No bootloaders work for me permanently?!

[bob321654984]

Ripping my hair out (not a good thing, I have little)...

 

I've installed Yosemite successfully about 12 times now, on an SSD on my Gigabyte Z77X-D3H. Looks great, but as soon as I try and install a boot loader it breaks it.

 

Clover works fine to boot off the USB and install it (again), but refuses to successfully install to the SSD. Without the USB in, it just says 'Boot error'.

 

Chameleon installs ok, but after boot it just shuts itself down again (don't even get into Yosemite). I didn't create the USB with Chameleon - does this make a difference? Won't let me as it doesn't run on my Macbook air (maybe cos it's Yosemite already or because I'm selecting desktop? Not sure how much scrutiny the USB creator does, or whether it should only be run on the destination system? I've screwed my Mackintosh Mavericks installation now, so can't find out)....

 

I've still got Clover EFI options in my EFI bios menu, despite having removed them several times.

 

Apologies if this sounds like a generic 'Doesn't work', but I just seem to be hitting a dead end at every turn and I'm struggling to find anything that I haven't tried already at least 2 or three times?! Would love to hear what any of you would try next?

 

EDIT: I've reformatted and repartitioned the SSD every time

[jamiethemorris]

Do you actually need to reformat and repartition the SSD each time? When you install Clover, what options are you checking in the installer? I'm assuming you have a UEFI BIOS, make sure you have these options checked:

-Install for UEFI Booting Only

-Install Clover on the ESP

-Bootloader > Don't update MBR and PBR sectors

 

Otherwise I could see it doing some strange stuff like you're experiencing.

 

FYI if the Clover USB was UEFI-bootable you can actually just drag the EFI folder from the Clover USB drive's EFI partition and put it on your main drive's EFI partition.

 

Also, No, it makes no difference whether you create the USB with Chameleon. I can't say why it would be shutting itself down like that because I haven't used Chameleon on Yosemite.