Dual booting Windows with Mac? Getting duplicate Windows Boot Manager boot entries appearing on every boot? Is your ASUS BIOS sometimes completely freezing on boot due to these boot entries building up (what a dumb bug!)? Eventually I got pretty fed up of unplugging every non-boot hard drive just to unfreeze the boot sequence, so I ventured to find a solution. After much research (there is a good thread over at tonymacx86) this is my write-up on the solution. here goes!
tldr;
Some buggy BIOS implementations seem to freeze if it detects both the Windows EFI alongside Clover EFI on the same system.
So, rename the Windows EFI bootloader folder to something else, so that the BIOS doesn’t see it.
Then it will be forced to boot Clover only, and hopefully happy days ;)
my set up
This blog post is ‘anecdotal advice’. My set up is as follows… you can try match it but I can’t guarantee this will work for you.
Security updates. Include ControlMsrE2 tool. MD5 (Cloverr5132.pkg) = ca14c9fccab3e685e6c793b25be3e100. Clover EFI Boot Loader Configuration macOS High Sierra Beta for UEFI or Legacy BIOS with GPT PartitionDownload Link:- Clover v2.4 r4084: http://simizer.com/1.
- I have a SSD for each Windows and MacOS.
- Keeping all bootloaders on a single EFS seems to help prevent the issue.
- Remember that the EFS is a FAT32 partition on a GPT disk which can contain EFI bootloaders.
- So I have placed both the EFI bootloaders for Windows and Mac together on a single EFS, which in my case is the EFS of Disk #1.
| disk | EFS | partitions |
|---|---|---|
| Disk #1 | Clover EFI as default bootloader + Windows EFI | Windows OS NTFS |
| Disk #2 | Left empty, don’t use! | macOS HFS |
FYI, tested on a ASUS z97k/CSM motherboard
Be prepared to get your hands dirty with UEFI bootloaders!
Step 1 –
a. Boot into macOS
b. mount the EFS partition
c. Use Clover Configurator to mount the EFS, or manually:
What’s Needed: 8GB+ USB Flash Drive Clover EFI Bootloader In this tutorial we will be creating the bootloader that will allow you to run the macOS installer that will also be created in this guide onto your to-be Hackintosh. This will be created using a flash drive that needs to be 8GB or larger in size so that it has enough space ton hold the Sierra or El Capitan installer files. Clover EFI bootloader UEFI support. This version of clover is for UEFI systems only. 0.00 star(s) 0 ratings Downloads 530 Updated Sep 23, 2018. Clover v2.4k r4667 r4667.
Fun fact: If “for some reason” the partition identifier (number) of your EFI partition is not numer 1, you can use fdisk to fix the partition order.
Step 2 –
It appears that the AMI Aptio BIOS (or at least, this ASUS Z97K/CSM mobo) is hardcoded to search for the EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi path, and then adding it to the boot list if it finds that it is not the default bootloader - which is causing the redundant entries – Grrr!
d. Rename the Microsoft part to something else – I just prefixed it with MS-.
I recommend renaming the Windows EFI folder and not deleting it because it contains BCD boot stuff - a massive pain to restore!
Next, we should also deal with of the EFI/BOOT directory. I also prefixed it with MS- just in case I ever want to revert from my Hackintosh set up.
Warning: Whenever you wish to run bcdedit from Windows, or run Windows Memory Diagnostics, you’ll first need to restore the Microsoft folders back temporarily, then afterwards rename it back.
Step 3 – Install Clover EFI files
Download the latest Clover EFI Bootable ISO and mount the ISO. Copy the BOOT and CLOVER folders over to your EFI partition.
You should now end up the following:
At this point, re-configure your Clover config.plist, kexts, and drivers64UEFI. Copy a backup from USB (highly recommended to have one). Follow a guide if you don’t know how.
Step 4 – Create custom boot entries
Make sure you have the latest version of Clover Configurator. (Fetching partition UUID’s was recently added!)
File > Open > navigate to your config.plist
Under the Gui section, create a new Custom Entry with the following:
- Volume – Select the EFI partition that we’ve been working on (from Step 1). The UUID automagically appears — hooray time saved!
- Path – Use your new custom path, e.g. `EFI/MS-Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi`
- Type – Set to Windows
- Everything else is probably optional
Similarly, repeat for your Mac partition.
Unlike my screenshot, keep Scan Auto=Yes for the next step (or the UEFI Shell boot item won’t show up). You can turn it off after everything works.
Step 5 – Purge all boot entries
Reboot. Clover should boot!
Select UEFI Shell:
Run this command: dmpstore -d Bo*
Run this command: dmpstore -d Boot0*
and then dmpstore -d BootOrder
This will clear the BootOrder and any other Boot entries from the EFI NVRAM. That’s what you want, right? Mac pro mid 2012 latest os.
Alternative method: see this forum post
Conclusion
By circumventing the hard-coded search paths in the UEFI firmware, we prevented the firmware from erroneously adding a “Windows Boot Manager” boot entry on every boot, thus preventing the scenario of the firmware freezing/hanging on boot due to too many entries. Neato!
AsRock users: If, after rebooting, no Clover doesn’t start, you need to boot into a copy of Clover on a USB to run:
bcfg boot add 0 fsX:EFIBOOTBOOTX64.EFI 'My Clover UEFI boot entry'
from the UEFI shell, where fsX is your EFI partition. Figure out which fs0, fs1, etc. it is using the ls command.
Download
Clover Efi Iso
You can download Clover Theme Manager including all Clover themes here. Click the Download Snapshot button to download it as a ZIP file.
Or use the following command to clone this source if your computer has git installed.
After extracting, you will see 90 folders in cloverefiboot-themesthemes. Here are the 90 Clover themes that you can use. Open screenshot.png in each folder to preview the theme.
Change Clover theme
Once you’ve found the theme you want, copy the theme folder into EFICLOVERthemes directory. AIO Boot is using the BGM theme so you can see the BGM folder here. On Windows, you can use the mountvol command to mount the EFI System Partition if you installed Clover on the EFI System Partition.
Ok now we will change a value in file EFICLOVERconfig.plist to change Clover theme. Open the config.plist file and look for the following:
Clover Efi File
Change the value of the two opening and closing tags of the string to the theme folder name that you copied before.
In the code above, I’m using the BGM theme. Save this file and boot into Clover for testing.
Clover Efi Bootloader
This way we can change the Clover theme without having to install the Clover Theme Manager. And of course, you can do this on Windows or Linux. In addition to changing the Clover theme, you can also change the screen resolution, ConsoleMode, language, mouse, and more. Check out the official documentation at Clover Wiki.