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

@olekor
Hello and welcome to the forum !

Can your BIOS see the NVMe SSD installed on the PCIe adapter ?
If the answer is ‘yes’, have you tried to install Windows directly on it ? So you would not need Clover.

OK, so, you want to use Clover.

Could you give details on what you mean by "the installation can’t continue" ?
If the installation processed started, and then stalled, at which point exactly was it ? And what happened ?

You cloned Windows from another Windows installed where ? On another of your SSDs (SATA ?) ?
I have no idea if doing this is possible… Maybe some others will have an answer…
As for me, I did a fresh/new installation of Windows on my NVMe SSD, and then I copied the data I needed from a HDD.

By the way, which version of Windows are you trying to install ?

@Morbius It worked, but only after I reinstalled Ubuntu with the USB I created with balenaEtcher instead of the one I created with Rufus. I really appreciate the help! Thank you!

thanks for your response.
First of all, I have used a simple PCIe-NVME adapter it’s not like the "ThinkMods NVME" adapter, which has used @Franzl_Lang for Lenovo T400 mentioned in the post #822
Secondly, the Samsung NVMe SSD controller represents a special class of devices. These devices are fully compatible with Windows but with correct integration of their drivers into Windows Setup,
so I will think to install Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2, but it will be enough expensive toy.

Answers to questions:


A: No


A: from under Clover installation from flash drive stops when a choice disk in the table of present disks



A: I have cloned windows 11 installed on my ThinkPad x230 by using "EaseUS Partition Master"

@YME2019

Congratulations ! Glad that you made it.
Which version of Clover and BDUtility did you finally use to create your Clover key ?

@olekor
If you wish to install Windows 11 on your Samsung NVMe SSD, the best advice I can give you is :
1. Delete everything you have installed on this drive earlier when you tried to clone Windows 11 from another drive
2. Make a fresh installation of Windows 11 on it through Clover (you will need an installation disk for Windows 11, and, of course, a Clover key)
3. Transfer all the data you need from your previous Windows installation, and reinstall all the applications you need.
It’s a tedious task but, at least, it will work.

For your information, I have Windows 11 installed on my NVMe SSD through Clover. It works perfect !

believe me, I tried all the options, got acquainted with the experience of using Samsung disks, and everywhere it is mentioned about integrating Samsung drivers, even if the BIOS has supported NVME. Maybe if using the "ThinkMods NVME" adapter, which has comes with an embedded bootloader, which can be booted from any stock BIOS. It contains Clover, pre-configured with special NVMe drivers that can then boot your SSD, even without stock BIOS support or use Coreboot, which has its own NVMe support, you can instead boot directly to the SSD without touching Clover, but all of this requires additional attempts and expenses.

@Morbius I used the version of Boot Disk Utility you posted as well as the version of Clover you recommended. When I only used those versions of BDU and Clover, it didn’t work. I had to reinstall Ubuntu with the new USB I created with BalenaEtcher. Not sure which one worked or if it required both changes. Thanks again for the help. Probably going to set it up to auto-boot now, since I don’t intend to install any other OS on this machine.

MB: GA-Z68M-D2H
RAM: Kingston 1600 4x4
CPU: i5 2550K
GPU: GTX970
SSD: x4 Adapter + 512G NVME
the uefi bios of this MB has a bug that limit the x4 slot to x1 speed(~180max),so i’m trying clover.
win10 installde sucessfully to the nvme drive,everything seems working fine,but all the settings in clover dosen’t save to plist file,but can be changede and savede from plist file("#"infront of key name means ingore?),so i lookde around in the file,saw some werid values in it,i have 4x4 kingston ram,but shows 4x2 in the plistfile,turns out BDU didn’t change any settings,and just put the files in there as it was in the image from github.then i deleted every entry in the plist file and boot in to it,mouse doesn’t work in clover,boot into
win10,everything still works
so my questions:
A: clover setting does’t save when changed from bootloader gui,is it normal?
B: dose the plist file mean anything for windows? or i’m just being lucky,should
i change some settings for my hardwear?cause if theres any hidden issue i’d like to fix it now not bump into it later.
C: the win10 install media is in the second partition of the clover usb,i can only boot into it with F3>UEFI external boot,can i boot it in bios mode form clover?i need to use it to inatall win10 for another bios system.
D: can use the readonly switch on the usb drive or remove it after boot into win10? i dont want other program have acces to it.

@BBR

I was successful in installing several OSs on my non-bootable NVMe SSD as you can see in post #817:

I have also helped others to install and use Clover (on this forum and other forums too).

I won’t be able to answer all your questions (and, frankly, I am not sure that I fully understand them). However, regarding your question C :

Obviously you can’t. This is because, after you have started Clover from your Clover USB key, you are in an EFI environment created by Clover and your initial Bios environment is irrelevant.

Do you mean you want to reuse your Clover key for another Bios system on another computer ?
I doubt that this would be recommended, and I am not even sure that it is feasible.
Based on my experience, if you want to use Clover on several computers, I would suggest you create several Clover keys, one for each system.

Anyway, the most important is that, from what you said, you can boot into your Windows 10 installed on your NVMe SSD through Clover. Congratulations for successfully installing Clover !

Can anyone advise on a working option to add a graphics setting in the Clover for a Matrox G200 (Emulex) WDDM driver that is found onboard on most HP DL Proliant servers. I have come across this problem myself, and can’t find anyone who solved this apart from adding a second PCI graphics card on this unit. The Clover boot gets stuck at the “6” prompt when booting with the the Matrox driver.

In the Clover configuration!

does this method also works for booting linux based OS? I intent to install proxmox on my samsung PM991 nvme. Will never use windows

Clover is a multiple OS boot loader

Clover EFI bootloader download | SourceForge.net

CloverHackyColor/CloverBootloader: Bootloader for macOS, Windows and Linux in UEFI and in legacy mode (github.com)

@Gao (post #853)

Absolutely !
See my post #817 here.

Reporting success in installing another OS with Clover on my non-bootable NVMe SSD drive in my “legacy” system : Emmabuntüs ! :smiley:

I have now installed the following OSs and all are bootable with Clover :
● Windows 10
● Windows 11
● Linux Mint LMDE
● Kali Linux
● Ubuntu Server
● Emmabuntüs

See my post #817 here.

Just wanted to clarify what this is actually doing for future reference…
After some testing it seems that the issue of a black screen with a “_” then a “6” and then seems to hang there is the result of clover being unable to automatically fail over to the legacy boot mode file and thus hangs during the fail over. your fix makes clover load the legacy boot file first and therefore skip issue entirely.

I have come across an issue, I have just purchased an old dell precision T1700, I have been trying to get it working in a PCIe x16 gen 2 slot (second PCIe 16) and couldn’t get it to work, and I eventually tried it in the PCIe x16 Gen 3 slot and it worked fine, I am wanting to know is there any way I can switch it to the Gen 2 PCIe slot as I am wanting to add a GPU to the Gen 3 slot soon.

Hi, I’m having the same problem as @jonjof. I’m also unable to boot into clover (on a usb) on my hpe ml310e gen8 v2. From what I’ve read in other threads, this could possible be due to the integrated graphics of the server.

I have also tried to rename boot7 to boot (and the original boot to boot_orig) but that doesn’t make any difference. Instead of a 6 with a blinking underscore this gives a 7 with a blinking underscore.

I have tried all day long to make it work and I really want it to work using clover. Is there anyone who has any idea how this could be solved?

@henry.gray,

I just installed Clover bootloader release 5150 on my T1700 Mini Tower and it works well with the NVMe SSD in either slot #5 (pcie x16 gen3 slot) or slot #1 (pcie x16 slot wired as x4 gen2) as shown here - Dell Precision T1700 Mini-Tower Owner’s Manual - System Board Components. I assume you too have the mini-tower and not the small-form-factor. I have the CloverCD volume on a SATA SSD instead of a USB, but that shouldn’t affect its function. I’m using the Sabrent NVMe to PCI Adapter. I use integrated Graphics on an i7-4790 CPU, so I don’t need a graphics pci card.

This might be the answer to your problem - Using PCI x4 on Dell T1700. You need to enable the additional PCI slots in the BIOS. It appears that by default, only the PCI x16 Gen 3 slot is active.

Let me know if you need any specific information about my setup.