Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no BIOS emulation)

[icanhazapple]

http://felipec.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/efi-adventures/


I ran across this other day, you guys who are working & developing solution should check out URL.

FYI - On my Mac Pro using Areca 18809ix-8 Controller with EFI firmware. I was able to get LION, Windows 8 Preview UEFI, & Ubuntu 11.10 UEFI install with out any headaches. Only thing i had to do was convert W8.iso using ocdimg cmd. & install Ubuntu Desktop x64 version using UEFI on Fat32. Plus Bootcamp Drivers are working in W8 Preview.

$ [SIZE="2"][SIZE="1"]diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *430.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OSX                     70.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS X                       260.0 GB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Ubuntu                 72.4 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Linux Swap                         1.0 GB     disk0s5
   6: 21686148-6449-6E6F-744E-656564454649               134.2 MB   disk0s99
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS X1                      1.3 TB     disk1s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS X2                      1.2 TB     disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data X3                      750.0 GB   disk1s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data X4                     749.4 GB   disk1s5
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *100.0 GB   disk2
   1: DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC               314.6 MB   disk2s1
   2:                        EFI                         103.8 MB   disk2s2
   3:         Microsoft Reserved                         134.2 MB   disk2s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                99.4 GB    disk2s4

nice! that is exactly what I'm looking to do.

 

[mac-hacks]

nice! that is exactly what I'm looking to do.

Install Windows 1st or remove your other drives until you have it install. Microsoft is using recovery partition which automatically install on /dev/disk0s1 even if your trying to install on HD other than /dev/disk0. If you look at my partition table, it's partition listed below.

1: DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC 314.6 MB disk2s1

FYI - All my drives are setup with RAID 0.

 

[Stefdar]

I have a 2011 Thunderbolt Macbook Air i7, and I am wondering:
1. Since I have only the Intel 3000 HD, do I need to enter an mm command in the EFI shell?
2. Do I need to use d3vi1's program?
3. In order for me to install Windows 7 x64 in EFI mode, do I need an unattended install?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jayhawk11]

Bumping to keep this near the top.

 

[darkfader]

Hmm.. either I wait for D3v1l's program or buy an extra SSD for my MBP (early 2011) to get both FileVault and TrueCrypt.
I've tried EFI stuff but mostly ended keeping fixing my partition table and virtual machine settings over and over again because of the damn hybrid partition table.

 

[crajohns6965]

After running EFI mode on my ~2008 MBP for a few weeks, I'm not sure I can recommend it. I'm strongly considering going back to boot camp mode (may change my mind with the Windows 8 CP coming out soon, not sure).

This issue I see chiefly is the brightness (you can't control it at all) and I'm pretty sure the 9600GT reactivates itself when you come out of standby (not in use, but sucks power). The battery life after coming out of standby is pretty terrible, 2.5 hours at most. At least with boot camp I could control the brightness to affect that, but without brightness control and a way to keep the 9600GT disabled after standby it really kills battery life. These were issues when I tried EFI with ubuntu awhile back too, but they have fixes over there for brightness and keeping the other GPU off.

The fact that I can use AHCI mode in boot camp with Nvidia (you just have to manually install the AHCI driver and it comes up without issue) makes EFI mode much less enticing. I don't think there's an easy fix for brightness mode - I've heard that you can modify it in the EFI shell but there's no way that I know of to do this once you boot into Windows.

 

[Sincci]

After running EFI mode on my ~2008 MBP for a few weeks, I'm not sure I can recommend it. I'm strongly considering going back to boot camp mode (may change my mind with the Windows 8 CP coming out soon, not sure).

This issue I see chiefly is the brightness (you can't control it at all) and I'm pretty sure the 9600GT reactivates itself when you come out of standby (not in use, but sucks power). The battery life after coming out of standby is pretty terrible, 2.5 hours at most. At least with boot camp I could control the brightness to affect that, but without brightness control and a way to keep the 9600GT disabled after standby it really kills battery life. These were issues when I tried EFI with ubuntu awhile back too, but they have fixes over there for brightness and keeping the other GPU off.

The fact that I can use AHCI mode in boot camp with Nvidia (you just have to manually install the AHCI driver and it comes up without issue) makes EFI mode much less enticing. I don't think there's an easy fix for brightness mode - I've heard that you can modify it in the EFI shell but there's no way that I know of to do this once you boot into Windows.

Ok, I just tried that one and so far I'm loving the results!

Here's how it looked in IDE mode:

And here's how it looks now, with the AHCI enabled:

All I had to do was to change the Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller manually to Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller and reboot the system. Even the brightness controls work, so at least for me this solution works far better than booting the system in UEFI mode.

 

[3ll0s]

Still alive?

D3v1l are you still alive?

 

[d3vi1]

D3v1l are you still alive?

Yes. Hope to have news soon enough.

 

[away8907]

The fact that I can use AHCI mode in boot camp with Nvidia (you just have to manually install the AHCI driver and it comes up without issue) makes EFI mode much less enticing.

You mind posting a quick how-to? I've been digging through all sorts of nVidia stuff and have yet to find the AHCI driver. I've tried the reg hack to no avail :/

 

[Sincci]

Here's how to do it:

1. In Device Manager, find the Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller.
2. Choose 'Update Driver Software', 'browse ...', 'let me pick ...'.
3. Uncheck 'Show compatible hardware'.
4. Choose 'Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller' in the manufacturer list, and the same for model (should be the only model)

Finally, in the registry, check that in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci Start is set to 0.

This hack does prevent you from accessing the bootcamp manager, but at least for me, the brightness settings will still work.

 

[icanhazapple]

fyi, the win8 consumer preview is out today.

and according to Peter Cohen (Dr. Pizza@Arstechnica) it will UEFI boot from USB without having to fiddle around with it https://twitter.com/DrPizza/status/174887652229783552

 

[archaic]

I have tried to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my MacBookPro 6,1. EFI installation went well until the end of installation and BCD error come. So I couldn't install it via EFI.

 

[ChemEGuy]

Hi!

So i tried the windows 8 consumer preview today. Been waiting to try this all out until a good enough build of it came out. I have a Macbook Air 11 mid 2011. Booting to it was okay enough. The windows usb creator tool broke the efi boot but then i tried the automated windows usb creation tool through the bootcamp utility and it worked fine. Booting from efi didn't yield any issues and i proceeded to install (i used diskpart and installed to a clean disk). Upon reboot the computer didn't like the hd3000 drivers so i had to disable that to proceed with installation (To do that i booted to safe mode and then pressed shift+f10 and opened compmgmt.msc). After this i was able to reboot the computer and complete the installation. At this point i set up windows and found that the broadcom (bcm4322) wireless made the system unstable and i had to disable that as well. At this point everything works except the wireless and video drivers as well as the bootcamp control panel. Brightness of the back-lit keys works but the screen brightness does not, and I found that to be rather interesting.

At this point I'm not really sure I understand why the drivers don't work or how to fix them. If anyone has any input on that, I would love to see a response.

 

[mac-hacks]

Hi!

So i tried the windows 8 consumer preview today. Been waiting to try this all out until a good enough build of it came out. I have a Macbook Air 11 mid 2011. Booting to it was okay enough. The windows usb creator tool broke the efi boot but then i tried the automated windows usb creation tool through the bootcamp utility and it worked fine. Booting from efi didn't yield any issues and i proceeded to install (i used diskpart and installed to a clean disk). Upon reboot the computer didn't like the hd3000 drivers so i had to disable that to proceed with installation (To do that i booted to safe mode and then pressed shift+f10 and opened compmgmt.msc). After this i was able to reboot the computer and complete the installation. At this point i set up windows and found that the broadcom (bcm4322) wireless made the system unstable and i had to disable that as well. At this point everything works except the wireless and video drivers as well as the bootcamp control panel. Brightness of the back-lit keys works but the screen brightness does not, and I found that to be rather interesting.

At this point I'm not really sure I understand why the drivers don't work or how to fix them. If anyone has any input on that, I would love to see a response.

You use bootcamp, right? So your booting IDE mode. You need to boot in ACHI mode to get drivers to work correctly. Using True UEFI enables ACHI...

 

[624636]

I just install the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview in EFI mode ; everything went fine ... till I look the system manager where I could found that my ATI 4850 (iMac 27 late 2K9) had no resources.

I didn't test the bootcamp manager but I think it doesn't work.

Is there a way to enable my graphic card now, or I have to re-install with a EFI modification on startup.

D3vi1, I hope you could release a alpha/beta version of your app

 

[Ludiculous]

Hi guys, I have few questions regarding Windows 8 installation. I followed everything online regarding installation, I partitioned my harddrive with 85GB, I started the installation, I entered the product key, I then clicked on my 85GB partition harddrive and formated it. However, it still wont let me install Windows 8 on it. Instead, it says: "Disk has MBR partition table. Windows can only be installed on GPT disks."

I boot using option key and selecting EFI boot.

I also have a MBP 2010 with Core I5

Does anyone know what to do at this point? I cant seem to get this resolved. I tried deleting the partitioned drive and choose "new" but nothing seems to work. I can't find anything online regarding this issue as well.

Thanks in advance for helping!

 

[ChemEGuy]

You use bootcamp, right? So your booting IDE mode. You need to boot in ACHI mode to get drivers to work correctly. Using True UEFI enables ACHI...

I am booting through EFI. My SSD is using AHCI and not IDE. Also I am using GPT. I did install the bootcamp utility on windows to get most the drivers, but i have tried other drivers for both the wireless and the intel HD3000 and neither worked.

 

[624636]

According to DaGr8Gatzby and chieffun I try to activate my ATI card on my iMac.

I make the screenshot (attachment) of my EFI shell after typing pci -i 01 00 00 -b ; I dont found the command to enter.

I think that something change with the Consumer Preview ; when I executed the "Windows Test" I had a score of 3.2 ; with the first preview I had a score of 1.

Thanks

 

[Bill Gates]

Hi guys, I have few questions regarding Windows 8 installation. I followed everything online regarding installation, I partitioned my harddrive with 85GB, I started the installation, I entered the product key, I then clicked on my 85GB partition harddrive and formated it. However, it still wont let me install Windows 8 on it. Instead, it says: "Disk has MBR partition table. Windows can only be installed on GPT disks."

I boot using option key and selecting EFI boot.

I also have a MBP 2010 with Core I5

Does anyone know what to do at this point? I cant seem to get this resolved. I tried deleting the partitioned drive and choose "new" but nothing seems to work. I can't find anything online regarding this issue as well.

Thanks in advance for helping!

Did you use Boot Camp assistant at one point on this drive? If so the drive has a hybrid MBR/GUID partition table. If I understand that error correctly, it looks like it wants a drive that only has a GUID partition table (GPT). You would need to restore the drive to a single partition or remove the Boot Camp partition and then use Disk Utility to add another partition to the drive.

 

[Yuusharo]

Did you use Boot Camp assistant at one point on this drive? If so the drive has a hybrid MBR/GUID partition table. If I understand that error correctly, it looks like it wants a drive that only has a GUID partition table (GPT). You would need to restore the drive to a single partition or remove the Boot Camp partition and then use Disk Utility to add another partition to the drive.

Or, the other option is to simply use Boot Camp assistant to remove and restore a new partition for Windows 8. I had to wipe out my Windows 7 partition first, which sucked, but that allowed me to create a new Boot Camp partition and install Windows 8 without problems.

 

[624636]

little guide to find registers and values: (values shown are for my macbook pro 3,1, gf8600m gt only)

1) start efi shell

2) find the vga controller: (the -b flag reduces output to one page)

pci -b

here you can see all devices, find the display (vga) controller, in my case:

00 01 00 00

3) check the device config:

pci -i 00 01 00 -b

a) on page 1 (in my case) i can see the values for the Command Register (4),
the bits (00) I/O space enabled and (02) bus master are set to 1, so nothing to change here.

b) on page 3 (in my case) i can see the values for the Bridge Control Register (3E), the bit (03) VGA Enable is set to 0, this should be 1

4) set the bit mentioned in 3b):

mm 0001003E -PCI 8

explanation:
a) device is on 000100 (see 2))
b) the Bridge Control Register is 3E (see 3b))
c) the VGA Enable bit is (03), so if you imagine an 8 bit register (00001000 = Bit (07) to Bit (00)) and you want to set bit (03) to 1, you have to feed the register with 00001000 binary, which is 8 decimal).

5) check pci device config again (same code as for 3)) and you should see that the VGA Enable bit (03) in register (3E) is now set to 1.

Hope this helps someone out there

It's me or there is some errors here. If I'm right could someone correct it or rewrite some of these type of tutorial/guide.

I don't find the terms "Bridge Control Register" and "VGA enable" also.

Thanks

 

[Ludiculous]

Did you use Boot Camp assistant at one point on this drive? If so the drive has a hybrid MBR/GUID partition table. If I understand that error correctly, it looks like it wants a drive that only has a GUID partition table (GPT). You would need to restore the drive to a single partition or remove the Boot Camp partition and then use Disk Utility to add another partition to the drive.

Thanks for replying! How do I restore the drive to a single partition? I did use boot camp assistant on the drive, I used it to create my boot disk, download updates for boot camp, and partition my hard drive into 2 drives. Did I do something wrong?

 

[mac-hacks]

Thanks for replying! How do I restore the drive to a single partition? I did use boot camp assistant on the drive, I used it to create my boot disk, download updates for boot camp, and partition my hard drive into 2 drives. Did I do something wrong?

Needs to look like this :

Easiest way:

Download gdisk & Install

Open terminal and type :

gdisk /dev/disk0 (changing the disk identifier as necessary)

type "x"

#The command prompt will change to read Expert command (? for help):.

type "o"

# This command displays the contents of the hybrid MBR, which will probably consist of four partitions, one of which is of type 0xEE.

type "n"

#The program won't seem to do anything; it will just show you another command prompt.

type "o" again.

# The MBR contents should be different from before; there should just be one partition, of type 0xEE. This is a standards-compliant protective MBR.

type "w"

# to save your changes.

 

[crajohns6965]

Windows 8 on Macbook Pro5,3 has some issues - particularly around graphics drivers. In either EFI or MBR mode; doesn't detect the graphics card but runs with the basic driver ok. When you try to install the nvidia driver it loads and seems to run ok, but there are random freezes (on the xda-developers forum some other users see the same thing). I think we need WDDM 1.2 drivers from Nvidia to get that fixed, but for now I wouldn't load Win8 on an nvidia graphics chipset.