[hardware at the end as it hardly seems relevant]

*edit - I have now finished the FAQ - what a great write up! I now recognize that clover is a boot manager, not boot loader. I'm not correcting anything below, as the question remains, but I will further investigate bootloader/bootmanager as my knowledge is still clearly lacking. further guidance is always appreciated!

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Hello! Hopefully you're a cloverbootloader wizard. I've beat my head against this for several hours, as well as hunted the interwebs for any solutions to the windows question (and since I'm here I figured I'd see if something comes to mind on this other thing I've spent less time hunting - the 1194 line thing)

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So! I finally got clover working pretty well to multiboot two installs of windows 10, and linux (I'm not a true hackintosh - sorry! it seems like you people know your clover though, and linux folks have not offered a solution yet.)

I'm not totally satisfied about my bootloader though. My PC is available to my family as an HTPC which is its primary use. the goal is, when turned on, to go through clover (set the timer for 3 seconds) and go straight into my windows 10 HTPC environment. I have another installation of windows 10 which I use to manage my day trading, more intensive video gaming, photo editing, programming, system maintenance, and just generally stuff the rest of the fam doesn't need to fiddle with.

The goal is to be able to access each windows install individually from within clover bootloader (skipping windows bootloader).

Clover is not of the same mind. Clover has only identified windows boot manager. So the boot process goes like this:

• Power on > clover > Windows bootloader > default Windows install (HTPC)

if I restart my pc intending on accessing my 'advanced' windows install it goes

• power on (/restart) > clover > Windows bootloader > select second install > system restarts > clover > loads into windows.

THEN if I'm done with my tinkering, and shut down the PC, and my GF comes to watch netflix a similar thing happens...

• power > clover > Windows bootloader > htpc [default] is selected after 5s > system restarts > clover > loads into windows.

so it works. but it's not fast, and more than once the pc restarted, and my GF clicked a key when clover was open and said "healerdan, I think the computer is broken again" (yeah, i've bricked my system a few times, and i'm proud of it!)

This is the first and primary question:

• how can I bypass the windows bootloader, selecting my preferred windows installation through clover (and Ideally skipping a system reset when I select the windows install I was not most recently using)?
  • My EFI partition is 512 mb, and is presently using 171 mb of that, so I was thinking what if I duplicated the Microsoft bootloader files and dedicated one to each installation then named the folders something like "HTPC" and "Windows desktop". I tried something to that effect but no avail, so I dropped it. Maybe someone else can build on it.

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[secondary / less pressing question in my mind]

...further slowing the bootloading process is an error which pops up on my mobo splash screen which seems to delay loading clover (I'm guessing to give me time to read the error message)

I haven't written down the entirety of the message, it's something to the effect of 'productname is not defined whole bios dict is ignored at 1194' then it mentions the plist. So I fired up this config.plist in note pad, and didn't see any glaring issues with the code, which I'm including below (only lines 1171 thru 1274 - according to notepad, line 1194 is the </dict> line which I've commented - it's not commented in the actual file. I'm starting to wonder if notepad counted wrong and it's the next dict for smbios that's the problem? I don't see a "productname" noted there either.)

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 <key>RtVariables</key> <dict> <key>Block</key> <array> <dict> <key>Comment</key> <string>Dell variables</string> <key>Disabled</key> <false/> <key>Guid</key> <string>FF2E9FC7-D16F-434A-A24E-C99519B7EB93</string> <key>Name</key> <string>*</string> </dict> </array> <key>BooterConfig</key> <string>0x28</string> <key>CsrActiveConfig</key> <string>0x3E7</string> <key>MLB</key> <string>C02032109R5DC771H</string> <key>ROM</key> <string>UseMacAddr0</string> # </dict> <key>SMBIOS</key> <dict> <key>#BiosReleaseDate</key> <string>05/03/10</string> <key>#BiosVendor</key> <string>Apple Inc.</string> <key>#BiosVersion</key> <string>IM131.88Z.F000.B00.1907241303</string> <key>#Board-ID</key> <string>Mac-FC02E91DDD3FA6A4</string> <key>#BoardManufacturer</key> <string>Apple Inc.</string> <key>#BoardSerialNumber</key> <string>C0225060SAMF651AX</string> <key>#BoardType</key> <integer>10</integer> <key>#BoardVersion</key> <string>Proto1</string> <key>#ChassisAssetTag</key> <string>Desktop</string> <key>#ChassisManufacturer</key> <string>Apple Inc.</string> <key>#ChassisType</key> <integer>16</integer> <key>#EfiVersion</key> <string>288.0.0.0.0</string> <key>#ExtendedFirmwareFeatures</key> <string>0x8FE001403</string> <key>#ExtendedFirmwareFeaturesMask</key> <string>0xFFFFFFFFFF</string> <key>#Family</key> <string>iMac</string> <key>#FirmwareFeatures</key> <string>0xC0001403</string> <key>#FirmwareFeaturesMask</key> <string>0xFFFFFFFF</string> <key>#LocationInChassis</key> <string>MLB</string> <key>#Memory</key> <dict> <key>Channels</key> <integer>2</integer> <key>Modules</key> <array> <dict> <key>Frequency</key> <integer>1333</integer> <key>Part</key> <string>C0001403</string> <key>Serial</key> <string>00001001</string> <key>Size</key> <integer>4096</integer> <key>Slot</key> <integer>0</integer> <key>Type</key> <string>DDR3</string> <key>Vendor</key> <string>Kingston</string> </dict> <dict> <key>Frequency</key> <integer>1333</integer> <key>Part</key> <string>C0001404</string> <key>Serial</key> <string>00001002</string> <key>Size</key> <integer>4096</integer> <key>Slot</key> <integer>2</integer> <key>Type</key> <string>DDR3</string> <key>Vendor</key> <string>Kingston</string> </dict> </array> <key>SlotCount</key> <integer>4</integer> </dict> 

I'm starting to think I should figure out a product name and just inject '<key>Productname</key> <string> *no clue, lookup smbios product names* </string>' just... anywhere? any guidance on this would be appreciated

So the second, less pressing questions:

^{because I've not looked into this too deeply yet myself}

• is line 1194 actually referring to the section defining smbios?
• where is the product name supposed to be/is it labeled something different causing the error?
• what and where would I add a "Productname" entry, or how could I just tell clover to shut up about it since everything seems to be otherwise fine?

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System & Guides:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fdv5BEg-ZE (how to install clover bootloader from windows - basically, I reformatted my NVME to GPT and disabled all legacy support to ensure uefi. installed pop and windows x2, then used File Explorer++, and Hasleo EasyUEFI to push clover to the EFI folder, and set as primary uefi loader.

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AMD Ryzen 7 3700X - stock cooler, not OC'd

GIGABYTE X570 AORUS MASTER

16gb RAM (Slots 2 and 4 I think - wherever mobo manual said.)

• G.Skill F4-3600C16-8GTZNC
• ddr4-3603 / pc4-28800 ddr4 sdram udimm

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super

I have several drives. I'll exclude the HDD's which I only use for backups

NVME SSD I think it's an inland premium (microcenter brand hwinfo only lists drive model as 'PCIe SSD') 2tb

Sata SSD - Samsung 860 EVO, 2tb

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Thank you for your thoughts!