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XPx86 & Win7x64 UEFI Dual Boot on SSD


Dogway

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Well pretty much what the titles says. I'm a bit disappointed. I found out that I need Windows7 for some high performance jobs, for example:

SSD TRIM command, AVX/AVX2 support, "better" multicore performance, VS2012 made software (XPx64 support dropped), dedicated CG Software (Mari,etc)...

Ok, so I decided to switch the XPx64 of the dual boot with Win7x64, that's fine, so now I make a new rig with an SSD from which I will boot both OS's. The new mobo will be UEFI, that means among other things that the OS boot will be faster, so I decide to install XP and Win7 on UEFI.

And I was happy until I find that, in order to do that it requires partitioning the SSD as GPT (instead of MBR) and that that's unsupported by XPx86, meaning... single OS Win7 on UEFI on the SSD, or Dual Boot without UEFI on the SSD!! Is that right or I am missing something, gone mad or.... please tell me, can't believe what my eyes see.

PD: And just to be on the safe side, do you think the next ASUS z87 mobos will support XpSP3? I mean AHCI drivers and all. Specially the Asus Z87M-Plus which I will acquire.

Thank you!

PD2: seems there is a way indeed, need further research... (or not... probably I misread)

PD3: Further reading on the link, it sounds as the GPT partition table makes some legacy partitions for MBR, does that means I can install both 7 on UEFI and XP without it on same SSD?

Edited by Dogway
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hehehe meat for some weeks.

straight to the point thank you, this doesn't sound as smooth as my last thread.

I gave it a fast look over and it seems to have some/many drawbacks. At this point maybe I should ask if you recommend me to do that or it is too risky, having on mind that it is XP & 7, so I don't know if that makes it easier or less risky.

On another note, what else would I be losing without Windows7 on UEFI? I read that it only shaves a few (~3) seconds at boot. Would I still be able to use UEFI as a BIOS replacement?

Edited by Dogway
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I additionally doubt that UEFI booting is faster in any way (3 seconds - if true/achievable is meaningless time save, unless your main occupation is booting/rebooting the system).

A number of motherboards have however both BIOS and UEFI, or are however capable of using MBR disks alright.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f217/solved-win7-64bits-uefi-mbr-need-infos-592835.html

BIOS based tools, like - as an example - grub4dos, won't work on EFI/UEFI mode, obviously.

Personal opinions:

  1. All in all GPT disks are a senseless new standard that has no real world advantage if not on extremely large storage devices.
  2. EFI/UEFI is instead a senseless new non-standard (meaning that the standard is so mindboggingly complex that noone can possibly make one actually fully respecting the set standard).

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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I think my mobo (future mobo actually) has both BIOS and UEFI, it's a microATX, the Asus Z87M-Plus. In the specs it says:

64 Mb Flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI 2.0, WfM 2.0, SM BIOS 2.7, ACPI 4.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3, My Favorites, Quick Note, Last Modified Log, F12 PrintScreen function, F3 Shortcut functions, and ASUS DRAM SPD (Serial Presence Detect) memory information

I would assume that if it has BIOS, then it allows MBR partitions as well?

I think I'm being redundant here but for the sake of confirmation, UEFI needs GPT partitions no matter what, right? That would lead me to make a dual boot XP and 7 as I did before with grub4dos based on BIOS. In this situation can I still go to UEFI bios and change settings? Aside the shiny UI what else would I be missing without UEFI, more parameters/control probably (ie for OC)?

edit: I'm kinda trying to ask if UEFI boot is something apart of UEFI as a BIOS... hope I'm being understood.

link

I just install my new config and kept my current win 764bit installation on my f3 hdd.

Know what ? I had no error at first boot i could fully access windows.

I use the amd ahci driver 11.7 graphic driver to use with hd4250 and disabled ahci ide compatible mode.My hdd use ncq so it's all right.

Currently Windows use the Bios driver for microsoft system.

My mother board use Uef (i control it with mouse )and it can detect if i have a efi OS or one that need a boot loader.

My hdd use mbr.I do not have to reinstall windows and i have no more stop 0x00000101 error +0x0000050.

Maybe asrock found a way to cheat windows using a uefi ?

Edited by Dogway
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Most UEFI current motherboards (all?) sold separately supportthe boot on MBR partition and usually can be set to either Bios or UEFI emulation. So you will most likely be able to install your multi boot on a MBR partition. All settings will be there even if you choose BIOS (and most likely cold boot will be faster with bios).

You just need to download your future motherboard manual and check if bios/uefi settings allow both.

The UEFI boot process for windows was created to increase the windows security for oem licensing. I don't even know for sure if a manufacturer even tried to use and sell one computer with it.

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The UEFI boot process for windows was created to increase the windows security for oem licensing. I don't even know for sure if a manufacturer even tried to use and sell one computer with it.

Yes and no.

The EFI thingy was more or less "invented" by Intel.

The real reason (originally and IMHO) being that of stopping giving away money to Award, Ami and similar BIOS making companies, officially to provide servers with a "more adequate to more powerful hardware base hardware interpreter".

It failed miserably.

Then Apple (more or less for the same reasons) started making Macintosh EFI based.

TIll now, all that made sense (either proprietary hardware on Mac's or hardware - servers - limited to a niche of machines managed by IT guys).

Then the good linux guys (possibly in perfect good faith) started supporting EFI/UEFI (thus contributing to it's success).

And only "finally" the good MS guys had the brilliant idea (with the usual arrogance) to leverage on the capabilities of UEFI to make it "compulsory" for Windows 8 (coherently with the senseless push towards 64 bit OS) the "secure boot".

Of course the "Secure boot" Microsoft made "compulsory" is not "secure" and in some cases it is not even "boot". :w00t:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Criticism

The real issue is that the thingy is senselessly complex, and since everyone can read the specifications "the way he/she likes" all the issues over the years with BIOS ( badly programmed BIOS code, senseless features added/removed, possibility to brick for good a motherboard, etc., etc. ) have not been particularly mitigated, let alone removed.

BTW; if we are talking of "freedom" (about which the proprietary BIOS was largely criticized over the years), the first step you have to do to get the specifications is to give away your personal data in order to get to read the specs:

http://www.uefi.org/specs/agreement

And guess who are the members of the UEFI org?

http://www.uefi.org/about/

Of course the request for providing data can be easily bypassed by simply using google and get directly to the download page.

Just for the record, the simple current 2.3.1 specifications consists in a .pdf made of only 2180 pages :w00t::ph34r: .

jaclaz

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jaclaz, can I still make a dual boot on a MBR formatted SSD and still access UEFI?

Has UEFI any advantage over BIOS (more/better parameters specially for OC, like more fan control, etc)?

is Windows 7 install problematic in this "MBR+Old BIOS" scenario?

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Mind you that I had read all those links previously, so my questions were formulated with that on mind. I expected at this point to have things a little bit more clear... let's check what I can get from your posts.

jaclaz, can I still make a dual boot on a MBR formatted SSD and still access UEFI?

You mean this guy?

He says he managed to boot windows 7 in BIOS on a UEFI board, my question is about doing that and at the same time enter UEFI and make board modifications.

is Windows 7 install problematic in this "MBR+Old BIOS" scenario?

One "no-problem", ok. "Problem free" I mind read you, is that right?

Has UEFI any advantage over BIOS (more/better parameters specially for OC, like more fan control, etc)?

Didn't see any clarification when I read that yesterday, it only talks about partitions. I had searched before, and I found what most of us find which is the wiki.

But that only talks about UEFI as a technology, not as an end product, so in terms of end-user usability the mentioned "advantages" fall into the vague category.

All in all GPT disks are a senseless new standard that has no real world advantage if not on extremely large storage devices.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038719697&postcount=2

So to simplify things up:

Since I'm using a MBR partition table, I should be good to go by formatting the SSD in WindowsXP, prior to the dual boot? (I read that W7 sometimes screw the partitioning)

I see people having SEVERE issues for installing W7 on a MBR disk, seems W7 wants a disk without format, but I don't want the 100Mb partition W7 makes, there comes my thought on pre-partitioning the disk on XP.

Then there is the key question I did several posts above:

edit: I'm kinda trying to ask if UEFI boot is something apart of UEFI as a BIOS... hope I'm being understood.

EFI/UEFI is instead a senseless new non-standard (meaning that the standard is so mindboggingly complex that noone can possibly make one actually fully respecting the set standard).

All I read are UEFI as a new boot platform, and not what I am interested at this point which is as a motherboard tweaking platform. I'm interested on that because I want to manage UEFI BIOS setting profiles, XMP profiles, extended FAN control, etc will I still be able to do that or am I limited by booting from old BIOS?

Edited by Dogway
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All I read are UEFI as a new boot platform, and not what I am interested at this point which is as a motherboard tweaking platform. I'm interested on that because I want to manage UEFI BIOS setting profiles, XMP profiles, extended FAN control, etc will I still be able to do that or am I limited by booting from old BIOS?

Who knows? :unsure:

Try and see. :ph34r:

Each motherboard manufacturer (exactly like it happened with BIOS) may have provided (or completely failed to provide) *everything* (and the contrary of it) and may have provided it (or completely failed to provide it) in either UEFI only mode, BIOS only mode or mixed mode and additionally Windows 7 or Windows 8 (and Windows XP) may "react" to these in different ways.

It is "vague", I would say "extremely vague", that is essentially the point about UEFI being a non-standard and knowing from experience how BOTH the motherboard manufacturers (or BIOS programmers or both) and Microsoft have failed to deliver over the years full, integral, fail-proof adherence to actual standards (but took them more or less as "general advice" and largely ignored them or managed to develop deviating, "custom" standards or "proprietary dialects" of them) you can understand what you can expect from this mess.

As an OT example, see what the XP Disk management can do when simply changing the active status of a partition on a disk partitioned by a later MS OS (and still within the MBR "standard"):

http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/

to me this establishes that you normally cannot believe anyone (and particularly the good MS guys and their programs and docs) on anything.

In other words, your mileage may (and will) vary.

jaclaz

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Thank you.

It's gonna be a real mess, the mix of a dual boot with xp x86 and win7 x64 AND a motherboard with UEFI and BIOS is surely gonna trigger more than one hurdle on the way.

Will "annoy" back again when my hands are on it, in a few months hopefully.

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  • 2 months later...

jaclaz, your last post here had me scratching my head. In that thread I was just explaining that there wasn't any refrain for installing XP on a board with a UEFI chip, because for the time being UEFI isn't mandatory (yet), so I wasn't worried about that.

About whether I could use UEFI or not, now re-reading this thread I remember why I wasn't concerned about it anymore since I had already planted on my mind the idea that I would be able to run UEFI (basically thanks to this post). I now finally got to understand it. I checked the mobo documentation as allen2 suggested and there's an option called CSM (Compatibility Support Module) which basically is whether to enable UEFI in BIOS mode, or UEFI mode (or as MBR boot capable or not kind of thing), so unlike my previous thinking, there are not "2 BIOS'es" but only one which you can choose to use in legacy mode or not.

You started talking about bootcamp, hybrid partitioning, etc and really got my head spinning hehe, now all is clear, not without hurdles I suspect, but surprises will come after I build the rig.

I still have a question, do I need to partitionate a fresh out of the BOX SSD in windows, or can I do it in UEFI?

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  • 1 month later...

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