UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with

Tutorial: UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with

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arkhi said:
15 Sep 2011

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with

How to Install Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 using the
"Unified Extensible Firmware Interface" (UEFI)

Information

Systems that are built using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) are more likely
to achieve very fast pre-boot times when compared to those with traditional BIOS. This
isn’t because UEFI is inherently faster, but because UEFI writers starting from scratch are
more able to optimize their implementation rather than building upon a BIOS
implementation that may be many years old.

Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8 - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN
Blogs

This method can also be used for the UEFI installation of Windows 7, Windows Server
2008 SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Vista SP1.

Note
You will need to satisfy the following requirements in order to proceed:

A Windows 8 compatible system

A Windows 8 64-bit installation media. 32-bit is not supported.
A UEFI v2.0+ compliant PC. Check your chipset manufacturer/firmware
documentation.

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 A blank, partition-free, hard disk for installation.

Warning

Disabling UEFI will make the system unbootable as there is no MBR on the disks.
You CANNOT make a sector-by-sector copy of GPT disks. The Disk and Partition
GUIDs will no longer be unique. This must never happen. You can make a sector-by-
sector copy of the contents of ESP or basic data partitions.

Here's How:
1. Do step 2 or 3 below depending on what installation Media you are using.

2. If using a 64-bit Windows 8 or 8.1 Installation DVD with UEFI

A) Insert the DVD, restart the computer, and go to step 4 below.

NOTE: If you are unsure that your 64-bit DVD has UEFI support, then see OPTION
TWO here: Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 ISO - Download or Create

3. If using a 64-bit Windows 8 or 8.1 Installation USB Flash Drive with UEFI

A) If you have not already, you will need to create a Windows 8 or 8.1 installation
bootable USB flash drive with UEFI from either a Windows 8 installation ISO or
DVD.

B) Connect the USB, restart the computer, and go to step 4 below.

Tip
Enable or Disable Always Automatically Boot PC from USB Drive in Windows To Go
Startup Options

How to Boot from a USB Drive within Windows 8 and 8.1

How to Boot from a USB Drive on Surface

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 4. Press whatever key (ex: F11) it shows to boot to your motherboard's boot menu, and
select to boot from the listed UEFI DVD or UEFI USB. (see screenshot below)

5. Do steps 2 to 7 in the tutorial at the link below, and return.

Clean Install - Windows 8

6. Delete all partitions/volumes on the disk # (ex: Disk 0) that you want to install Windows 8
as UEFI on until that disk # shows as unallocated space. (see screenshot below)

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 7. When you are finished, click/tap on New, Apply (for full size of disk), and OK. (see
screenshot above)

8. You will notice that the disk has now been formatted as GPT with 4 partitions. Select the
"Primary" partition 4, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You might receive a "Windows can't be installed on drive 0" warning, but as long
as you can click on the Next button, you're fine.

Note
The 4 partitions are:

Paritition 1 - Recovery
Partition 2 - System - The EFI System partition that contains the NTLDR, HAL,
Boot.txt, and other files that are needed to boot the system, such as drivers.
Partition 3 - MSR - The Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that reserves space
on each disk drive for subsequent use by operating system software.

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 Partition 4 - Primary - Where Windows is to be installed to.

It is imperative that these 4 partitions remain in the exact order as they are

9. You can now finish doing the steps in either tutorial below.

Steps 9 to 21 here - Clean Install - Windows 8

Same steps 9 to 21 as above, but also steps 4 to 6 afterwards here - Clean Install
with Windows 8 Upgrade

10. That's it. You have successfully installed Windows 8 on a UEFI system.

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 Related Tutorials

How to Clean Install Windows on a MSATA (SSD) Drive

Create a Bootable UEFI USB Flash Drive for Installing Windows 7. Windows 8, and Windows 8.1
How to Install Windows 7 Using "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface" (UEFI)
Create Bootable USB or DVD with Windows 8 ISO
How to Do a Clean Install of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1
How to Do a Clean Install with Windows 8 Upgrade
Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk - Windows 7 Forums
How to Download and Run the "Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant"
How to Create or Download a Windows 8 Upgrade ISO
How to Enable or Disable Secure Boot in UEFI
How to Check if Secure Boot is Enabled or Disabled in Windows 8 and 8.1
How to Check if Windows is Booted in UEFI or Legacy BIOS Mode
How to Boot to UEFI Firmware Settings from inside Windows 8
How to Do a Repair Install of Windows 8 without Losing Anything
How to Upgrade from Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, or XP to Windows 8 or 8.1
How to Open Device Manager During Installation of Windows 8 and 8.1

External Links:

Windows and GPT FAQ

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
UEFI and Windows
Technical Note: UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS - YouTube
Last edited by Brink; 08 Sep 2014 at 11:16.

theog said:
15 Sep 2011

Nice one.

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 Dave76 said:
18 Sep 2011

Good information.

sealight said:
25 Sep 2011

Windows 8 Dev Preview with Tools has a file bigger than 4GB so it cannot be stored inside a
FAT formatted USB stick.
And if we format the USB stick with NTFS the UEFI BIOS wont boot from it.

How can we install "Windows 8 Dev Preview with Tools" UEFI mode using a USB stick?

dragorth said:
25 Sep 2011

Try splitting the install.wim file

Originally Posted by sealight
Windows 8 Dev Preview with Tools has a file bigger than 4GB so it cannot be stored
inside a FAT formatted USB stick.
And if we format the USB stick with NTFS the UEFI BIOS wont boot from it.

How can we install "Windows 8 Dev Preview with Tools" UEFI mode using a USB stick?

I have the same issue on a macbook pro early 2011. I used Imagex to split the install.wim
into several install.swm files (supported uder windows vista and 7), and move the boot files
to the efi\boot folder, but I am getting stuck at the Product key page. All the product keys in
the product.ini do not work, as well as the product keys given by microsoft for the reinstall
option. I will continue on.

dragorth said:

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 25 Sep 2011

Update
Originally Posted by dragorth
Originally Posted by sealight
Windows 8 Dev Preview with Tools has a file bigger than 4GB so it cannot be stored
inside a FAT formatted USB stick.
And if we format the USB stick with NTFS the UEFI BIOS wont boot from it.

How can we install "Windows 8 Dev Preview with Tools" UEFI mode using a USB
stick?

I have the same issue on a macbook pro early 2011. I used Imagex to split the install.wim
into several install.swm files (supported uder windows vista and 7), and move the boot
files to the efi\boot folder, but I am getting stuck at the Product key page. All the product
keys in the product.ini do not work, as well as the product keys given by microsoft for the
reinstall option. I will continue on.

I now have the installer running through the install, but fails when it tries to write to the mac
boot sector. I had to redownload the iso, and resplit the files.

arkhi said:
28 Sep 2011

Strange, I remember being able to boot from an NTFS partition. Not a USB stick, but a
seperate partition with the installation files on it and installed from there.

Also, shouldn't you be able to skip the Product Key page anyway?

And about failing to write to the mac boot sector, are you sure the drive you installed it in is
blank? Win8 would usually write the boot files as soon as you select a drive for installation.

dragorth said:
28 Sep 2011

Really?

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 Originally Posted by arkhi
Strange, I remember being able to boot from an NTFS partition. Not a USB stick, but a
seperate partition with the installation files on it and installed from there.

Also, shouldn't you be able to skip the Product Key page anyway?

And about failing to write to the mac boot sector, are you sure the drive you installed it in
is blank? Win8 would usually write the boot files as soon as you select a drive for
installation.

The UEFI spec calls for fat32 partitions being readable, not ntfs. When formated as ntfs, the
usb stick would not be detected by the Mac UEFI. I did not use rEFIt, as I have been having
issues with lion. (refit does not solve all the problems, I usually get an error when using it, at
least from the windows 8 boot options)

I have tried with the drive clean, with the drive pre partitioned according to the Microsoft
requirements for uefi, and with OSX installed. In all cases, windows 8 gives me the message
"Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration. Instalation cannot proceed."

When searching the log messages located in the $windows.~bt and $windows.~ls (I don't
remember which one right this second), I see a general error code, that I forgot to save.
When searching online, I found similar error,numbered 81, not the 35 that I was getting that
seemed to be driver issues, so I don't know if this one is a driver issue, or what. I have
settled on using bootcamp for now, until I feel like working on this again. Bootcamp is
working ok, with random system crashes.

I think if I kew a lot more than I do about the microsoft boot environment, I could probably
seperate the boot settings out into a fat32 boot partition, and them install from a ntfs
partition, but this is seriously becoming a headache. I have worked on this for two weeks,
having to wipe and restore the whole system countless times. I now hate the windows install
screen. I am wondering if i may be able to use imagex to apply the install image directly,
setting up the individual partitions myself, and making it work, I just don't know what files go
where in the microsoft system partition, and which files are directly needed for the EFI
partition.

I should note, after installing windows the way I described in the earlier post, then getting
that error message, when I reboot, I am able to hold down option/alt and boot into the UEFI
Boot option, and get a windows error. It says that the recovery tools are not installed, and I
must use my disk or usb stick to boot into it.

If anyone has suggestions, I am all ears.

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 Thanks.

arkhi said:
28 Sep 2011

Hmm.. Which mac do you have, by any chance? Not the OS version, but the actual mac
product?

Just to add a couple of facts that I know that I'm trying to piece together in regards to your
problem:

For Windows:
Can only boot from UEFI through a GPT disk on a UEFI 2.0 64-bit implemented firmware
This is because only the 64-bit versions of Windows are designed to be booted from UEFI

For Macs/Apple:
*Macs uses EFI 1.1 32-bit mode for most of its OSX Tiger and Lepoard. It was fairly
recent (2008-9ish maybe?) that they implemented 64-bit EFI.
*I can't say for sure if the even newer ones already implemented UEFI 2.0.

Doing some research, this post from Apr 2010

(https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0) stated:

Unfortunately, the 2010 MBP (at least the Core i7 version) seems to still be using EFI 1.1.
I checked by booting to rEFIt ... the Mac doesn't use UEFI 2.0 ...

dragorth said:
28 Sep 2011

Originally Posted by arkhi

Hmm.. Which mac do you have, by any chance? Not the OS version, but the actual mac

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 product?

Just to add a couple of facts that I know that I'm trying to piece together in regards to your
problem:

For Windows:
Can only boot from UEFI through a GPT disk on a UEFI 2.0 64-bit implemented firmware
This is because only the 64-bit versions of Windows are designed to be booted from UEFI

For Macs/Apple:
*Macs uses EFI 1.1 32-bit mode for most of its OSX Tiger and Lepoard. It was fairly
recent (2008-9ish maybe?) that they implemented 64-bit EFI.
*I can't say for sure if the even newer ones already implemented UEFI 2.0. <-Look
up and s

Doing some research, this post from Apr 2010

(https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0) stated:

Unfortunately, the 2010 MBP (at least the Core i7 version) seems to still be using EFI
1.1. I checked by booting to rEFIt ... the Mac doesn't use UEFI 2.0 ...

For brevities sake:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B1E
SMC Version (system): 1.69f1
Serial Number (system):
Hardware UUID:
Sudden Motion Sensor:

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 State: Enabled

This is an early 2011 model. Deleted the serial and unique for privacy concerns.

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