Clover Bootloader freezes on my PC

[bala7s]

I'm using r5156 from an USB drive using the iso file and Ventoy.
I have a Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 motherboard with EFI support, a Phenom II CPU and 32 GB of DDR3 RAM.
When I select Clover from Ventoy's menu, it loads up, showing the main menu, but freezes immediately.
I tried to put the iso file to a pendrive with Balena Etcher but it won't load at all.

[Morbius01]

I am not sure whether Ventoy could be the cause of your problem.
What I can tell you is that I have a main board even older that yours (non UEFI), and there is no way I can use v.5156 (or any of the most recent versions of Clover) : my PC would freeze even before I reach Clover's main menu !
And several people using legacy systems have reported too being unable to use the recent versions of Clover.

I can only suggest you to read what I did to successfully create a Clover key, and then install several OSs on my non-bootable NVMe SSD.
For this, I used an earlier version of Clover, v.4961 and the BD Utility tool.
You may like to try it. Who knows, it might work for you too.
See here.

[Morbius01]

This is not the main Clover menu.
This is the secondary menu that I get after selecting 'EXIT' from the main menu.
Anyway, on this menu, can you select 'Boot Maintenance Manager' ?

And also, can you list all the storage devices you have in your PC ?
Earlier, you mentioned a Samsung NVMe SSD on a PCIe adapter. Is there anything else ? Like any HDD ?

Regarding your NVMe SSD, what does it contain at the moment ?
And what kind of partition table does it have ? MBR or GPT ?

[bala7s]

I can’t select basically any menu, because it freezes, and I’m not that quick.

I have two SATA HDD through an SATA PCI card but it is unusable with EFI mode (another issue I have to address but it’s a different topic).

The SSD is formatted (exfat or ntfs - I don’t remember) and empty.

[Morbius01]

It looks like there is something in your PC configuration which Clover does not like, and makes it freeze.
But right now, I am puzzled about why you don't get to the main Clover menu.

I suggest you do the following :

• Erase everything on your SSD. Then create a GPT partition table. But do not format it.
  This can be done easily with the GParted utility on any Linux version. (you said earlier that you can see your SSD under Linux, so I assume that you have a live version of Linux on a USB drive, such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint)
  If you need further help on how to do this, just ask.
  [ I think that you can also create a partition table on Windows using Diskpart or Disk Management.
  I find it easier to do it on Linux with GParted ]

• Disconnect your two HDDs

• Restart your PC with the Clover key inserted. (and, of course, the NVMe SSD plugged on its PCIe slot !)

Any results ?

[bala7s]

I did every step exactly as you wrote, but no luck. I even removed the SATA card to make sure. The SSD is perfectly visible in line Linux and I can manage it with GParted with no issue so it can't really has any defect.
There is one thing I may try. There is a newer beta firmware for this motherboard, I wonder if I could try that safely.

[Morbius01]

Could you try Clover version 5070 ?

Extract the CloverISO-5070.tar.lzma file from the attached ZIP folder.
Move it to the folder where BDUtility.exe is.
Start BDUtility.
Options > Configuration.
In Local, select CloverISO-5070.tar.lzma. Click OK.
Insert a USB drive. Select it.
Click Format.

After the Clover key is created, copy the '\EFI\CLOVER\drivers\off\NvmExpressDxe.efi' driver to :

• \EFI\CLOVER\drivers\BIOS
  and
• \EFI\CLOVER\drivers\UEFI

Restart and boot from this new Clover key.

Results ?
Do you get the main Clover Configuration Manager menu ?

CloverISO-5070.tar.zip