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Can't run Windows 7 installer on UEFI *only*


Mike Taylor

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Hi. I am aware that this thread has been repeated over and over. Thing is, 90% of the threads end up with "oh well, uefi is borked, just run in legacy and all will be fine" and the other 10% just doesn't work in my case apparently.

I don't wanna allow legacy boot (even that my bios has such options) because I've been advised already not do mix legacy and uefi at any point. Thus I disabled legacy completely in BIOS forcing UEFI only.

 

The situation is as follows: I want to install Win7 on the same SSD as current 10.13. Right now I have 3 paritions: #1 EFI, #2 APFS (10.13), #3 HFS+ (a placeholder for windows).

I have created a bootable USB stick (pretty sure I did it correctly). I have been trying to do this manually (by partitioning the USB and copying files) as well as automatically (using Rufus tool).

Each time I paid attention to partition disk as GPT no-csm. 


The issue is that each time I try to boot the Windows 7 installer I end up on infamous error page (see attachement) [Google spider: 0xc000000d \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD)]

 

I have tried to boot directly (F12) as well as I have tried to use Clover which is already installed on the SSD but same result each time. (Clover recognizes this EFI correctly -- see attachement). 

 

I've tried already having \EFI\Microsoft\Boot and also \EFI\Boot, either or both, no budge.

As for the .efi files themselves I tried to use (as suggested on the internet) bootmgfw.efi from Windows' install.wim archive, I tried also to rename it to BOOTX64.efi as well as I tried to use BOOTX64.efi "generated" by rufus. Neither of those 3 options didn't change anything.

 

What other suggestions I shall try? 

 

Why is MS installer even trying to "run" this BCD? Shouldn't this file be executed in Legacy only? 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

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Not sure if this will work for Windows 7, but this is how I create the Win10 USB installer:

- Create a FAT32 usb drive, extract Windows 10 64-bit iso there

- Boot to usb drive, format the new partition to NTFS, install Windows there

 

You need a 64bit version, not 32bit.

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That is what I've doing now and still getting the error attached in the first post. Windows is x64 and the partition was FAT32 (please see the attachement for gui reference). 

 

I'm not even at the parition my hard drive+install part, first I need to get to the windows installer itself :P

 

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For Windows 7 you need to copy the folder efi\microsoft\boot to efi\boot (one level up), copy the file bootmgfw.efi to that folder and rename it to bootx64.efi

The file bootmgfw.efi is in the folder \1\Windows\Boot\EFI\ inside the file \sources\install.wim from DVD. Open install.wim with 7-Zip.

Before installing Windows you need to change the partition format to NTFS. You can use gParted from a Linux live CD.

IMPORTANT: Windows installer formats and renumbers all partitions after the destination one, because it creates a reserved partition, so if you will install Linux, do it after installing Windows, or install Windows in the last partition.

 

Source: Olarila / UEFI multi boot with Clover

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The result is exactly the same. It's worth noticing that it's exactly the same, meaning the error screen still shows \EFI\Microsoft\Boot

 

Another thing worth mentioning (perhaps) is that when Rufus creates UEFI USB it automatically creates \EFI\Boot folder with BOOTX64.EFI file in it which has exactly the same checksum as bootmgfw.efi from install.wim\1\Windows\Boot\EFI\ so it would mean that it's some generic file?

 

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