Sonoma 14.4, stuck on boot, solution provided

Hello all. I'd like to post the issue I had and the solution. Hopefully it will be helpful to someone.

MacbookPro late 2013, Retina 13". I had Sonoma version 14.3.1 running without issues and decided to casually upgrade to 14.4. Note: my version of OCLP was 1.3.0. Bad mistake.

After a Success ful upgrade, OCLP prompted me to apply the root patches, which I did. At the next reboot the laptop got stuck on boot (the progress bar would freeze at 1/3). I reset the NVRAM/PRAM. No difference.

I attempted to get into the OCLP recovery but this would lead to a black screen and I could not get into recovery.

At this point I created a bootable usb installer of OCLP + Sonoma from another mac, and booted from it. This time I could get into recovery.

I followed the "reset root patches" steps as highlighted here https://Dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/TROUBLESHOOTING.html#stuck-on-boot-after-root-patching but my filesystem lacked the ".../Extensions" directory described in the last step alltoghether.

In the end I managed to boot the system by booting it in "safe mode" as described here https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac.

At that point due to the wifi not working (missing patches) I copied via usb-stick the version 1.4.1 (latest) of OCLP, ran it and applied the updated root patches. Rebooted, the system booted properly!

I hope this helps. In my case, I suspect something happened while applying the root patches the first time. Having an old version (1.3.0) was probably part of the issue.

So:

  1. always make backups!
  2. always check the release notes of OCLP
  3. patch

Thanks to the OCLP team for the superb work.

Author: @spidernik84