Clover/Bootloader for Dual Boot Installation of Windows 10 and El Capitan

[Cephrus]

I managed to get OS X El Capitan to run on my Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H build alongside Windows 10.
However, I need to get a boot loader, presumably Clover, in order to boot without my Install USB.

I haven't touched the boot loader or any of the post-installation tools yet out of fear that they will mess up my preexisting Windows installation, as I've done in the past. I've read on other posts in various places that Clover cannot boot to their Windows installations and mess up Windows' boot loader.

On another machine I setup a dual boot using EasyBCD to configure the Windows boot loader to boot to OS X, but the configuration worked for 10.7, and to my knowledge is deprecated in 10.10+.

I am unsure if installing Clover will mess up my main install of Windows and am unwilling to take the risk, so if anyone could enlighten me on any settings or other things that I could do to boot to my OS X install without messing with my Windows 10 install.

Thanks,

Ceph.

 

[n3oNLit3]

Please follow the Rules, and add your specific hardware to your profile.

• Profiles need to contain at least your primary system to assist others with helping you.

It is impossible for people to help you, and we would only be guessing at solutions, without this information.

Please provide complete details in your profile/signature
(Profile/Settings link in upper right corner of this site)

You should look at the Multi Booting section of the forum as there are many topics posted on your question.. Site search is always your friend..

 

[Cephrus]

I had attempted to do a search for my issue, but I found no promising results. People with similar conditions to mine seemed to not have resolutions or have clover not boot the windows install.

I have Windows 10 installed on a 128GB SSD boot disk. I have installed El Capitan on a spare 250GB hard disk and have a 3TB hard disk for other data installed.

I just want to know if there is any chance Clover could mess-up my Windows install, and if there is anything I can do to minimize it.
I recognize that this is a fairly stupid question. This will be my first OS X install since Lion and my first time using Clover, and I don't want to ruin my Windows install.

 

[n3oNLit3]

I managed to get OS X El Capitan to run on my Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H build alongside Windows 10.
However, I need to get a boot loader, presumably Clover, in order to boot without my Install USB.

I haven't touched the boot loader or any of the post-installation tools yet out of fear that they will mess up my preexisting Windows installation, as I've done in the past. I've read on other posts in various places that Clover cannot boot to their Windows installations and mess up Windows' boot loader.

On another machine I setup a dual boot using EasyBCD to configure the Windows boot loader to boot to OS X, but the configuration worked for 10.7, and to my knowledge is deprecated in 10.10+.

I am unsure if installing Clover will mess up my main install of Windows and am unwilling to take the risk, so if anyone could enlighten me on any settings or other things that I could do to boot to my OS X install without messing with my Windows 10 install.

Thanks,

Ceph.

Is Widows installed in UEFI or Legacy? That makes a big difference on if you will be able to get Clover to boot Windows or at least with less difficulty..

It is possible however, I have Clover triple booting El Capitan, Yosemite and Win 10

 

[Cephrus]

Windows 10 is installed as UEFI.

However, in Disk Management my boot disk has no EFI partition (my conclusion was made from msinfo32 and setupact.log).

 

[n3oNLit3]

Perfect... You should have little issue getting Clover to boot Win10 then. For me, I installed Win10 after running Clover for quite some time; however, if you were to install Clover via the actual Clover install app, not the post install .pkg, (it might work fine, for me though, I want the latest Clover build and I want to know and select exactly the options that I know I need, and not options that will work for most boards) it should recognize your windows install no problem.

In most cases, your going to see, more Windows partitions (up to 5) than just the booting partition. So you will need to create custom entries for those in Clover Configurator, to hide the ones you do not wish to see. This is covered in the Clover Wiki, albeit loosely. You wont mess anything up making custom entries so attempting it, would at worst, not let you boot into windows until you deleted or adjusted the custom entry thus resetting it to what Clover naturally see's.

Edit**

---

You can run MSINFO32.EXE and under System Summary, check to see what "BIOS Mode" is shown as. To verify that you are truly installed UEFI. There are instruction on the Microsoft support pages for running this if you are not familiar with it.

 

[Cephrus]

Cool.

MSINFO32 says the BIOS mode is UEFI.

Just want to ask though: the Clover on the USB I made with Unibeast doesn't boot to my Windows install (it hangs at the flashing underscore). Will this affect anything?

 

[n3oNLit3]

Cool.
MSINFO32 says the BIOS mode is UEFI.
Just want to ask though: the Clover on the USB I made with Unibeast doesn't boot to my Windows install (it hangs at the flashing underscore). Will this affect anything?

With the USB via UniBeast, how many Windows partitions are you given? What are their names?

I really have no idea, whether the Clover install boot menu, could actually boot another system or not, guess I could try... It should however, because AFAIK it is just standard Clover r3270. If you were to install via the stand alone Clover, the latest is r3280. Should make little difference however between the two with regard to how multi booting is handled.

 

[Cephrus]

There are 5 in total. The first two are boot from legacy Windows HD1/2, the third boot Windows from efi, the next is boot from legacy HD2 (again), and the last is boot Windows efi boot menu from efi.
There used to be a Windows install on my 3tb drive, but I removed the boot loader from it.

Edit: The last option, boot the menu from efi, will boot into Windows 10.

 

[n3oNLit3]

There are 5 in total. The first two are boot from legacy Windows HD1/2, the third boot Windows from efi, the next is boot from legacy HD2 (again), and the last is boot Windows efi boot menu from efi.
There used to be a Windows install on my 3tb drive, but I removed the boot loader from it.

Edit: The last option, boot the menu from efi, will boot into Windows 10.

Ok, great. 5 is what I was expecting to see. And it sounds like you have found the correct option for booting Windows.

Go ahead and run post install, per the guide and if you have questions let me know. We should be able to get you dual booting without issue.

Im subscribed to this thread and will be on all day, so come back with any questions..