[Guide] NVMe-boot without modding your UEFI/BIOS (Clover-EFI bootloader method)

@htruempl :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!

Although I am not an expert regarding the Clover-EFI bootloader method, I suspect, that your problem is caused by the fact, that you had cloned the complete data (incl. the Boot Sector) from the SATA SSD to the NVMe SSD.
If you want to use this method, you have to boot off an USB Flash Drive, which contains the EFI Boot Sector. You cannot boot off the NVMe SSD, because the required NVMe module is missing within your currently in-use BIOS.
Since your mainboard has an AMI UEFI BIOS, you should be able to integrate the NVMe module into the BIOS, to flash it and to boot directly off the NVMe SSD.
Question:
Why haven’t you tried to solve your problem to get the modded BIOS properpy flashed?

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

Hi Fernando (Dieter), as i wrote: "3. BIOS Flashing regularly procedure OK, latest BIOS: J61_0394 flashed. Mods BIOS Flashing (NVMe Insert) not possible for sure, because of HP/AMI integrated Checksum protection."
As i know now fore sure (HP Solution Forum), a modded BIOS can´t be flashed on a HP WS (These are Enterprise machines). They have strong protection integrated because of security reasons in Enterprise use. I tried AFUDOS an other FreeDOS based flasing programs, no chance. A senior expert explained it in detail to me, why its not possible. Their included hidden checksum protection hasn´t been "cracked" so far. So i gave it up and was glad to find the Clover based solution here.

Regards
Heinz

Yes you can.
1. Make a small partition on your SATA drive 100MB is more than enough.
2. Format the new small parititon with FAT32.
3. Copy the contents of your working Clover USB
4. got to BIOS tell BIOS to boot into UEFI and specific the SATA drive.
5. You should be able to boot using your SATA

@htruempl

Clover is a UEFI bootloader, thus, the NVME you’re trying to boot off of must be formatted in GPT.
See my post above.

It’s likely you cloned a MBR disk over. In my post there’s a set of command to convert NVME to GPT.
If this is in fact your issue, you’ll be up and running once you convert the new boot drive to GPT. Try it out.

@RedEyeNinja :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum and thanks for your contributions!
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

@htruempl :
If you resp. your “senior expert” should be right, it would really be a pity for you and other affected users!

Hello Fernando, i found a very good description in the net, which i tested succesfully. Its a different methodology then the Clover one. I doesn´t fit here in this threath, because of the described Clover Solution, but it fits to the Subject:" Booting Windows 7 / 10 from GPT Disk on BIOS (non-UEFI) systems". Its universell, not only for GPT OS-Volumes, MBR OS-Volumes are bootet as well, by transferring the Bootloader-Environment, using DISPART and other Shell Commands on a bootable USB-Stick (MS MCT based W10 OS repair environment on mobile boot device, temporarely needed as well). It´s worth to to have a lok at it, professionel solution, from a profesisonel server admin:<br /><a href="http://woshub.com/booting-windows-7-from-a-gpt-disk-using-bios-firmware-non-uefi/" target="_blank">http://woshub.com/booting-windows-7-from...mware-non-uefi/</a><br /><br />PDF based description (extracted from me):<br /><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/2j2irpok4lvnzef/Booting%20Windows%207_10%20from%20GPT%20Disk%20on%20BIOS.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/2j2irpok4lvnze...20BIOS.pdf?dl=0</a><br /><br />If one thinks about in a bit abstract manner, the solution could be used for any OS.Volume on any physical disp, independing from the storage capacity and the partion style GPT/MBR.<br /><br />What a professional and strong shell command environment, I´m very impressed and glad.<br />If you find it interesting and usefull for the forum here, its up to you to put it may in a better fitting treath. K.R. Heinz

There is already another thread on this forum about DUET and it never worked for me.

I’ve done that and it works well. Thanks.
I have found that when I have only the NVME on PCIE card and no other drives the BIOS still finds Windows Boot Manager and tries to boot…but windows then starts to load and throws an error and is unable to repair. I’m sure if I was cleverer I could get that working too! Alas I’ve grown bored of it…new Mobo, processor and DDR4 ordered.

I’m sure it’s probably possible, but someone familiar with all this would have to figure it out then share how-to

Hi Fernando, i think you need to revisit some steps in the guide. For example step 3a has become unnecessary and you need to explain clearly point 6a where we have to choose the USB with the win installation in Clover, how to do it, as is not clear at all. I went with the arrows and hit enter on the drive with the windows symbol and i get "device read error ". I just reinstalled windows 10 from that drive one hour before trying this so the drive works well.

@MARSTG :
The guide (= start post of this thread) has been developed and written by @Nyctophilia and not by me. So it is up to him to customize his guide, if there should be a need for it.

I saw that in the first post, but I wasn’t sure of your involvement.


May I ask why is step 3a not necessary??

Yes, because the driver is no longer found where the instructions say it will be, instead it is already in the uefi64 directory .


This is NOT true!

Point 3a:
Copy \EFI\CLOVER<b>drivers-Off\drivers64\NvmExpressDxe-64.efi (this path has been changed…)
…to \EFI\CLOVER\drivers64UEFI<br />
Do you see the difference?

BTW, they have changed the position of the driver from <b>drivers-Off\drivers64\ to <b>drivers-Off\drivers64UEFI; so the autor should change the description of point 3a, NOT delete it and you should search in the right folder for it !

Have a nice week!
P.S.: my sister is living near Edmonton

Hello there to all of you!

First of all thank you for your hard work providing all that kind of tools!


I am trying this on Lenovo D20 is anyone successfully deal with it ?

When i boot from USB Clover graphic UI shows and when i plug my Windows USB it pops great!! But when i click it i am facing this situation

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EwV8cu…4uMLW0Y7F2wWbfG


I am running Samsung EVO 970 1 TB on PCI-E it recognize it inside Windows when i install it on another drive but i want to install Dual OS on it Ubuntu and Windows 10 2x500 GB splitted

Any ideas ? I will appreciate it !

Hi,
First, thanks for the work and post.
I bought a Samsung 970 EVO Nvme to make a boot drive on my Asus Sabertooth board. I attached the drive to a PciE slot and drive is working.
I followed the steps to make clover boot USB and able to boot from it to my old boot SSD drive.
Then I cloned my boot SSD drive(C:) to my new NVME (H:). And then I unplugged my old boot drive(C:) hoping that Clover will find the New cloned NVMe for booting but no luck.
As far as I understand Clover works fine with fresh installations but I dont want to go through installing all my softwares again.
If there is a trick that will make it work which I am missing, please let me know.

Did you follow all the points on the first page, particularly
3a) to copy the NVMe driver?
Have a look to posts #90, #183, #235.
Here is working like a charm!

Thanks for the help but it did not work for me.
But found another thread on the forum with moded bios for Asus Sabertooth X79. It worked on the 1st try.
Thread is [OFFER] ASUS Sabertooth X79 4801 beta BIOS with NVMe boot support (now updated with latest microcodes and newer Marvell firmware) (2)
May be helpful for somebody else.
Best



Hey,

I was getting the same error with an HP Z800 using an PCIE M.2 adapter. Luckily i managed to figure a simple cunning workaround!

What I did was I installed the NVME SSD on another computer and booted up the Windows 10 USB stick to run the typical install.
After Windows writes its install kit and all that jazz there’s a restart(before booting the copied kit located on your drive).
During this stage, I just manually shut down the PC when doing bios post during the restart process and put the NVME SSD drive back into my HP Z800. Went into Clover GUI and simply selected WINDOWS EFI boot (i think that’s what it was called…was the first choice on the left :slight_smile: )
Windows then just started installing by itself normally.

Two days later , all is working fine ! Booting sweet NVME into windowzzzzzz 10

TL:DR: Do the first part of the Windows 10 install on a different computer. and let it finish on your workstation

Cheers