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

warning   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.



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)

UEFI_USB_Boot_Menu.jpg

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)

Step7.jpg

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   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.
  • 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





setup.PNG

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


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








External Links:


 

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Nice one.
 

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Good information.
 

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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?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo W520
Try splitting the install.wim file

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.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Update

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.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
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.
 

My Computer

Really?

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.

Thanks.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
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/2407582?start=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 ...
 

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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. <-Look up and s
Doing some research, this post from Apr 2010 (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2407582?start=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:
State: Enabled

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

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B1E
I did some research on this. The fact that they keep calling their firmware EFI (without the U) bothers me since there is clearly a difference between UEFI and EFI.

After some research, I'm lead to believe that it's not possible to boot Windows through UEFI on a Mac because Mac's don't have the UEFI 2.0 standard and that Boot Camp assumes that any other OS aside from OSX should be booted via MBR/BIOS.

Interesting read btw:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2767378?start=0&tstart=0


I spoke to an Apple genius about it and he asked a tech person on the phone. Seems that UEFI isn't on Macs because the mac hardware does not conform to the UEFI standards, which were designed for PC's.

I did some research and apparently Apple dont even use standard EFI 1.x, its EFI 1.10 plus some UEFI 2.0 bits.

So we are stuck with BIOS under Boot Camp untill someone figures out a way to emulate UEFI in a rEFIt kind of way.
 

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Some FUD.

Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B1E
I did some research on this. The fact that they keep calling their firmware EFI (without the U) bothers me since there is clearly a difference between UEFI and EFI.

After some research, I'm lead to believe that it's not possible to boot Windows through UEFI on a Mac because Mac's don't have the UEFI 2.0 standard and that Boot Camp assumes that any other OS aside from OSX should be booted via MBR/BIOS.

Interesting read btw:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2767378?start=0&tstart=0


I spoke to an Apple genius about it and he asked a tech person on the phone. Seems that UEFI isn't on Macs because the mac hardware does not conform to the UEFI standards, which were designed for PC's.

I did some research and apparently Apple dont even use standard EFI 1.x, its EFI 1.10 plus some UEFI 2.0 bits.

So we are stuck with BIOS under Boot Camp untill someone figures out a way to emulate UEFI in a rEFIt kind of way.

So, having looked more into this, I know the issue with windows 7 is Microsoft's support for uefi. Windows 7 tries to use vga bios hooks to boot, which is not supported by any version of efi, though can be added by manufacturers (one of the benefits of UEFI). Macs are PC's hardware wise, with custom extensions for Apple. The main extension Apple adds is an HFS+ driver, which is not specified by the efi specs, and then the bios emulator.

There are those that have installed custom windows 7 installers to there macs, by using an unattended installation. The down side is you don't see the screen until windows is fully loaded, and creating such an installation is non trivial.

Windows 8 has the uefi standard video support needed, as seen by the fact that I can boot into the installer. This is most likely an issue with windows 8 installer, not Mac Pro Bios.

This link will be interesting for your edification. I am just trying to figure out how to get the files on the boot partition.
 

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It will be useful for my next build :)
 

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@Dragorth,

How do you know Windows 7 uses the BIOS VGA to boot since it's also capable of installing on a UEFI system? I actually made this tutorial after trying to install Windows 7 on UEFI knowing that the procedure would be the same on Win8 (install screenshots here are taken from Win7 install).

In any case, since I don't have a Mac myself, I can't help you experiment with Win8 and give advice to the matter. The last, desperate thing I can think of is to try exFAT and see if Mac boots from it since I know new Macs support at least reading it.

Either way, I wish you the best of luck! :)
 

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@Dragorth,

How do you know Windows 7 uses the BIOS VGA to boot since it's also capable of installing on a UEFI system? I actually made this tutorial after trying to install Windows 7 on UEFI knowing that the procedure would be the same on Win8 (install screenshots here are taken from Win7 install).

In any case, since I don't have a Mac myself, I can't help you experiment with Win8 and give advice to the matter. The last, desperate thing I can think of is to try exFAT and see if Mac boots from it since I know new Macs support at least reading it.

Either way, I wish you the best of luck! :)

Since microsoft has market dominance, they can require motherboard manufacturers to provide this needed extension. Apple doesn't, since it is not needed by the spec.
I will try your suggestion, and thanks for the help.
Some more knowledgeable guys than I are working to bring the necessary components for win 7.
I am afraid I left out the link, lol. Here is how I know.
Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no bios emulation) - Page 4 - MacRumors Forums
 

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  • OS
    Windows 8
Very informative :).
Maybe you can illustrate how to boot & install a non Microsoft based operating system in a secure boot UEFI environment on an upcoming OEM machine ?

Just to put all the nasty rumors to rest once and for all.

Just asking..
 

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Very informative :).
Maybe you can illustrate how to boot & install a non Microsoft based operating system in a secure boot UEFI environment on an upcoming OEM machine ?

Just to put all the nasty rumors to rest once and for all.

Just asking..

Secure boot does not prevent booting other OSes. It prevents booting Unknown, unsigned, or infected OSes.

It is up to the manufacturer to provide a switch to allow any OS to boot. I imagine that many large distributions, such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and hopefully the BSD's will have a known key in the UEFI system. I would have to read the UEFI spec to know how updates to this list are handled, since Microsoft will presumably have different keys for each OS.

Not to mention many will still use older OSes such as Windows XP, Vista and 7 that, as far as I know, do not have signed boot signatures. Debian and Ubuntu also already have a signed software system, making them very secure anyway, I imagine the infrastructure is in place to support these, considering that many businesses that would use these things are using these UEFI systems. Since Linux has been on the Itanium systems for some time, and all of those are some flavor of EFI, I don't believe there will be an issue with the secure boot.

I would worry more on consumer focused suppliers that have few business partners, as they have the least incentive to provide these options. Considering that EFI seems easier to add things to, I wouldn't be surprised to be able to add these keys at the command line or just adding a file to the EFI Partition.

Dragorth.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Considering that EFI seems easier to add things to, I wouldn't be surprised to be able to add these keys at the command line or just adding a file to the EFI Partition.
I was under the impression that the Microsoft UEFI boot was actually a physical hardware signature (or similar) which would only allow Microsoft Windows 8 to boot? I wasn't aware there would actually be a partition that would contain the files...
 

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System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Dev Preview x64
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    i7 950 3.06GHz
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Considering that EFI seems easier to add things to, I wouldn't be surprised to be able to add these keys at the command line or just adding a file to the EFI Partition.
I was under the impression that the Microsoft UEFI boot was actually a physical hardware signature (or similar) which would only allow Microsoft Windows 8 to boot? I wasn't aware there would actually be a partition that would contain the files...

Intel's TPM platform, whatever name they are calling it now. Yes, but as I stated, there will be a need to update that list, simply from the different OS versions of Windows, not to mention they may need to change it across the board in case hackers get ahold on the code, either a hack or the actual number. It would be chancy, in light of the different playstation 3 and Xbox hacks that already exist.

Also, as I stated, corporations will want to test these as well. They will need to be able to modify different settings, and test out different numbers, such as an antivirus looking for a way simulate the windows boot secter, which would be my guess of where the next versions of root kits will come in.

The TPM is only so good as the hardware, and Intel has been known to make mistakes. (Pentiums may be the best known, but are by no means the only ones, or anywhere near the most recent.)

Like I said, I haven't taken the time to read the specs, but I am fairly sure there is a mechanism for updates, just like the old bios. Not to mention, with the bios mode, we can use something like UEFI BOOT to boot into an UEFI only OS, and bypass the Secure Boot measures. There are always ways around any limitation, just keep your eyes open, and outside of the boxes the give you to use.

Dragorth.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Yeah, fair enough. When you put it like that, it makes sense to have a software controller for the whole system, and as we know, pretty much every software is breakable, one way or another.
Question is, in what layer will the controller be? If they're moving away from BIOS, where exactly are they going to put it? I don't see a system partition being a very good idea, unless they put it somewhere really sneaky and use properly good encryption techniques, right?
 

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  • OS
    Windows 8 Dev Preview x64
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    i7 950 3.06GHz
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    Asus Rampage III
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    G Skill 4GB DDR3 2000MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GTX570 1.25GB DDR5
    PSU
    Antec ATX TruePower 750W
    Case
    Antec Lanboy Air Red
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