Testing UEFI on a non UEFI system - Can be done in VMWARE

Hi everyone
Some people might like to test the possibilities of UEFI systems even though their current machines aren't equipped with it.

It IS possible to do this in a Virtual machine even if the HOST system is a non UEFI machine.

Edit Manually the VM configuration for the VM you want to test this feature with.

Add the following like to the .VMX (machine configuration file)
firmware = “efi”

Note that you must do this BEFORE installing the VM and you can't change it afterwards.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks for the reminder Jimbo.

I had this posted a while back, works even on Player:
http://www.eightforums.com/virtualization/18753-vmware-player-uefi.html

Works like a charm.

There were no post reactions back there but I guess those who need this can easily and silently test it out.

You've mentioned it:

Note that you must do this BEFORE installing the VM and you can't change it afterwards.

Click to expand...

Very important indeed because we know how easy it is to change settings on the go; unfortunately this settings aren't meant to be changed afterwards.

Cheers
Hopachi

What is it that people test with uefi? I don't notice any actual difference other than the gpt partitions. What am I missing here?

Besides the GPT partitions I've noticed other things:

-If you boot with UEFI you have a higher resolution in BIOS and OS boot screens: 1024x768 or higher.
-In general the UEFI OS will have one or two extra small partitions compared to the MBR one...
but
-There is that ability to create 128 primary partitions on one disk and boot with them all(OS added to list in the UEFI fat32 main partition).
-UEFI claims to be more secure during boot time.
-There is more speed during OS boot.

And there may be other good stuff I'm missing as well...

A VM is a good place to encounter this first on your older machine without UEFI, if you plan on getting a new machine that will most likely have UEFI. So people can get used to the settings, partitioning and see that the performance is good.