Clover loop issue -> bios -> Clover...

[Perfectly_Diverse]

THE BACKSTORY:
So my computer has a problem with the power button sticking when pressed. (You have to wiggle it to make sure it pops up.) Well while I was gone for awhile my sister was using my comp without issue, making sure to wiggle the button, until the day before I got back when she just jabs at it in a hurry. In effect she killed the computer as the bios was booting, thus corrupting the bios. It auto restored to a previous revision that was incompatible with clover and uefi booting both Yosemite and Windows 8.1.
I was able to upgrade the bios back to the current and compatible revision and changed the settings to what I could remember was necessary to function.


I then booted Yosemite fine. But then (foolishly) I booted Windows through the bios, not clover, and Windows Boot Manager took over...Well then I eventually booted my mac drive (somehow... I don't remember) and through the clover efi shell I renamed the boot manager folders to "remove" it from my mac efi partition. I was now able to boot into the drive's clover bootloader again, but now I have a new issue...


THE ACTUAL ISSUE:
When I boot clover, either from the Mac drive or USB installer, and select any option, it restarts into the bios and back into my default boot option, which is the Mac drive, thus back into clover...


And Windows does not show as an option in clover, nor can I boot the windows drive as uefi in bios...


The boot options in clover also say drive not detected, which I assume is the real issue?...


I can't boot either drives even when they are the only drive connected... What should I do to fix this?
I can now boot Windows after a fresh install. I did the install with all other drives unplugged.

Below is a link to pictures of settings and info that may help you understand what's happening. I tried searching for answers on the forums, but I'm stuck using my phone for Internet and the search on this site never works on my phone...


The pics of the EFI folder are from the Mac drive. The windows drive and the USB only show up as BLK# through the map command. I don't know how to access those other drives from the shell.


And just to be clear, Mac and Windows are installed on two seperate drives, not partitions.


https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jvz3cqhq9qabux3/AABHRMJoZZgFqseQhm8gS05Ka?dl=0

Update 2/19/2015:

I tried to boot into the Install USB with all other drives removed. This didn't work, so I decided to give up for the day. I removed all drives but my Windows drive so I could use my computer, but it wouldn't boot (Choose Proper Boot Device warning). So attempting to stay calm I check the BIOS boot priorities. Somehow, I'm assuming while I was trying to boot from the Install USB, boot entries where added to the BIOS: 2 Sets of Entries titled "Clover start boot.efi at Yosemite" and "Clover start boot.efi at Install OS X Yosemite" were added and made first priority... what is this? Those drives aren't even plugged in, nor was the fresh Windows drive plugged in when I was messing with the OS X drives... (Picture of boot entries are in the dropbox)

I tried booting from clover in verbose mode, and with both my Install USB and Yosemite drives it stated it was loading from the correct drive, accessing IABootFiles\boot.efi, started the "dotted progress bar", but then restarts and boots back into Clover.

 

[TpwUK]

Some UEFI boards keep a list of UEFI compatible boot devices, these can be handy as long as nothing changes, but can clog up the list with defunct settings. Switch you BIOS back to legacy and reboot, that should clear the list, if it does not, then use the UEFI boot manager to manually delete the defunct ones.

I don't know if it will stop the looping, I doubt it, but you never know.

Martin

 

[Perfectly_Diverse]

TpwUK, I tried what you suggested and it didn't work for me, but it got me thinking.

I researched how to manually edit or remove the boot entries, and after a few searches I found out about the BCDEdit.exe tool in an elevated command promt for managing the Windows Boot Manager and associated files. Now I can boot up all but my Install OS X USB (which seems to have a different issue now. I'll post on that somewhere else). I read through most of the man and help pages for it before I used it. (As a warning to those who might think they'll just jump in without knowing what's what, you could really screw things up if you're not careful. Do your research!)

So, I ran

bcdedit /enum ALL

which listed all entries in the system boot configuration data store. When I looked at the list it had 2 sets of identical entries: one for "Clover boot.efi for Yosemite" and one for "Clover boot.efi for Install OS X", both trying to reference \EFI\Clover\CloverX64.efi.

I made sure that there wasn't a clover directory in my windows EFI by first using DISKPART to list and select my Windows disk, (which was the only disk plugged in at the time), then list and select the EFI partition (which may be described as SYSTEM. Use good judgement.), and then I assigned a drive letter to it, exited diskpart, then navigated to that drive letter:

diskpart
list disk
select disk [I]# -- [B]OF DISK[/B][/I]
list partition
select partition [I]# -- [B]OF EFI (SYSTEM) PARTITION[/B][/I]
assign letter=f -- [B]U[I]NUSED VOLUME LETTER (I chose f)[/I][/B]
exit
f:
dir

There wasn't a Clover directory, so the entry must have been carried over from when I had my other drives plugged in.

Once I verified that the entries were empty references, I then backed up my System Store:

bcdedit /export F:\BCDBackup

and I deleted the entries one at a time:

bcdedit /delete {[B][I]GUID[/I][/B]} -- [B][I]OF DATA ENTRY[/I][/B]

I then restarted the computer (shutdown /r) and checked the boot options in the BIOS. All of the extra entries where gone! I booted into Windows to verify it was still booting and it still worked.

Then I unplugged my Windows drive, and tried to boot up my Install OS X USB. It started to boot but as the OS loaded it failed and gave me the slashed O sign... there's always something...

But then I tried my Mac drive and it booted up beautifully without issue!

Both drives are plugged in now and boot from Clover just like they should.

 

[TpwUK]

Awesome news and glad that you got the problem sorted.

Your response is also an excellent resource for others that may run into this issue - Well done all round!!

Martin