UEFI Installation of Windows 7 – Video Edition

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is now becoming more important as manufacturers release hard drives over 2.2TB. These new drives require GPT to fully access the drive space but systems running BIOS will not boot with GPT drives. I put up a 10 minute video of the Windows 7 UEFI Installation, so read on to find out a little bit more about UEFI.

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3TB Western Digital Drive on a UEFI day night

The first UEFI article and screenshots of the installation are at:

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2010/11/22/3tb-western-digital-drive-on-a-uefi-day-night/

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Does My Motherboard Support UEFI?

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It might if it is an Intel board. Check the list below or check the BIOS and see if it has a UEFI Boot option.

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Current List of UEFI Motherboards

The link below is from UEFI.org and has a list of some UEFI compatible motherboards.

Class Two UEFI Platforms currently commercially available

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Windows 7 and UEFI

Windows 7 supports UEFI and all Windows 7 Installation DVDs support a UEFI boot.

It is important to know that:

If you are installing Windows® to an EFI-based computer, you must enable EFI mode in the computer’s firmware in both attended and unattended installations. You must boot to 64-bit EFI-mode preinstallation media (64-bit Windows PE in EFI mode or 64-bit Windows Setup in EFI mode). You cannot install Windows to UEFI-based computers in BIOS mode.

This means that as long as you have a 64-bit motherboard that supports UEFI then you can install a UEFI version of Windows 7 with any installation DVD!

Once my system installation was complete, I booted to the 3TB GPT hard drive! Sweet.

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GPT Disks Under 2.2TB

Almost any modern hard drive can be a GPT drive. I installed UEFI Windows 7 on my 10,000 RPM Western Digital VelociRaptor and it works great! You do not need to wait to get a large format drive to perform a UEFI installation.

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Mental Note: Converting a disk will erase the disk! Do not convert or change disks with data on them unless you have backed up that data!

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UEFI Installation of Windows 7 Video

Watch the video for the entire UEFI process. It is actually very simple to perform.

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External DVD Drive Required for UEFI Installation?

I could not get UEFI to load with either an internal SATA DVD, internal IDE DVD or a USB thumb drive. I could only get it to load with a USB DVD drive. If you are having issues getting UEFI Windows 7 to load I would suggest trying an external DVD connected via USB.

My little $40 USB DVD model is:

SAMSUNG USB 2.0 Black Slim External DVD Writer Model SE-S084

Good luck and please COMMENT when you have a successful installation!

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UEFI Resources

http://www.uefi.org/learning_center/

http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/UEFI_Windows.mspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744321%28WS.10%29.aspx

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I hope you get to try out or build a UEFI system.

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Tim