Getting UEFI shell when trying to boot OS X in Virtual Box

Question

I am using the latest test build of Virtual Box (normal versions don't work on El Capitan).

When trying to boot a Virtual Machine with an El Capitan cdr file (created from the command line) I end up getting the UEFI shell instead of the OS X installer.

How would I be able to boot the El Capitan cdr file? I am also running El Capitan as the host too.

https://superuser.com/q/1235970 might help – ReinstateMonica3167040 Oct 31 '19 at 00:57 — ReinstateMonica3167040, Oct 31 '19 at 00:57

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 12 '21 at 10:22

7

Type exit at the UEFI Shell Prompt
Go to Boot Maintenance Manager
Choose Boot From File
Go to Preboot....
Navigate through [Some GUID] -> System -> Library -> CoreServices
Finally select boot.efi

Your machine should now boot up. Works for me for Big Sur.

answered Feb 12 '21 at 10:22

Ahmad Uzair

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Note after step 6 you have to wait a lot and see lots of scrolling text before system starts to boot. – Marek R Dec 12 '22 at 15:51

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 07 '15 at 07:35

5

You have to disable EFI boot in the machine settings. Then it will work, however, you will have to have Chameleon installed on the .cdr image.

answered Oct 07 '15 at 07:35

redbeam_

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Why the downvote? At least say what's wrong with my answer... – redbeam_ Nov 05 '17 at 23:26
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For some toxic reason, the SE community sometimes downvote answers automatically if your rep looks too low. yep, hen-and-egg – Pacerier Mar 19 '18 at 15:42
This solved this problem for me. – John Smith Feb 22 '19 at 04:05

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 07 '15 at 06:45

This is not working in VirtualBox at the time of writing (2015-10-07).

Apple migrated the format of the partition table for El Capitan boot image from MBR to GPT and VirtualBox does not yet support HFS+ filesystems on GPT partitioned drives when starting from EFI.

Refer to this issue:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14490

score -3 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 13 '18 at 17:40

-3

The easiest way to not get this error is to use VMware Workstation Pro.

Even if you prefer VirtualBox, if you even more prefer to do things the easy way, install VMware Workstation Pro.

You can install it here.

I have not tried this method myself, so I cannot guarantee that it will work.

Thanks for taking your time to listen,

Zyrom121

answered Apr 13 '18 at 17:40

Zyrom121

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If you haven't tried it and aren't sure it works, how can you say it's the easiest solution? – fixer1234 Apr 13 '18 at 19:12
Because I have tried it on an older version of VMware. – Zyrom121 Apr 18 '18 at 18:53

Getting UEFI shell when trying to boot OS X in Virtual Box

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