on-uefi-interactive-shell-with-mac-os-x-high-sierra-vm) or even run the boot file from shell: `fs[your number]:\path\to\boot\file` which is located at `System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi` for catalina – Jiří Dec 09 '20 at 18:38
  • you can browse the file hierarchy using standard `cd` and `ls` to locate the boot file... – Jiří Dec 09 '20 at 18:41
  • another way is to add new virtual hard drive with virtualbox boot image that does the selection for you automatically: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/15_idYyD9gAwhaYPykkZCe_j5aZKswONd – Jiří Dec 09 '20 at 18:46
  • Jiří File is password protected. Why share a file with the world, then stick a password on it? – MC9000 Aug 24 '22 at 17:15

2 Answers2

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I was able to fix the UEFI problems as follows (credit to techrechard website):

At UEFI prompt: Type exit You’ll be brought into an EFI text-mode GUI. Select Boot Maintenance Manager and click. Select Boot From File and click You should see two entries in a list (they are cryptic looking PCI bus paths).

The first PCI path in the list is probably the boot partition that doesn’t contain bootable firmware. The second PCI path is probably to the recovery partition, the one you need to boot from. If the 2nd partition isn’t the recovery partition, look under the paths in the list to see if one of them is it. If the recovery partition isn’t present and valid, these instructions won’t work.

Click the 2nd entry, you should see (and then click):

macOS Install Data

Then click:

Locked Files

Then (if present), click

Boot Files

And finally click:

boot.efi

Installation will continue, or you will boot into the OS or get the Recovery Utilities menu (where macOS can be reinstalled from or Disk Utilities run). The ambiguity of that last statement is I did that awhile before writing this comment and I don’t recall what I booted into first, only that it worked and was not hard to figure out what to do at that point. If you have a recovery partition, to boot directly into the Recovery Mode turn on the Mac and immediately press and hold (⌘)-R

Vaibhav Gupta
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  • Thanks Vaibhav, while doing this I have 3 or 4 entries in the Boot file list, depending on the Catalina ISO image I downloaded. No matter which one I choose, I always get the message "PX-E16 No valid offer received", and after a few automatic reboots it goes back to the EFI text-mode GUI. Is there a network configuration I need to setup in order to make it work? I'm using VMWare Fusion 13.0.1 and a Catalina 10.15.5 image. – Xavier Arias Apr 23 '23 at 11:56
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Apparently if you follow this link how to install catalina, you will get an error like the one you got (This is probably due tu the way virtualbox reads disks--> uefi or legacy). Mine was :‘FSL: \ system/library/coreservices \ boot EFI’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or script file?. On another forum I found this command:

> Install.nsh

If you write it in the command line of your virtualbox MAC environment it should proceed. It worked fine when I typed it.

Andy McRae
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