Clover Legacy Bootloader

[Claribel Szwaja]

Forthose wanting to try Windows 10, I thought I would create a short guide on how to create a Clover/UEFI Windows 10 installer with Rufus and clean install. This guide is tailored for legacy BIOS machines but should also work in systems with native UEFI firmware.

Prerequisites

1. Access to OSX and Windows to run Rufus and install Clover

2. Install Rufus: Download from here

3. Download the Windows 10 insider preview ISO (build 10074) from here.

4. After the image has been burned to the USB, copy bootx64.efi from the /efi/boot folder of the Windows ISO/DVD into /efi/microsoft/boot. Rename the file to "bootmgfw.efi" and also rename cdboot.efi to cdboot.bak.

Sometimes, you have the scenario where there is an already existing install of legacy Windows on an MBR disk. Afterwards, you install OSX on a separate GPT disk with Clover and find that it won't boot the existing Windows MBR drive. What to do without formatting and re-installing Windows in UEFI mode?

Answer: Install the Windows EFI bootloader, bootmgfw.efi on the existing Windows NTFS partition using bcdboot.exe. This program can be executed from the command prompt and is also found in Windows installation media (iso, DVD or usb). The Windows 8 or newer versions of bcdboot.exe are required for exclusive installation of UEFI boot files in an EFI folder (and will also work with Windows 7).

@fusion71au i found fix to my system what i did

1. Use rufus instead MBR I select GPT UEFI

2. Renamed bootx64.efi to bootmgfw.efi and above instructions said

3. Installed clover to usb , selected -> UEFI Mobo instead no kext required

4. Just booted with my UEFI USB and selected to efi usb ( boot with bootmgfw.efi )

5. As OSX is previously installed and left free space I selected

Note : Don't forget to install clover to ESP (EFI Patition ) and , Preferable if you boot from ESP and select USB (windows ) this way UEFI Bios will add entry to Both Bootloader Windows and Clover , otherwise Windows Bootloader will rule over it .. re-installing clover doesn't fix this (in My Situation) ,

I'm happy that you found a workaround to your problem, although by remaking the RUFUS installer again, your USB drive would have been repartitioned and reformatted, which was what I was recommending anyway in post#4 . Personally, I've never had the error 0xc0000005 with the installer USB made with an MBR partition layout.

Choosing the "GPT partition scheme for UEFI computer" certainly works if your computer has native UEFI firmware but some systems with legacy BIOS eg my desktop GA-P55aUD3/Intel i5 750/ATI HD 5770 will refuse to boot from a GPT partitioned USB so I chose a FAT32 MBR to be compatible with more systems. Also if you have UEFI BIOS, you don't really even need to install Clover onto the USB - just directly choose the UEFI boot option for the USB and it will load bootx64.efi/bootmgfw.efi --> install UEFI Windows.

That being said, I've tested my MBR formatted installer to install UEFI Windows 10 on all my legacy BIOS systems, a desktop GA-B75M-D3H with UEFI BIOS and also on my real Mac Mini - see pictures below....

i was having a issue with my system i always need to rename cloverx64.efi to bootmgfw to bootclover and i'm totally having new exp with UEFI (renaming alwasy irritate me windows updates take over it )

I remember getting this error with my Optiplex 780. I had an extra USB flash drive plugged in to the back of the box, and I only needed to unplug the unneeded flash drive, and Windows 10 installed without any more errors.

My guess is that you have used the bootx64.efi from your hard disk's EFI system partition (which is actually CLOVERX64.efi and about 646KB) instead of the bootx64.efi from the Windows 8 ISO/DVD (> 1MB, found in the EFI\boot folder of the Windows install media)...

Another way to get bootmgfw.efi is to extract it from install.wim using 7 Zip in Windows (found in the sources folder on your Windows 8 ISO/DVD). Open install.wim and navigate to the Windows\Boot\EFI folder...

Good afternoon @fusion71au. I was hoping you or anyone could help me with an issue I'm having.

My goal was to dual boot Windows 7 and Yosemite both in UEFI mode using Clover, with the operating systms on seperate SSD's. I'm a decent PC user, but I'm new to Mac so it took me a little bit to understand the Mac lingo.

I successfully installed OSX Yosemite following various guides (mostly from tonymac), and other sites when I didn't understand something. It took me a approximately 5 hours or so to install Yosemite, but it's been solid ever since. Now, the big issue I'm having is with Windows 7. That's suprising to me because I'm a long time PC user who has built many systems. Long story short, it's installed in UEFI. It took me a while to figure out Windows Update. Apparently there are issues with that (as stared on many forums). Luckly I found another guide that helped me a lot.

Now, before installing the Windows Updates I was able to successfully boot Windows and Yosemite from Clover. After I installed all of the Windows Updates (that took hours too), and plugged back in the hard drive that contained Yosemite, I could not boot Windows 7 from Clover anymore. The Windows screen would come up, and then it would turn into a black screen. After I I don't know what I did. I even reinstalled Windows 7 (for like the 5th time). This last time i saw that I could still boot Windows 7 if I set it as #1 to boot in bios. If Windows had previously failed to boot from Clover, Windows will give me an error screen, but when i choose to "Launch Windows Normally" it launches with no problems. I think something happend with the Clover bootloader. I can still boot into Yosemite with Clover. I've searched and searched with no clear answer. Today is day five of me trying to get this to work. I've tried almost everything people suggested with no good results.

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate in UEFI mode as per this guide: -mode-usb.html

I installed Yosemite per this guide: Success Guide Yosemite 10.10.1 Clover UEFI Guide - Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H

It booted fine from Clover for a while. Once again, I performed a windows update where it had to install 200+ updates. It seems like right after that, it would not boot from Clover anymore. OS X Yoesmite still boots, and Windows will boot if I choose it in the bios, but not in Clover. I even reinstalled the EFI boot file because I thought the update may have corrupted it.

Unlike boot1f32alt, boot1f5 will automatically search for a "boot" file named boot5 (without the user having to press a number key during boot to choose). We need to rename Clover's third stage boot file this way to prevent a conflict with the Windows installer folder also named "boot" - see post#21 by @Slice.

Procedure

8. At the Partition Boot Record screen, select the FAT32 formatted UEFI Windows Installer as the destination partition and click the Restore PBR button.

9. For the Restore file, browse to the boot1f5 file we copied from step 2.

Generally, Windows is not happy unless the disk with its system partition and boot files (usually, the disk it was first installed on) is given first boot priority in your BIOS...one thing you can try is moving the Clover and boot folders from the EFI of your OSX drive to the EFI System Partition of your Windows drive. After giving first boot priority to the Windows drive, you can then use EasyUEFI to make the system boot to Clover - see Manually install Clover for UEFI booting and configure boot priority with EasyUEFI in Windows

I'm having a hard time with steph 4 because I can't seem to find that bootx64 bootx64.efi from the /efi/boot folder of the Windows ISO/DVD into /efi/microsoft/boot to rename it to "bootmgfw.efi I already renamed cdboot.efi to cdboot.bak.

This has been a slightly longer post, but I hope it is useful. The steps involved can take a while, but they are quite simple to follow. As always, if you need me to clarify anything, let me know in the comments.

Hey Hamish,

Thanks for the wonderful guide. I am currently stuck on the step of adding the .efi driver to the USB. Once I use Rufus to install the image of refind on my USB my windows 10 no longer recognizes the USB stick.

I think this can be resolved by either using the Windows Command Prompt, or using a Linux live disk. Are you comfortable with either of these options? If it comes to it, I could just upload an image of my USB stick that has the driver pre-installed.

Thanks for such a quick response! I have a basic understanding of Linux terminal. If you have an image of your USB stick that you can upload that would be amazing for me and it might also help other people that follow your guide in the future.

Hi- the title and contents of this post suggest that you are using rEFInd, yet the file paths you give are for the Clover bootloader, and the .img file seems to only contain Clover bootloader-related files. Am I crazy, or does this not have anything to do with rEFInd?

Thank you so much for such an informative post. I have cloned my Win 10 OS to an NVMe drive but my older computer can only see the drive as storage.

I tried to go the easy route that you included in your post and tried to download your file:

I left a reply earlier but it seems to have been deleted.

I followed your instruction for a Win 10 USB Clover boot disk, but no matter what I do I get no result.

My motherboard is an ASUS A88X Pro with an AMD A10 780K Processor. I have installed a WD Black SN750 1TB.

I downloaded your file: and followed your instruction, but not having any luck.

PS: if you were to supply this setup on a USB disk for Win 10 I would gladly pay for it. I have spent all day today trying to create the USB boot drive to be able to boot the NVMe which I have cloned my Win 10 OS onto.

When you have t waste that amount of time you have to consider it it is really worth the trouble.

I would have loved to have got this to work. Do you have any suggestions that may help.

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