- Joined
- Aug 30, 2016
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- Motherboard
- Asus MAXIMUS XI HERO
- CPU
- i7-8700K
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- RX5700 XT
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- Classic Mac
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I've been in UEFI hell for a while now, and am not getting any closer to understanding what's going on.
[UPDATE:] OMG, why have I not yet read this thread
(reading now)
Here is the diskutil summary of my Mojave boot disk:
/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 499.9 GB disk0s2
This is about what I would expect. APFS boot drive, EFI partition.
However, my BIOS shows two identical non-Microsoft UEFI boot entries for this drive. Why? It only has one EFI partition. Not that it really matters, because the only boot option that works in the BIOS priority list is "Microsoft Boot" from that same EFI partition.
Here's the diskutil summary of my Win10 boot drive (which used to work until yesterday!)
/dev/disk1 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 512.1 GB disk1
1: Microsoft Reserved 16.8 MB disk1s1
2: Microsoft Basic Data 511.7 GB disk1s2
Note that diskutil doesn't recognise a partition here, just "MS basic data". However, Disk Utility (GUI version) is able to mount that partition (as Untitled, an NTFS volume). I have just installed Tuxera NTFS, so NTFS volumes are r/w-able and formattable from Mojave.
What I notice is that there's no (longer any) EFI partition on that Win10 disk. I believe that there was one right after Win10 install, though I don't have a screenshot to prove it. Online I have found some sad stories about Win7-10 occasionally (usually during an upgrade) deleting its own EFI partition (!!) and there are some dangerous-looking recipes for repairing that situation. Once my backup is complete I might try this. Has anyone else ever seen Win EFI partition disappear?
So... in a dual boot Hackintosh with each OS on its own drive... is there supposed to be one EFI partition, or two? If there is only one, does Win10 repeatedly clobber it? Because I thought I had everything configured properly -- I could select Mojave and boot it, then I could shut down and select Windows and boot it. And yet after running Win10 for a day, next time I tried to boot Mojave UEFI hell broke loose (full and anguished description in other thread which is probably TLDR: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...iour-booting-into-bios-instead-of-efi.290291/).
There seems to be a catch-22 here. If Win10 will not tolerate 2 EFI partitions and insists on colonising the pre-existing Clover EFI partition, then it overwrites bootmgfw.efi with a fresh copy. But if I mv that bootfile out of the way and replace it with a copy of Cloverx68 boot, I'm no longer able to boot Win10 because an attempt to boot Win10 will just reboot to the Clover menu.
This is turning into such a nightmare that I may just have to live with USB sticks to select which EFI folder and hence which OS to boot. I can always make backup USB sticks but I wish I understood what was happening, and I wish UEFI boot (and BIOS) was less "intelligent" and could be hard-configured in some visible human-readable place, like "boot this file in this directory from this partition". Can it?
[UPDATE:] OMG, why have I not yet read this thread
[Guide] How to keep Clover working when installing Windows and Linux
A very common issue when multibooting macOS/OS X with Windows and Linux is that after installing the latter the computer will only boot to them. The reason for this is that Clover does not automatically add itself to the UEFI firmware boot menu that is accessible by pressing F12 or another...
www.tonymacx86.com
Here is the diskutil summary of my Mojave boot disk:
/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 499.9 GB disk0s2
This is about what I would expect. APFS boot drive, EFI partition.
However, my BIOS shows two identical non-Microsoft UEFI boot entries for this drive. Why? It only has one EFI partition. Not that it really matters, because the only boot option that works in the BIOS priority list is "Microsoft Boot" from that same EFI partition.
Here's the diskutil summary of my Win10 boot drive (which used to work until yesterday!)
/dev/disk1 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 512.1 GB disk1
1: Microsoft Reserved 16.8 MB disk1s1
2: Microsoft Basic Data 511.7 GB disk1s2
Note that diskutil doesn't recognise a partition here, just "MS basic data". However, Disk Utility (GUI version) is able to mount that partition (as Untitled, an NTFS volume). I have just installed Tuxera NTFS, so NTFS volumes are r/w-able and formattable from Mojave.
What I notice is that there's no (longer any) EFI partition on that Win10 disk. I believe that there was one right after Win10 install, though I don't have a screenshot to prove it. Online I have found some sad stories about Win7-10 occasionally (usually during an upgrade) deleting its own EFI partition (!!) and there are some dangerous-looking recipes for repairing that situation. Once my backup is complete I might try this. Has anyone else ever seen Win EFI partition disappear?
So... in a dual boot Hackintosh with each OS on its own drive... is there supposed to be one EFI partition, or two? If there is only one, does Win10 repeatedly clobber it? Because I thought I had everything configured properly -- I could select Mojave and boot it, then I could shut down and select Windows and boot it. And yet after running Win10 for a day, next time I tried to boot Mojave UEFI hell broke loose (full and anguished description in other thread which is probably TLDR: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...iour-booting-into-bios-instead-of-efi.290291/).
There seems to be a catch-22 here. If Win10 will not tolerate 2 EFI partitions and insists on colonising the pre-existing Clover EFI partition, then it overwrites bootmgfw.efi with a fresh copy. But if I mv that bootfile out of the way and replace it with a copy of Cloverx68 boot, I'm no longer able to boot Win10 because an attempt to boot Win10 will just reboot to the Clover menu.
This is turning into such a nightmare that I may just have to live with USB sticks to select which EFI folder and hence which OS to boot. I can always make backup USB sticks but I wish I understood what was happening, and I wish UEFI boot (and BIOS) was less "intelligent" and could be hard-configured in some visible human-readable place, like "boot this file in this directory from this partition". Can it?