UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

skodabenz · 2011-02-02 20:18:37

NaterGator wrote:

add_efi_memmap didn't do anything; I've left the computer to sit for ~15 minutes and nothing happens... if it's going to take longer than that I'll not wait. There is disk access while the kernel is loaded, but there is nothing output whatsoever at initrd. :\
I had previously tried with nomodeset but it had no effect.
This being my first foray into EFI/UEFI, is there any use in me booting into a UEFI shell and prodding around?

UEFI shell will enable you to obtian useful info and change few stuff in you system even if you are unable to boot as os. It has 'edit' for text editing and few other stuff for formatting fat partitions and such stuff. You can also obtain memmap, pci and other useful info for debugging. It is similar to windows cmd shell in usage.

NaterGator · 2011-02-03 17:55:53

Digging around a bit more, this looks like it may be a GRUB2 limitation with certain combinations of UEFI & 8GB of memory or more. I built the grub2-efi-bzr package to get the most up-to-date grub2.

I was able to obtain the following debug output at the point when initrd stalls:

Searching led me to the following mailing list discussions:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub- … 00000.html
and
http://www.mail-archive.com/grub-devel@ … 16883.html

Unfortunately being a college student I have to devote time to class now, but I'm hoping to attack this some more this weekend and see if I can't find the appropriate patch to get up and running.

skodabenz · 2011-04-02 09:10:33

Can you guys try latest snapshot of grub2-efi-bzr http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=40290 (actual package grub2-efi-x86_64-bzr) and check whether all your problems are solved. You might have to disable archlinux_grub2_mkconfig_fixes.patch though. Comment out

patch -Np1 -i ${srcdir}/archlinux_grub2_mkconfig_fixes.patch

line in the PKGBUILD. That patch has not yet been updated. All the black screen with a cursor problems should have been solved by now (corrected by bzr rev 3158).

akakey · 2011-04-10 13:14:57

Hi all and sorry for my bad english!
I have Intel DH67BLB3 mobo and I'm trying to launch arch in UEFI mode. I can't run efibootmgr because I can't modprobe efivars (I get "FATAL: Error inserting efivars (/lib/modules/2.6.37-ARCH/kernel/drivers/firmware/efivars.ko.gz): No such device"). Is this because of fact that I'm trying to modprobe it while kernel is loaded in BIOS mode? Maybe I must first boot kernel using UEFI and then it should create special /sys/firmware/efi/vars device? And if so, how can I boot kernel in UEFI mode if my mobo doesn't seem to have any options like "Choose *.efi file to boot from"?

Last edited by akakey (2011-04-10 13:21:22)

skodabenz · 2011-04-10 14:18:31

akakey wrote:

Hi all and sorry for my bad english!
I have Intel DH67BLB3 mobo and I'm trying to launch arch in UEFI mode. I can't run efibootmgr because I can't modprobe efivars (I get "FATAL: Error inserting efivars (/lib/modules/2.6.37-ARCH/kernel/drivers/firmware/efivars.ko.gz): No such device"). Is this because of fact that I'm trying to modprobe it while kernel is loaded in BIOS mode? Maybe I must first boot kernel using UEFI and then it should create special /sys/firmware/efi/vars device? And if so, how can I boot kernel in UEFI mode if my mobo doesn't seem to have any options like "Choose *.efi file to boot from"?

'efivars' will work only if the kernel has been booted in UEFI mode, not BIOS mode since it relies on EFI Runtime Services to modify the firmware boot manager. Check your mobo manual for info on how to launch .efi files. Or boot into archboot iso (in UEFI mode) and run efibootmgr.

akakey · 2011-04-10 17:03:05

Thanks, that works (I had to load 'efivars' into archboot manually, but it works).

balta2ar · 2011-05-24 08:42:45

Hello, everyone!

I'm owner of EFI-based ASUS P8P67 Deluxe. I was experiencing some difficulties during OS installation, so let me share my experience with you. I wanted to install Windows 7 64-bit and ArchLinux x64 on my new PC. Of course, in EFI mode. That's where the problems began.

My PC configuration is:

ASUS P8P67 Deluxe
OCZ Vertex 3 120 Gb
Intel Core i5-2500K
NVIDIA GTX 580 Gainward
16Gb RAM

I didn't have a CD/DVD drive so I had to prepare a bootable copy of Windows on a USB pen. I tried different programs but finally I ended up with UltraISO. However, when I tried to boot widows from USB, installer refused to accept my partitions. Many encountered this message when windows says that disk is GPT-formatted. That means that installer was run not in EFI mode.

After that I tried to run windows installer in EFI by all means I could think about. Firmware of my motherboard does not seem to contain any built-in EFI shell, nor does it allow to "Boot from file". After some googling I found out that copying a shell_full.efi from EDK-1.06 (later I also tried EDK2 and it also worked) in /efi/boot/bootx64.efi helps: usb stick obtained UEFI prefix in boot menu in BIOS interface and looked like "UEFI: Kingston II". When I tried to boot from it, I got into shell.

In parallel, I also tried to install ArchLinux from another USB stick. I burned latest archboot-2011.05 and followed the standart installation procedure. At the end I choose grub2-efi-x64. However, I didn't see a way to boot it automatically. The only way I could boot grub2 is from EFI shell. That was the first glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, I was dependent on USB srick and couldn't boot anything without it. More googling again and I resolved the problem by puttin the shell to <EFI_SYSTEM_PARTITION>/shellx64.efi. After that "Launch EFI shell" option in BIOS dropped me into shell. USB was not necessary anymore. I could boot ArchLinux from harddisk with lots of hand actions.

I tried to launch all the efi files I could found on the windows 7 usb. Launching bootmgr.efi, memtest.efi always resulted in error sayng that the specified binary is not a recognized command or batch or a file. cdboot.efi and cdboot_noprompt.efi seemed to have started loading, but few seconds later it crashed and I was dropped back to the shell. So I couldn't install windows in EFI mode, not even run the installation. An interesting note here is that cdboot.efi and cdboot_noprompt.efi do not autocomplete in EFI shell. All other efi files do.

Yesterday I borrowed an external USB DVD ROM drive in hope to install windows from it. However, the drive didn't contain UEFI prefix in the BIOS boot menu and result was the same: windows installer complained about GPT. I also noticed one thing: when I connected my Cowon J3 audio player to USB in order to charge it, it also appeared in BIOS and it contained UEFI prefix. That was weird, because I didn't copy any of efi files to the player. I didn't try to boot from it, though.

Finally, I managed to install Windows 7 in EFI mode by accident. Unintentionaly, I left USB DVD drive plugged in and booted into the EFI shell. My USB stick with Windows 7 was also plugged in. I was fooling around on the available drives and tried to launch EFI files I collected from different sources. During that process I run cdboot.efi from USB Windows 7 again and... surprise, surprise, installation started! It didn't drop back to the shell as previously. I also heard DVD disk spinning in the USB DVD driver! Few seconds later Windows accepted my GPT disk and I continued with installation. I went away from the PC for about ten-fifteen minutes but when I got back, Windows was already installed! How amazingly fast! It didn't recognize some of my hardware including network card, though. I rebooted and discovered "Windows boot manager" in BIOS boot menu. From now on I could boot Windows without a problem.

Let me summarize my experience in form of current problems and questions:

1. [Why can't I/How do I] boot Windows DVD in UEFI mode without all this magic with same USB stick? I saw on youtube people running the same Windows 7 in UEFI from DVD without a problem. They got UEFI: DVD in Boot menu. I don't. Why?

2. What does Windows installer do so special that "Windows boot manager" appears in the boot menu? How do I do the same for grub2? How do I add it to the BIOS Boot menu? I tried to reproduce folder structure for grub on ESP: I copied contents of grub folder to /efi/grub/boot on the analogy to /efi/microsoft/boot/ folder. It didn't work - grub didn't appear in BIOS Boot menu.

3. Is there any document describing ASUS P8P67 specific EFI behaviour? What conditions should be met in order to boot device in UEFI mode? FAT32 Partition type, certain files availble, partition flags?

4. Note: I tried to run rEFIt EFI files in the shell but failed: 'refit.efi' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file.

5. Note: I get kernel panic when I reboot ArchLinux: http://img.flashtux.org/img132dcbc19160x584317ed.jpg. Shutdown is fine, though. That's very unpleasant because I cannot reboot my PC remotely - I need to push Reset button in order to reboot the machine.

6. Note: My primary harddisk OCZ Vertex 3 SSD does not have UEFI prefix in Boot menu. Only USB sticks obtain such prefix provided they contain FAT32 partition.

7. Note: I didn't manage to run cdboot.efi from Windows DVD. When I booted into EFI shell, DVD wasn't mapped to some drive name like fs1: or something. I had to manually do "map fs1 blkA" - blkA was printed in the output of map command in the EFI shell. This mapping, however, didn't help: I changed drive to fs1 but 'ls' gave me an error. I coudn't browse the Windows DVD filesystem.

8. Note: SATA mode is set to AHCI in BIOS.

I really want to make this post useful to someone. I'm ready to provide all the necessary logs and infos to help with investigation of mentioned problems. Bellow I post all the information I collected and which I belive might be of any interest and use.

Info:
lshw output:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394135/

gdisk output:

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sdc: 234441648 sectors, 111.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): D3A460D9-0C5C-4121-8838-E63ED027269E
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 234441614
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2925 sectors (1.4 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          411647   200.0 MiB   EF00
   2          411648          432127   10.0 MiB    EF02
   3          821248        62261247   29.3 GiB    0700
   4        62261248       129845247   32.2 GiB    0700
   5       129845248       148277247   8.8 GiB     0700
   6       150325248       150734847   200.0 MiB   0700
   7       148277248       150325247   1000.0 MiB  8200
   8       150734848       234440703   39.9 GiB    0700
   9          432128          821247   190.0 MiB   0700

Command (? for help): i
Partition number (1-9): 1
Partition GUID code: C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B (EFI System)
Partition unique GUID: 58471815-D914-4133-894A-7E80927727F6
First sector: 2048 (at 1024.0 KiB)
Last sector: 411647 (at 201.0 MiB)
Partition size: 409600 sectors (200.0 MiB)
Attribute flags: 0000000000000000
Partition name: ''

EFI shell commands output:
dh.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394158/
dmpstore.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394159/
guid.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394160/
help.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394161/
map.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394162/
pci.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394163/
run.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394164/
ver.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394165/
vol.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394166/

EDIT: I duplicated post here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. … try1687860
EDIT: fixed typos and added 7.
EDIT: I've just found this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIB … %20default. This seems to be a solution for the problem #2. I will check it by evening at home.

Last edited by balta2ar (2011-05-24 11:28:38)

skodabenz · 2011-05-24 14:18:31

balta2ar wrote:

I didn't have a CD/DVD drive so I had to prepare a bootable copy of Windows on a USB pen. I tried different programs but finally I ended up with UltraISO. However, when I tried to boot widows from USB, installer refused to accept my partitions. Many encountered this message when windows says that disk is GPT-formatted. That means that installer was run not in EFI mode.

Although this is technically not related to linux, setting up Windows 7 x64 iso to boot from USB for a BIOS boot sets up the USB as NTFS, not FAT32. Thats why the firmware fall-back to BIOS boot since it did not find any UEFI bootable disk/drive .

In parallel, I also tried to install ArchLinux from another USB stick. I burned latest archboot-2011.05 and followed the standard installation procedure. At the end I choose grub2-efi-x64. However, I didn't see a way to boot it automatically. The only way I could boot grub2 is from EFI shell. That was the first glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, I was dependent on USB srick and couldn't boot anything without it. More googling again and I resolved the problem by puttin the shell to <EFI_SYSTEM_PARTITION>/shellx64.efi. After that "Launch EFI shell" option in BIOS dropped me into shell. USB was not necessary anymore. I could boot ArchLinux from harddisk with lots of hand actions.
2. What does Windows installer do so special that "Windows boot manager" appears in the boot menu? How do I do the same for grub2? How do I add it to the BIOS Boot menu? I tried to reproduce folder structure for grub on ESP: I copied contents of grub folder to /efi/grub/boot on the analogy to /efi/microsoft/boot/ folder. It didn't work - grub didn't appear in BIOS Boot menu.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … UEFI_Shell and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … ot_Manager . For this to work you should have booted in UEFI mode. By standard procedure i suppose you used isohybrid (dd the iso to the usb) option and booted in BIOS mode.

I tried to launch all the efi files I could found on the windows 7 usb. Launching bootmgr.efi, memtest.efi always resulted in error sayng that the specified binary is not a recognized command or batch or a file. cdboot.efi and cdboot_noprompt.efi seemed to have started loading, but few seconds later it crashed and I was dropped back to the shell. So I couldn't install windows in EFI mode, not even run the installation. An interesting note here is that cdboot.efi and cdboot_noprompt.efi do not autocomplete in EFI shell. All other efi files do.
Finally, I managed to install Windows 7 in EFI mode by accident. Unintentionaly, I left USB DVD drive plugged in and booted into the EFI shell. My USB stick with Windows 7 was also plugged in. I was fooling around on the available drives and tried to launch EFI files I collected from different sources. During that process I run cdboot.efi from USB Windows 7 again and... surprise, surprise, installation started! It didn't drop back to the shell as previously. I also heard DVD disk spinning in the USB DVD driver! Few seconds later Windows accepted my GPT disk and I continued with installation. I went away from the PC for about ten-fifteen minutes but when I got back, Windows was already installed! How amazingly fast! It didn't recognize some of my hardware including network card, though. I rebooted and discovered "Windows boot manager" in BIOS boot menu. From now on I could boot Windows without a problem.
Let me summarize my experience in form of current problems and questions:
1. [Why can't I/How do I] boot Windows DVD in UEFI mode without all this magic with same USB stick? I saw on youtube people running the same Windows 7 in UEFI from DVD without a problem. They got UEFI: DVD in Boot menu. I don't. Why?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … stcount=76

3. Is there any document describing ASUS P8P67 specific EFI behaviour? What conditions should be met in order to boot device in UEFI mode? FAT32 Partition type, certain files availble, partition flags?

The instructions are common for any UEFI systems (excluding Intel Macs which are actually weird in UEFI booting)

4. Note: I tried to run rEFIt EFI files in the shell but failed: 'refit.efi' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file.

rEFIt is specific to Intel Macs. It does not work for non-Mac UEFI systems.

5. Note: I get kernel panic when I reboot ArchLinux: http://img.flashtux.org/img132dcbc19160x584317ed.jpg. Shutdown is fine, though. That's very unpleasant because I cannot reboot my PC remotely - I need to push Reset button in order to reboot the machine.

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23067 . Add

reboot=a

to the kernel command line in the bootloader. If it does not work try

reboot=a,w

.

6. Note: My primary harddisk OCZ Vertex 3 SSD does not have UEFI prefix in Boot menu. Only USB sticks obtain such prefix provided they contain FAT32 partition.

You should have a <EFI_SYSTEM_PARTITION>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi file for your SSD to have UEFI prefix in the boot menu.

7. Note: I didn't manage to run cdboot.efi from Windows DVD. When I booted into EFI shell, DVD wasn't mapped to some drive name like fs1: or something. I had to manually do "map fs1 blkA" - blkA was printed in the output of map command in the EFI shell. This mapping, however, didn't help: I changed drive to fs1 but 'ls' gave me an error. I coudn't browse the Windows DVD filesystem.

Most of the UEFI firmwares do not have support for reading ISO9660 or UDF iso/cd/dvd .

Info:
lshw output:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394135/
EFI shell commands output:
map.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394162/
pci.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394163/
ver.txt - http://paste.pocoo.org/show/394165/
EDIT: I duplicated post here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. … try1687860
EDIT: I've just found this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIB … %20default. This seems to be a solution for the problem #2. I will check it by evening at home.

Actually it is possible to have Windows 7x64 ISO UEFI, Archboot ISO BIOS (using syslinux) and Archboot ISO UEFI in the same USB. I have done it before.

Just extract Windows 7 x64 iso and Archboot iso contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive. Then extract the <WINDOWS_7_ISO>/efi/microsoft/boot/efisys.bin file using p7zip, it will contain <EFISYS.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi . Copy this bootx64.efi file to <USB>/efi/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi .
Similarly extract <ARCHBOOT_ISO>/efi/grub2/grub2_efi.bin and copy <GRUB2_EFI.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi to <USB>/efi/grub2/grub.efi . Copy the UEFI Shell to <USB>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi .

PS: I posted the same in insanelymac forums just in case. I am surprised though, you didn't read UEFI info available in Archwiki (UEFI and GRUB2 pages) and instead searched everything using Google.

balta2ar · 2011-05-25 08:14:18

skodabenz wrote:

balta2ar wrote:
I didn't have a CD/DVD drive so I had to prepare a bootable copy of Windows on a USB pen. I tried different programs but finally I ended up with UltraISO. However, when I tried to boot widows from USB, installer refused to accept my partitions. Many encountered this message when windows says that disk is GPT-formatted. That means that installer was run not in EFI mode.
Although this is technically not related to linux, setting up Windows 7 x64 iso to boot from USB for a BIOS boot sets up the USB as NTFS, not FAT32. Thats why the firmware fall-back to BIOS boot since it did not find any UEFI bootable disk/drive .

Are you sure it was NTFS? I was able to surf USB folder contents from the EFI shell. As you said, EFI can read FAT12/16/32 only, so I suppose the filesystem was of FAT32 type, something that EFI could read.

2. What does Windows installer do so special that "Windows boot manager" appears in the boot menu? How do I do the same for grub2? How do I add it to the BIOS Boot menu? I tried to reproduce folder structure for grub on ESP: I copied contents of grub folder to /efi/grub/boot on the analogy to /efi/microsoft/boot/ folder. It didn't work - grub didn't appear in BIOS Boot menu.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … UEFI_Shell and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … ot_Manager . For this to work you should have booted in UEFI mode. By standard procedure i suppose you used isohybrid (dd the iso to the usb) option and booted in BIOS mode.

Yes, that's exactly the way I created ArchBoot usb: using dd.

1. [Why can't I/How do I] boot Windows DVD in UEFI mode without all this magic with same USB stick? I saw on youtube people running the same Windows 7 in UEFI from DVD without a problem. They got UEFI: DVD in Boot menu. I don't. Why?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … stcount=76

I've read your post several times. Sorry, but I still don't get why I cannot boot windows DVD in EFI mode. Can you please clear things out?
That is really weird from the point of view of a regular user. I buy EFI motherboard, Windows 7 DVD, I partition my disk in GPT, I put the DVD in my external USB DVD drive in hope to install the Windows on the harddrive and finally I can't get firmware to start WIndows installation in EFI mode.

5. Note: I get kernel panic when I reboot ArchLinux: http://img.flashtux.org/img132dcbc19160x584317ed.jpg. Shutdown is fine, though. That's very unpleasant because I cannot reboot my PC remotely - I need to push Reset button in order to reboot the machine.
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23067 . Add
reboot=a
to the kernel command line in the bootloader. If it does not work try
reboot=a,w
.

"reboot=a" leads to kernel panic during initial system boot, but "reboot=a,w" fixed the problem. Thank you very much!

6. Note: My primary harddisk OCZ Vertex 3 SSD does not have UEFI prefix in Boot menu. Only USB sticks obtain such prefix provided they contain FAT32 partition.
You should have a <EFI_SYSTEM_PARTITION>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi file for your SSD to have UEFI prefix in the boot menu.

I have it but firmware still does not label my SSD with UEFI. It does not seem to depend on that. As I mentioned in my previous post, my audio player was marked with UEFI in the BIOS, although I never copied any of efi files on it, I just connected it to USB to charge.

Directory of: fs0:\efi\boot

  05/22/11  09:13p              760,928  bootx64.efi
          1 File(s)     760,928 bytes
          0 Dir(s)

7. Note: I didn't manage to run cdboot.efi from Windows DVD. When I booted into EFI shell, DVD wasn't mapped to some drive name like fs1: or something. I had to manually do "map fs1 blkA" - blkA was printed in the output of map command in the EFI shell. This mapping, however, didn't help: I changed drive to fs1 but 'ls' gave me an error. I coudn't browse the Windows DVD filesystem.
Most of the UEFI firmwares do not have support for reading ISO9660 or UDF iso/cd/dvd .

Well, then how am I supposed to install Windows 7 from DVD in UEFI mode? Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbyGTwa3 … re=related. It's Intel mobo, external USB DVD, same Windows 7 64bit and installation runs in EFI mode. But it's not the case for me for reasons unclear to me.

Actually it is possible to have Windows 7x64 ISO UEFI, Archboot ISO BIOS (using syslinux) and Archboot ISO UEFI in the same USB. I have done it before.
Just extract Windows 7 x64 iso and Archboot iso contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive. Then extract the <WINDOWS_7_ISO>/efi/microsoft/boot/efisys.bin file using p7zip, it will contain <EFISYS.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi . Copy this bootx64.efi file to <USB>/efi/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi .
Similarly extract <ARCHBOOT_ISO>/efi/grub2/grub2_efi.bin and copy <GRUB2_EFI.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi to <USB>/efi/grub2/grub.efi . Copy the UEFI Shell to <USB>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi .

Does not work for me. I didn't manage to unpack grub2_efi.bin. p7zip says it contains no files. I also tried to mount it as msdosfs, vfat, using -o loop, without it, but no success. As to Windows, when I run extracted bootx64.efi in the EFI shell, it's like it's trying to load installer but than falls back to the shell as before. Is it something wrong with my Windows ISO?

PS: I posted the same in insanelymac forums just in case. I am surprised though, you didn't read UEFI info available in Archwiki (UEFI and GRUB2 pages) and instead searched everything using Google.

Yes, I found that later. I was a little inattentive and in a hurry.

Last edited by balta2ar (2011-05-25 09:09:39)

skodabenz · 2011-05-25 11:25:05

balta2ar wrote:

skodabenz wrote:
Although this is technically not related to linux, setting up Windows 7 x64 iso to boot from USB for a BIOS boot sets up the USB as NTFS, not FAT32. Thats why the firmware fall-back to BIOS boot since it did not find any UEFI bootable disk/drive .
Are you sure it was NTFS? I was able to surf USB folder contents from the EFI shell. As you said, EFI can read FAT12/16/32 only, so I suppose the filesystem was of FAT32 type, something that EFI could read.

Most of the time, the Windows bootmgr failed to install properly in FAT32 formatted USB. It did work for NTFS though. However i guess it might be possible that you usb booted fine in BIOS mode with FAT32 fs.

Yes, that's exactly the way I created ArchBoot usb: using dd.

Isohybrid will not work for UEFI boot, since isohybrid sets up the USB as ISO9660 fs which the firmware will not read.

I've read your post several times. Sorry, but I still don't get why I cannot boot windows DVD in EFI mode. Can you please clear things out?
That is really weird from the point of view of a regular user. I buy EFI motherboard, Windows 7 DVD, I partition my disk in GPT, I put the DVD in my external USB DVD drive in hope to install the Windows on the harddrive and finally I can't get firmware to start WIndows installation in EFI mode.

Can you try http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. … &p=1261601 ?

6. Note: My primary harddisk OCZ Vertex 3 SSD does not have UEFI prefix in Boot menu. Only USB sticks obtain such prefix provided they contain FAT32 partition.
You should have a <EFI_SYSTEM_PARTITION>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi file for your SSD to have UEFI prefix in the boot menu.
I have it but firmware still does not label my SSD with UEFI. It does not seem to depend on that. As I mentioned in my previous post, my audio player was marked with UEFI in the BIOS, although I never copied any of efi files on it, I just connected it to USB to charge.
Directory of: fs0:\efi\boot

  05/22/11  09:13p              760,928  bootx64.efi
          1 File(s)     760,928 bytes
          0 Dir(s)
http://i22.fastpic.ru/thumb/2011/0525/a9/e3189b08d49881f660aed1f28f3271a9.jpeg

Well the SSD will show up if your firmware spec version was 2.3 , while actually it is 2.0 (UEFI Shell 'ver' command). But your audio player showing up in the boot menu is weird. But since it does not contain the UEFI prefix it just shows up like any other USB device which many BIOSes pretty much support nowadays (as BIOS boot using normal MBR boot code in the USB).

7. Note: I didn't manage to run cdboot.efi from Windows DVD. When I booted into EFI shell, DVD wasn't mapped to some drive name like fs1: or something. I had to manually do "map fs1 blkA" - blkA was printed in the output of map command in the EFI shell. This mapping, however, didn't help: I changed drive to fs1 but 'ls' gave me an error. I coudn't browse the Windows DVD filesystem.
Most of the UEFI firmwares do not have support for reading ISO9660 or UDF iso/cd/dvd .
Well, then how am I supposed to install Windows 7 from DVD in UEFI mode? Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbyGTwa3 … re=related. It's Intel mobo, external USB DVD, same Windows 7 64bit and installation runs in EFI mode. But it's not the case for me for reasons unclear to me.

Is it a retail Windows 7 DVD or a OEM DVD (mostly remastered). Only the retails x64 DVDs will work. Otherwise recreate the iso using oscdimg.

Actually it is possible to have Windows 7x64 ISO UEFI, Archboot ISO BIOS (using syslinux) and Archboot ISO UEFI in the same USB. I have done it before.
Just extract Windows 7 x64 iso and Archboot iso contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive. Then extract the <WINDOWS_7_ISO>/efi/microsoft/boot/efisys.bin file using p7zip, it will contain <EFISYS.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi . Copy this bootx64.efi file to <USB>/efi/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi .
Similarly extract <ARCHBOOT_ISO>/efi/grub2/grub2_efi.bin and copy <GRUB2_EFI.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi to <USB>/efi/grub2/grub.efi . Copy the UEFI Shell to <USB>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi .
Does not work for me. I didn't manage to unpack grub2_efi.bin. p7zip says it contains no files. I also tried to mount it as msdosfs, vfat, using -o loop, without it, but no success. As to Windows, when I run extracted bootx64.efi in the EFI shell, it's like it's trying to load installer but than falls back to the shell as before. Is it something wrong with my Windows ISO?

Can you attach the grub2_efi.bin file somewhere (like dropbox)? That file should not be empty. It should be FAT12 (floppy) formatted and should contain /efi/boot/boot{x64,ia32}.efi files. If it is empty then there is something wrong with archboot-allinone.sh script.

balta2ar · 2011-05-25 13:06:35

Yes, that's exactly the way I created ArchBoot usb: using dd.
Isohybrid will not work for UEFI boot, since isohybrid sets up the USB as ISO9660 fs which the firmware will not read.

I successfully used ArchBoot to install ArchLinux in BIOS mode to my SSD GPT disk and experienced almost no problems (except a bug in the installer script, but that's different story). It was not required to boot ArchBoot in UEFI mode -- even in BIOS mode installation on a GPT disk went fine.

I've read your post several times. Sorry, but I still don't get why I cannot boot windows DVD in EFI mode. Can you please clear things out?
That is really weird from the point of view of a regular user. I buy EFI motherboard, Windows 7 DVD, I partition my disk in GPT, I put the DVD in my external USB DVD drive in hope to install the Windows on the harddrive and finally I can't get firmware to start WIndows installation in EFI mode.
Can you try http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. … &p=1261601 ?

Sure. I have prepared an image following your instructions. I will test it by evening at home.

You should have a <EFI_SYSTEM_PARTITION>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi file for your SSD to have UEFI prefix in the boot menu.

I have it but firmware still does not label my SSD with UEFI. It does not seem to depend on that. As I mentioned in my previous post, my audio player was marked with UEFI in the BIOS, although I never copied any of efi files on it, I just connected it to USB to charge.
Directory of: fs0:\efi\boot

  05/22/11  09:13p              760,928  bootx64.efi
          1 File(s)     760,928 bytes
          0 Dir(s)
http://i22.fastpic.ru/thumb/2011/0525/a9/e3189b08d49881f660aed1f28f3271a9.jpeg
Well the SSD will show up if your firmware spec version was 2.3 , while actually it is 2.0 (UEFI Shell 'ver' command). But your audio player showing up in the boot menu is weird. But since it does not contain the UEFI prefix it just shows up like any other USB device which many BIOSes pretty much support nowadays (as BIOS boot using normal MBR boot code in the USB).

According to the screenshot my BIOS version is 2.00.1201. There is 1503 BIOS version on the ASUS site. Do you recommend upgrading? I think UEFI mode for SSD is not that important. I've managed to install Linux without it, even Windows 7 with help of black magic, now I can boot both of them. It is much more important for me to learn how to boot from DVD in UEFI mode and install Windows in UEFI mode with DVD drive or USB stick only, not using both of them.
Sorry, I must have confused you with my last screenshot. It was a proof of absence of UEFI label on my SSD disk. I will post another screenshot with UEFI label on Cowon audio player later.

Actually it is possible to have Windows 7x64 ISO UEFI, Archboot ISO BIOS (using syslinux) and Archboot ISO UEFI in the same USB. I have done it before.
Just extract Windows 7 x64 iso and Archboot iso contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive. Then extract the <WINDOWS_7_ISO>/efi/microsoft/boot/efisys.bin file using p7zip, it will contain <EFISYS.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi . Copy this bootx64.efi file to <USB>/efi/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi .
Similarly extract <ARCHBOOT_ISO>/efi/grub2/grub2_efi.bin and copy <GRUB2_EFI.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi to <USB>/efi/grub2/grub.efi . Copy the UEFI Shell to <USB>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi .
Does not work for me. I didn't manage to unpack grub2_efi.bin. p7zip says it contains no files. I also tried to mount it as msdosfs, vfat, using -o loop, without it, but no success. As to Windows, when I run extracted bootx64.efi in the EFI shell, it's like it's trying to load installer but than falls back to the shell as before. Is it something wrong with my Windows ISO?
Can you attach the grub2_efi.bin file somewhere (like dropbox)? That file should not be empty. It should be FAT12 (floppy) formatted and should contain /efi/boot/boot{x64,ia32}.efi files. If it is empty then there is something wrong with archboot-allinone.sh script.

You can download my grub2_efi.bin here: http://rghost.ru/7860361 or here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25167882/grub2_efi.bin
I use latest available archboot downloaded here: http://www.mirror.yandex.ru/archlinux/i … t/2011.05/

ngo · 2011-05-26 07:51:20

I confirm that problems still exist when booting in UEFI mode.
I have a ThinkPad X220 laptop with Core i7 Sandy Bridge with arch64 installed.
When I select the "Legacy BIOS" boot in BIOS, I can boot fine, have working acpi, native screen resolution, i915 drivers loaded etc. But, naturally, no uefi support (efivars not loading, efibootmgr not working etc).

When I select "UEFI mode", booting freezes after "Loading initial ramdisk" message. To overcome this I add noefi kernel option in grub2. This way the system gets booted, but no acpi, low resolution etc, etc. I tried add_efi_memmap and nomodeset options, no luck. Also, grub2.cfg seems reasonable to me (gfxpayload=keep and all that stuff is present)

I use grub2-efi-bzr package from AUR, stock arch kernel (2.6.38). BIOS is fully updated. I also tried elilo, and still no luck(but I may have missed something about its configuration)

Does anyone have working UEFI boot on Sandy Bridge without the noefi kernel option?

By the way, what are the benefits of UEFI mode as opposed to good old BIOS?

Thanks.

balta2ar · 2011-05-26 08:02:40

skodabenz wrote:

I've read your post several times. Sorry, but I still don't get why I cannot boot windows DVD in EFI mode. Can you please clear things out?
That is really weird from the point of view of a regular user. I buy EFI motherboard, Windows 7 DVD, I partition my disk in GPT, I put the DVD in my external USB DVD drive in hope to install the Windows on the harddrive and finally I can't get firmware to start WIndows installation in EFI mode.
Can you try http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. … &p=1261601 ?

Good news, everyone! It works! oscdimg did the trick! Windows installation started in EFI mode and accepted my GPT disk. Thank you very much, skodabenz!

Well, then how am I supposed to install Windows 7 from DVD in UEFI mode? Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbyGTwa3 … re=related. It's Intel mobo, external USB DVD, same Windows 7 64bit and installation runs in EFI mode. But it's not the case for me for reasons unclear to me.
Is it a retail Windows 7 DVD or a OEM DVD (mostly remastered). Only the retails x64 DVDs will work. Otherwise recreate the iso using oscdimg.

Image created with oscdimg works great. I will also give a try to unmodified Windows 7 Retail DVD this evening.

Actually it is possible to have Windows 7x64 ISO UEFI, Archboot ISO BIOS (using syslinux) and Archboot ISO UEFI in the same USB. I have done it before.
Just extract Windows 7 x64 iso and Archboot iso contents to the FAT32 formatted USB drive. Then extract the <WINDOWS_7_ISO>/efi/microsoft/boot/efisys.bin file using p7zip, it will contain <EFISYS.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi . Copy this bootx64.efi file to <USB>/efi/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi .
Similarly extract <ARCHBOOT_ISO>/efi/grub2/grub2_efi.bin and copy <GRUB2_EFI.BIN>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi to <USB>/efi/grub2/grub.efi . Copy the UEFI Shell to <USB>/efi/boot/bootx64.efi .
Does not work for me. I didn't manage to unpack grub2_efi.bin. p7zip says it contains no files. I also tried to mount it as msdosfs, vfat, using -o loop, without it, but no success. As to Windows, when I run extracted bootx64.efi in the EFI shell, it's like it's trying to load installer but than falls back to the shell as before. Is it something wrong with my Windows ISO?
Can you attach the grub2_efi.bin file somewhere (like dropbox)? That file should not be empty. It should be FAT12 (floppy) formatted and should contain /efi/boot/boot{x64,ia32}.efi files. If it is empty then there is something wrong with archboot-allinone.sh script.

I tried to unpack grub2_efi.bin from older version of archboot (2011.02) available here: http://mirror.yandex.ru/archlinux/iso/archboot/2011.02/
It was unpacked successfully and I found bootx64.efi there. I notified Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) just in case.
I will try to follow your instructions again to create Arch USB in UEFI mode.

Here is a screenshot of BIOS with Cowon player connected:

As you can see, Cowon is labeled with UEFI. Although I guarantee that I copied no efi files on it.
Also, my external USB DVD drive model is Slimtype eTAU108 (just for case someone wants to know which model is guaranteed to run Windows 7 x64 in UEFI mode).

Thanks to you, I can create Windows 7 x64 DVD and run it in UEFI mode. Now, how do I properly create Windows 7 x64 USB installer to run in UEFI mode too? Even better, it would be nice to have three-in-one USB: Arch BIOS + Arch UEFI + Windows 7 EFI.

skodabenz · 2011-05-26 11:26:05

ngo wrote:

I confirm that problems still exist when booting in UEFI mode.
I have a ThinkPad X220 laptop with Core i7 Sandy Bridge with arch64 installed.
When I select the "Legacy BIOS" boot in BIOS, I can boot fine, have working acpi, native screen resolution, i915 drivers loaded etc. But, naturally, no uefi support (efivars not loading, efibootmgr not working etc).
When I select "UEFI mode", booting freezes after "Loading initial ramdisk" message. To overcome this I add noefi kernel option in grub2. This way the system gets booted, but no acpi, low resolution etc, etc. I tried add_efi_memmap and nomodeset options, no luck. Also, grub2.cfg seems reasonable to me (gfxpayload=keep and all that stuff is present)
I use grub2-efi-bzr package from AUR, stock arch kernel (2.6.38). BIOS is fully updated. I also tried elilo, and still no luck(but I may have missed something about its configuration)
Does anyone have working UEFI boot on Sandy Bridge without the noefi kernel option?
By the way, what are the benefits of UEFI mode as opposed to good old BIOS?
Thanks.

Can you try

noexec=off

in kernel command line? I don't know what it does exactly but it might work as explained at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIB … %20options .

ngo · 2011-05-26 12:17:19

skodabenz wrote:

Can you try
noexec=off
in kernel command line? I don't know what it does exactly but it might work as explained at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIB … %20options .

I tried it, but without noefi boot still hangs.

I guess that the only option left is to apply kernel patches, which I might try to do when I have more time...

skodabenz · 2011-05-26 15:12:23

ngo wrote:

skodabenz wrote:
Can you try
noexec=off
in kernel command line? I don't know what it does exactly but it might work as explained at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIB … %20options .
I tried it, but without noefi boot still hangs.
I guess that the only option left is to apply kernel patches, which I might try to do when I have more time...

I guess these patches (in order) -

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … 1fea5a1b84
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … efbeab6ad8
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … b622824aed
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … fb9134aa8a
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … 575f9d4a78
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … ecdbb6e349

There may be more EFI related patches by the same person. These patches may land in 2.6.40/3.0/whatever version the next kernel will be called.

EDIT: Added 6th patch link.

Last edited by skodabenz (2011-05-27 06:37:28)

skodabenz · 2011-05-27 06:50:28

skodabenz wrote:

I guess these patches (in order) -
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … 1fea5a1b84
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … efbeab6ad8
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … b622824aed
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … fb9134aa8a
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … 575f9d4a78
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g … ecdbb6e349
These patches may land in 2.6.40/3.0/whatever version the next kernel will be called.

Please vote https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/24463 for the patches to be included in the current kernel in core/testing.

Last edited by skodabenz (2011-05-27 06:50:53)

balta2ar · 2011-05-27 09:38:16

Yesterday I connected another SATA disk. There were FAT32 partitions also. Windows 7 failed to boot after that. It offered me to insert installation DVD and try to repair. I did that, but there were no option to repair installation.
Is it possible to fix windows loader in such cases? The installation is perfectly fine, but disk number (or even partition) has changed.

I also tried unmodified Windows 7 DVD Retail and it didn't work for me -- I was unable to run installation in UEFI mode.

Will installation be launched in UEFI mode if I burn that specially created Windows UEFI ISO to USB stick and try to boot from it? Or what is the other way to create bootable Windows 7 USB? Simple copying of files + bootx64.efi didn't seem to work.

giddie · 2011-05-28 14:55:03

OK, I'll be carefully monitoring that bug. This is preventing me from booting my lovely new Latitude E5520 properly in UEFI. Since this was my first experience with UEFI *and* Grub2, it took me a while to realise it wasn't something I was doing wrong

skodabenz · 2011-05-31 04:17:21

Can you guys try kernel26-mainline 3.0.0-rc1 http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=39965? Compiled packages at http://arch.miffe.org/x86_64/kernel26-m … pkg.tar.xz and http://arch.miffe.org/i686/kernel26-mai … pkg.tar.xz . It contains all the six patches.

giddie · 2011-05-31 12:06:52

OK, I've built kernel26-mainline 3.0rc1-1, and the kernel will now boot in EFI mode (yay!). However, there are some bug reports that appear in my dmesg. Have a look at the results here: https://gist.github.com/1000394.

Is there anything else I can get you that might help?

skodabenz · 2011-05-31 12:54:03

giddie wrote:

OK, I've built kernel26-mainline 3.0rc1-1, and the kernel will now boot in EFI mode (yay!). However, there are some bug reports that appear in my dmesg. Have a look at the results here: https://gist.github.com/1000394.
Is there anything else I can get you that might help?

File a bug report in kernel bugzilla and also send the info to stable@kernel.org . These patches may be a part of 2.6.39.X stable kernels.

giddie · 2011-05-31 14:00:39

OK, kernel bug report is at: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36362. I've also sent an email, as you suggested, asking for the patches to be merged to stable.

skodabenz · 2011-05-31 15:33:05

giddie wrote:

OK, kernel bug report is at: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36362. I've also sent an email, as you suggested, asking for the patches to be merged to stable.

The bug report seems to be assigned to IA-64 (Itanium) team instead of x86_64 team. I think that should be corrected.

skodabenz · 2011-06-07 19:20:16

balta2ar wrote:

Now, how do I properly create Windows 7 x64 USB installer to run in UEFI mode too? Even better, it would be nice to have three-in-one USB: Arch BIOS + Arch UEFI + Windows 7 EFI.

EDIT: Moved to gitorious wiki at https://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_du … pages/Home .

Last edited by skodabenz (2011-06-23 11:06:45)

Arch Linux

#26 2011-02-02 20:18:37

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#27 2011-02-03 17:55:53

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#28 2011-04-02 09:10:33

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#29 2011-04-10 13:14:57

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#30 2011-04-10 14:18:31

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#31 2011-04-10 17:03:05

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#32 2011-05-24 08:42:45

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#33 2011-05-24 14:18:31

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#34 2011-05-25 08:14:18

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#35 2011-05-25 11:25:05

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#36 2011-05-25 13:06:35

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#37 2011-05-26 07:51:20

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#38 2011-05-26 08:02:40

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#39 2011-05-26 11:26:05

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#40 2011-05-26 12:17:19

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#41 2011-05-26 15:12:23

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#42 2011-05-27 06:50:28

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#43 2011-05-27 09:38:16

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#44 2011-05-28 14:55:03

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#45 2011-05-31 04:17:21

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#46 2011-05-31 12:06:52

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#47 2011-05-31 12:54:03

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#48 2011-05-31 14:00:39

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#49 2011-05-31 15:33:05

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

#50 2011-06-07 19:20:16

Re: UEFI boot with Intel P67 (Sandy Bridge) motherboard

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