Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no BIOS emulation)

[Sandleford]

Linux has a version of nvidia driver that works for my mac pro in efi mode. You know if windows does?
I looked around but maybe I missed it.

Just cloned the windows install I have and it took like an hour and a half. The funny part is afterwards I used mbr2gpt.

 

[kaidelorenzo]

Has anyone had success on the mid 2009 iMac? I can't even boot the installer.

Ok I was finally able to boot various windows 8 and 10 installers. However, they take a long time to get to the installer welcome page, and then when I try to use diskpart the internal HDD doesn't seem to be recognized correctly. Everything with diskpart is super slow and none of the commands I run seem to work correctly.

Does anyone have any advice for what I might try next?

 

[larkrahman]

Well just checking in, I managed to get this working on my Macbook Pro.



I am not having very much success reproducing this on my Mac Pro. However, I believe this is because I integrated all boot camp drivers into my install.wim file and not just the Nvidia drivers. I will check back sometime tomorrow with my findings.

9

Hi,

Does anyone have the EFI script for the :

iMac11,1 ("Core i5" 2.66 27-Inch Late 2009 with ATI Radeon HD 4850) ;
MacBook6,11 ("Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13" Uni/Late 09 with geforce 9400) ;

Thanks in advance ...

Hi did you find the efi script for 2009 late 27 Inch with ati video card. Would be so greatfull if you could share.

Hi,

Does anyone have the EFI script for the :

iMac11,1 ("Core i5" 2.66 27-Inch Late 2009 with ATI Radeon HD 4850) ;
MacBook6,11 ("Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13" Uni/Late 09 with geforce 9400) ;

Thanks in advance ...

Hi can you share efi script Imac late 2009 ati 4850
Thanks

 

[atway70]

away8907 checking back in after a conversation reminded me of this endeavor. Wild that it has 46 pages today.

 

[kocoman]

Now that it's morning, I can go into more detail with this:
1) It's legal as long as the user (the owner of the device) is responsible for the modification.
2) It's hard to explain to the users that they are buying an application that modifies the flash and that they take all responsibility over bricking their device (and voiding the warranty in the process). They are paying hard money to brick their device.
3) If the user updates his firmware, he would need to reinstall the application in the firmware.
The process would be the following:
a) I generate a EFI Firmware Volume containing the Boot DXE (Posts the OptionROM and sets the VGA regs and switches the gMux to the correct video card) and the Runtime DXE (provides the RS->QueryVariableInfo service) and possibly other goodies (say some not yet written filesystem drivers like NTFS, ExFAT, EXT4, ZFS, etc.).
b) The user runs the setup application that sets the correct NVRAM variables and adds the Firmware Volume as an EFI FFS File in main Firmware Volume.
c) When the machine reboots, the DXE dispatcher automatically loads the Boot DXE and the Runtime from the Firmware Volume and runs them DXE _BEFORE_ loading the BootPicker. As a result, you can run Windows Vista SP1+, 7 and 8 straight from the original DVD.

While the process is clear, I'm not sure on the risks and I think that we should test on all possible logic boards and have a white list in the Setup Application of the logic boards that have been tested successfully and are confirmed working, otherwise I will not attempt this. The problem is that testing this requires testing the app on ALL post 2008 Mac logic boards and firmware versions and a few months ago when I counted them it was more than 50 logic boards, each with 2 or more firmware versions.

I believe you can understand why I'm hesitating.

The good news is that the Flash on most Macs is half empty, so there's enough room for this.

Furthermore, this method could be used to replace the bootpicker on each mac with a "Lion Recovery" aware one and to add AirPort card booting to all Macs (basically add the Broadcom wireless DXE to them). There are a lot of things that could be improved by editing the flash. You could take down the start-up time on a lot of Macs, clean the flash of duplicate files (some Macs have two copies of the discrete Option ROM), improve the bootpicker with Lion Recovery and Airport support, etc.

Has anyone got Bus/Pci/BroadcomWireless/4360 dxe to work with ipxe? thx

 

[SamDaaEpic]

Is Anyone Alive in this Thread???? If so, Does anyone have any idea on how to run Windows 10 In EFI Mode on my Macbook Pro 5,1? I've looked through this entire thread and only found 2 or 3 mentions on my mac model, I did try everything stated in the guides people wrote from slipstreaming drivers into the iso to going to the efi shell and setting the gpu and then booting; Nothing Worked for me. Any help would be really appreciated.

 

[kocoman]

how to fix code 43 error on hd4000? thx

 

[tqbinh]

I figured out how to convert a Bootcamp Win7 installation on my 2009 Macbook Pro to EFI, everything works except the following caveats: screen brightness control doesn't work (starts at full brightness or likely the brightness of screen when OSX shutdown), webcam maybe doesn't work, bluetooth untested. Bootcamp Control panel won't open without a hack. Check my wiki post: http://wiki.bazz1.com/w/index.php/EFI_Win7_Macbook_Pro_5,4_2009

The link is broken, could you, please, post this wiki here?

 

[Boyd01]

Unfortunately, @mbazz only made that one post here in 2015 and has not been seen since then...

 

[tqbinh]

My efforts for running Windows 7 in EFI mode on Macbook Pro 17" 2009 are all unsuccessful, even with VGAShim.
I ended up by running Windows 7 in legacy mode, but from GPT disk. I followed this instruction and use rEFInd to boot from the helper USB. This allow me to give away hassles in converting GPT back and forth to Hybrid MBR and renew BCD record every time I switch from Windows 10 UEFI to Windows 7 legacy.
The reason I prefer Windows 7 over Windows 10 is that Windows 7 renders text better using MacType.

 

[Windows 7Pro2009]

My efforts for running Windows 7 in EFI mode on Macbook Pro 17" 2009 are all unsuccessful, even with VGAShim.
I ended up by running Windows 7 in legacy mode, but from GPT disk. I followed this instruction and use rEFInd to boot from the helper USB. This allow me to give away hassles in converting GPT back and forth to Hybrid MBR and renew BCD record every time I switch from Windows 10 UEFI to Windows 7 legacy.
The reason I prefer Windows 7 over Windows 10 is that Windows 7 renders text better using MacType.

have you tried using UEFISeven? Apparently it's a fork of vgashim that allows 7 to boot on systems with UEFI Class-3 firmwares.

 

[leo015]

(Original thread : https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cant-get-windows-fully-working-imac-10-1.2423791/)

Hey everyone, would someone please be kind enough to offer any input/advice to the problem I'm having?

I have an iMac 10,1 (Late 2009, 21.5 Inch, Core 2 Duo E7600, ATI Radeon HD 4670).
The problem is that the internal screen ONLY works with a UEFI installation. Otherwise as soon as I boot either into a Windows legacy setup or legacy installed disk my internal screen goes completely black, no backlight whatsoever. It's like it's disabled, not even recognized in settings. Windows only detects my external monitor. I've confirmed this isn't only a Windows problem but rather booting a BIOS (Legacy) device in general. For example - Plop Boot Manager disc or Zorin Linux install disc. Both turn off my internal screen and show only on external monitor.

If i try to install my GPU drivers on the UEFI installation, then both screens are detected but the internal monitor display is severely corrupted (Image : https://ibb.co/HFn5G0R).

At first I believed it was a driver problem due to Windows. However I now suspect it's a EFI issue.

 

[gotsn0w]

(Original thread : https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cant-get-windows-fully-working-imac-10-1.2423791/)

Hey everyone, would someone please be kind enough to offer any input/advice to the problem I'm having?

I have an iMac 10,1 (Late 2009, 21.5 Inch, Core 2 Duo E7600, ATI Radeon HD 4670).
The problem is that the internal screen ONLY works with a UEFI installation. Otherwise as soon as I boot either into a Windows legacy setup or legacy installed disk my internal screen goes completely black, no backlight whatsoever. It's like it's disabled, not even recognized in settings. Windows only detects my external monitor. I've confirmed this isn't only a Windows problem but rather booting a BIOS (Legacy) device in general. For example - Plop Boot Manager disc or Zorin Linux install disc. Both turn off my internal screen and show only on external monitor.

If i try to install my GPU drivers on the UEFI installation, then both screens are detected but the internal monitor display is severely corrupted (Image : https://ibb.co/HFn5G0R).

At first I believed it was a driver problem due to Windows. However I now suspect it's a EFI issue.

I had to create an unattended Windows 7 installation. I don't quite remember all of the details, but I know that it was configured for a UEFI installation, and in the install spec it was set up wipe the internal disk completely and partition it for UEFI using the GPT scheme; it also had IPv4 networking set up for DHCP (connected to Ethernet, no Wi-Fi), and was configured for Remote Desktop access out of the box; I then RDP'd into the Mac, downloaded the video drivers, installed them, and I had video upon the next reboot.

I can't post links in replies yet, apparently, but a quick Google search for 'windows 7 unattended install', yields an article from InterWorks titled ’Creating a Windows 7 Thin PC Unattended Installation'—hopefully that's a good starting point.

Once you build the system image and flash it to a USB stick, you'll start up the iMac holding Option, as usual, and then select the installer, which should be called "EFI Boot" but might be something different. If you've already wiped the internal disk (via a Mac OS X installer USB or CD) then it'll be the only option on boot. The install will take some amount of time, and after the Mac reboots, you can try connecting it to Ethernet and using RDP to access it.

 

[petter189]

AYUDA POR FAVOR tengo una macbook 6.1 del 2009 a la que le instale Windows 10 pero no me acepta el driver de video de la tarjeta gráfica incorporada que sería nvidia GeForce 9400m en ningúna de sus versiones y no se como entrar en el shell efi para intentar digitar algo

 

[ibay770]

Does this work on Macbook 2,1? Just getting a blank screen when laoding windows.

 

[ibay770]

It actually works for most recent Macs

I've recently managed to make Windows x64 boot in UEFI on MacBook Pro 6,2 and am working on making it work also on MacBook Pro 5,3. To check if your machine supports booting Windows in UEFI mode, boot the Windows installer and even if there's nothing (or junk) on the screen the caps lock key should still work. If it works it means that your machine supports it, booted successfully
but can't use the video card. It just needs a small EFI application to run before the Windows loader that makes the discrete video card usable . If anyone is interested, I am currently writing such an application and am looking for testers.

Is anyone interested in booting Windows in 17 seconds instead of 30 and having support for GPT partitions? If so, let me know via a private message. Please include the model of your Mac. I will select 3 testers for each 64bit EFI Mac model. I will ask for technical information about their Macs and expect feedback.
The prerequisites for testing are 30 minutes of work on your Mac and a bit of technical inclination.

The EFI version itself is ignored by Windows. The Windows boot loader doesn't really care if your EFI declares version 1.10 or 2.10. If you still want to change it, you can and it can be changed upon boot to any arbitrary number with the application below (to 2.1 in this case), but it is not the problem that makes Windows unusable:

#include <Uefi.h>
#include <Library/UefiLib.h>
#include <Library/UefiApplicationEntryPoint.h>

EFI_STATUS EFIAPI UefiMain (
IN EFI_HANDLE ImageHandle,
IN EFI_SYSTEM_TABLE *SystemTable
)
{
SystemTable->Hdr.Revision=((2 << 16 ) | 10);
return EFI_SUCCESS;
}

I know it's 14 years later, but if you're still doing this, I have a Macbook 2,1 I'm trying to get windows on.

 

[Vladistone]

I had an issue w/duo installing Win7 on an iMac 11.3 with OC emulation as an "iMac Pro 1.1".
But things turned out to be much more complicated due to the installed OCLP EFI (it's to work with the unsupported AMG Fire Pro M6100 GPU). Here's what I discovered:

- Win7 was installed on a separate SSD (named "Win7"), mounted on a second PC.
- Then I installed supported Bootcamp drivers there and
- Then configured Remote Desktop settings for Windows.
- The next step was to replace the "Win7" SSD into the iMac and attempt to boot into Win7OS.
However, the system hung on the "Starting Windows" of screen, and no startup options allowed me to finally reach the desktop.
Only by sheer luck (thanks to the made sounds what I heard when disconnecting the USB keyboard from the iMac) did I realize that Win7OS had somehow started, but the screen suspended at "Starting Windows"! In other words, the GPU remained inoperative when booting Windows on an iMac with a FirePro M6100 due to an incompatible driver found in Bootcamp Assist...
Only after I launched a remote login to the Windows desktop was I able to access the working interface of the iMac and then to install the necessary AMD drivers for my GPU.

Note: that to remotely access the Windows desktop, you can use either another PC with mstsc.exe or any Mac with the "Microsoft Remote Desktop" app downloaded from App Store.
But the key caveat is that you must first run Win7 on the PC, as you need to change the remote desktop access and permissions for control via external remote access.

If you have experience customizing Wininstall images using Ventoy + NTlite apps, you might be able to configure remote desktop permissions during the unattended installation of a Windows distribution and automatically launch Bootcamp when Windows initially boots. Then you won't need a second computer for the initial installation. However, I'm not very familiar with configuring custom Windows distribution builds, so I used the "samurai" method described above.

 

[Core 2 Duo]

Is Anyone Alive in this Thread???? If so, Does anyone have any idea on how to run Windows 10 In EFI Mode on my Macbook Pro 5,1? I've looked through this entire thread and only found 2 or 3 mentions on my mac model, I did try everything stated in the guides people wrote from slipstreaming drivers into the iso to going to the efi shell and setting the gpu and then booting; Nothing Worked for me. Any help would be really appreciated.

It seems like (to me) the best way (possibly the only way) to install Windows 7 or 10 on these older MBP's is you need the superdrive working and a dvd of the Windows install, I tried putting the install on a hard drive, making a usb stick or drive a number of dif ways, and when I got the book selector to see the drive as a bootable device and tried booting from it, in all cases it would hang and go no farther.

I gave up on all of those and put the superdrive back in and burned a simple Windows install DVD, and it booted right up, and I installed Windows the first try...

I have since then bailed on the MBP2.1 and got a perfect MBP6.2 for very cheap, and it too needed the super drive to install Windows 10 Enterprise (which is still getting updates for a few years)...