Please help me finally get my vintage Dell Precision T7400 workstation booting Windows 10 from my Samsung SM951 SSD
As I’d previously had a lot of difficulties getting my Kingston KC1000 booting using Clover, I specifially purchased a MZHPV512HDGL-0000 version, which should be AHCI and not nvme and so it should be seen by my legacy non UEFI bios. I reused the Kingston KC100 PCIe card with the SM951 installed and it is seen as ‘mass storage’ by the BIOS, so I thought I’d be good to go, but when I boot from my USB Windows installer (made with microsoft media creation tool) the installer doesn’t see it as being bootable and won’t continue with the installation, “Ensure controller enabled in BIOS”. I tried all sorts of BIOS options, disabling SAS and SATA drives, even IDE instead of AHCI. I also tried formatting the SM951 (which is seen in Windows no problem and has device id DEV_A801) as GPT and as MBR but nothing would get the Windows installer to proceed.
Hence I’m back here in the Clover-EFI bootloader method thread. I even tried cloning my current Samsung 830 boot drive to the SM951, but Samsung magician doesn’t recognize the SM951, probably because it was an OEM only model…
So I made an AIO USB boot drive using the discontinued 0.9.9.21 AIO Boot Creator (as the newgen version gave me an error). I’m not sure I need to as I have a AHCI and not a nvme drive, but I copied the NvmExpressDxe-64.efi from the Off directory to the other 2 directories and also to 2 new directories I created, drivers64 and drivers64UEFI. BTW the update link in the original post is broken and I think should link to silbliss’ great post on this.
So now I can boot up into Clover 4664 and encouragingly it’s also seeing the new SM951 drive, but unfortunately it’s not seeing my Windows installation USB, no matter how many times I press F3 and/or reinsert.
So any tips to get Clover to start Windows installer, or even better if it’s possible to get windows to install straight to the SM951 AHCI without Clover, would be much appreciated!
Did you by any chance use the Microsoft Windows media creation tool (availablefor free from the ms website) to make your bootable usb?
Clover is a little bit fussy about usb drive boot configuration I find I generally have more success with usbs made with the creation tool over those made with Rufus. In saying that alot of users here have reported success simply by switching to a different brand usb stick for the windows install. It seems clover prefers certain usb types over others maybe its a driver or usb controller thing ?
Anyway I hope this helps good luck and happy modding…
It should be possible to boot nvme and keep raid I suspect clover may need a raid driver or something ? to allow it to recognise the raid and thus hand it over to the os. This Clover nvme boot hack works by creating a fake or emulated bios hardware profile that is handed to the os. It would seem that Clover isn’t including your raid for some reason.
I suggest that you try the method which I have explained here several posts above. It has always worked for me (and for others too !)
On the main Clover menu, with your Windows Installation USB drive inserted, do not select any icon !
Instead, navigate with the right arrow to the last entry ‘Exit Clover’, and then :
Exit Clover → Boot Maintenance Manager → Boot from file → Windows 10 USB drive → <efi> → <boot> → bootx64.efi
This should start the Windows Installation process.
I have been away from this forum for quite a while. I just came back.
Have you been able to install Windows 10 so that you can start it from Clover ?
In one of your last posts, you mentioned :
“The Windows installer USB drive is Fat32/MBR and installs Windows just fine when it is the boot drive.”
This could be the cause of your problem. The Windows Installer USB drive which you see working fine when in the boot drive will not work when you try to install Windows to boot with Clover, because it is not UEFI compatible !
(if it was UEFI compatible, it would certainly not “work fine when in the boot drive” since your machine is not UEFI compatible !)
What you need to do is to create again your Windows installer USB key.
If you do this on a Windows machine, use the Rufus tool.
Make sure that you select : GPT, UEFI (non CSM), FAT32
If you do this on a Linux machine, use the WoeUSB tool.
Since the Windows Installer USB drive that you have now created is UEFI compatible, it will not work when you try to boot directly from it ! This is normal because your system is not UEFI compatible.
However, it will work when you try to install Windows from Clover. This is because Clover creates a UEFI environment, even if your machine is not UEFI compatible.
To start the Windows installation process, from the main Clover menu, with your Windows Installation USB drive inserted, do the following.
Navigate with the right arrow to the last entry ‘Exit Clover’, and then :
Exit Clover → Boot Maintenance Manager → Boot from file → Windows 10 USB drive → <efi> → <boot> → bootx64.efi
This should start the Windows Installation process.
Is possible to boot clover iso from unused ssd internal disk and no from usb stick? If yes, how can i correctly install/burn iso to internal ssd? I try did it via command dd, but boot of clover from ssd, then work more slower than from usb.
Yes, it’s possible : I did it on a small capacity internal SATA SSD, and it works !
To do it, I did not try to install Clover directly to the SATA SSD.
Instead, I first created a Clover USB drive. Then, I installed several OSs on my PCIe NVMe SSD through Clover.
Finally, I cloned the Clover USB drive to the SATA SSD, using the Linux utility ddrescue.
When I started the PC, booting from the SATA SSD (after unplugging the Clover USB drive), it launched Clover, thus allowing me to start any of the OSs that I had previously installed !
Yes, i used same. I installed first clover to usb, then installed win11 to nvme disk and then clone via linux dd command usb to unused ssd, but booting of clover from ssd is more slower than was from usb stick .
How much slower is it to boot Clover from the “unused SSD”, compared to booting Clover from the USB drive ?
For me, it is roughly the same time. But the advantage I can see from booting Clover from an internal dedicated SSD is not about the time, but the convenience of not having to plug a USB key for Clover : it’s all in the internal SSD !
There is nothing much I can see to help you boot faster from your internal SSD.
Anyway, you should be happy that you have successfully created a Clover key, installed Win 11 on your NVMe SSD, and boot on it through Clover !
By the way, how old is your PC ?
What is the main board ?
Is it UEFI compatible or only Legacy ?
Different in speed of the boot is big. Usb is booting approximately 5-6 seconds, but via ssd it is + 10 seconds.
Question: With clover i am playing only second day and it is for me very confused . I succes used very old clover CloverISO-3424.tar.lzma. When I tested some current version, so clover not boot to graphic screen(like when you press in graphic screen icone exit clover ). What can be issue? Bad detection VGA?
I can’t tell you why you cannot use most recent versions of Clover with your legacy PC.
But many users of old systems, like myself, have reported the same problem.
It could be that the developers of Clover, as they upgraded Clover over time, did not continuously test their new versions of Clover on old systems, but only used more recent PCs for those tests.
For that reason, users of old systems like myself use versions 4961 and 5070 of Clover. Both work for me. So, you may like to try them.
By the way, how did you create your Clover key ?
Did you use the Boot Disk Utility ?
Or did you use another method ? (which one ?)
V.5070 work fine, but now i used Autounattend installation of win11 with uefi fs layout. MBR layout crashed.
Question: How i can get list of names bootable volumes/devices? I want configure/enable timeout of default DefaultVolume. Timeout is setup in config.plist to 5 seconds, but it isn’t active. I read, that there is needed to change options DefaultVolume to real name of some volume.
From the main Clover menu, you can access the EFI Shell by navigating with the arrows until you get ‘EFI Shell’ and then select it by pressing ‘ENTER’.
The Shell first lists a mapping table.
Then, you can get a list of the boot entries by typing the command:
I just re-installed Windows 11 on my 2009 legacy system, to boot with Clover on a non-bootable NVMe SSD.
Since my PC is obviously not TPM compatible (2009 main board !), I bypassed the TPM checks by modifying the registry at the beginning of the Windows 11 installation process with a method widely described through the Net. (if anyone needs details on how to do, just shout !)
No issue at all with updates, Windows updates the system from time to time.
Hello Everyone,
I have been reading many post on this Topic in an attempt to get an NVME SSD installed and bootable on several old BIOS only PC’s. I have created usb’s using both Duet EDK2015 and EDK 2020 / Refind. I keep getting the same problem no matter which old PC I try on. Bstartart! shows on the screen for several seconds and then black screen, followed by “out of Range - 74kHz / 60 Hz.” In an attempt to solve this resolution problem, I entered the command “resolution 800 600” in refind.config, just to set the resolution low enough that the monitor could at least display something. I tried several other higher resolutions ie 1024 768 but no luck. The systems are very old, ranging from 2009 to 2012 with legacy BIOS only (no UEFI). I have read that other users have experienced the same problem, but I can’t find a post where a solution was given.
I would greatly appreciate any suggestions, as I am stuck and can’t proceed since I have a blank screen. Thanks in advance.
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