There will be a lot of new stuff showed off at the event tomorrow, but the next build will most likely have disappointingly little of that
Quick question guys/gals, I need a little bit of advice. I have done clean installations of Windows 7/8/10 hundreds of times over the years. But all of my experience is using regular BIOS. I have zero experience with UEFI. I have several new laptops which, of course, came setup with UEFI initially but I always wipe out OEM systems first, switch to BIOS and clean install a fresh Windows ISO without the OEM junk. Anyways, I am trying to get an idea on what I should do with Windows 10, let's assume we were to get a build tomorrow, whether or not I should stick with regular BIOS or give UEFI a try for the remainder of my testing of Windows 10 builds. For a clean install of these Windows 10 builds, should I continue using BIOS or switch to UEFI from now on? Do these Windows 10 test builds work well (install well) using UEFI? Any problems to note? Do you have an easy How-To link for getting started with UEFI and clean installing of Windows? (How-To likely would be for Win8, but that should be sufficient I'm sure) Thank you, I appreciate any advice on this. Cheers!
1. In my opinion BIOS is a thing from a past, so you should try UEFI for sure. 2. Didn't have any problem with any of the builds while installing them on UEFI system. 3. Just download Rufus, select "GTP for UEFI" from a drop down menu and create bootable USB. Restart your system --> enter boot menu and choose "UEFI <your USB name>" from the list. That's it.
I plug in a flash drive and do the following from an Administrative Command Prompt: Code: diskpart list disk select disk # clean create partition primary format fs=fat32 quick active assign exit - # being the number for the flash drive shown in list disk - active and assign are probably unnecessary for UEFI boot, but they don't really hurt anything either Then I take a Windows .iso, and with 7-zip installed, I right-click the .iso > 7-Zip > Extract Files... > Extract to: (the flash drive). Wait until it's done, then I reboot the computer, and boot it in UEFI mode without issue. I do a similar process for Linux disc images too; and ideally, this should work with any Windows x64 edition Vista (or 7; can't recall if Vista had EFI support) and up. If you don't dual-boot with Legacy operating systems and have a Windows 8-compliant motherboard; it'd be a good idea to enable SecureBoot to make sure you get the best boot times (some motherboard will load pointless Legacy ROMs (particularly for the hard drives) unless SecureBoot is enabled. Would also be a nice idea to make sure your BIOS is up-to-date.
Thanks for the UEFI info, I have never even considered it - but will now...always good to learn new things.
Thank you, I appreciate it. Great advice. I have heard good things about Rufus but haven't used it before. Your instructions for creating a UEFI-compatible bootable USB will definitely come in handy if I do go with Rufus when I proceed with this. Follow up question: Does Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool have the ability to create UEFI-compatible bootable USB as well? Thank you for your detailed instructions and advice as well. I am a huge fan of doing things manually anyways as opposed to using a simply program to get the job done, so I will quite likely follow your instructions to get started. Follow up question: I am assuming that SecureBoot is to be disabled throughout the process and then enable SecureBoot once the installation is done and Windows is up and running, is that correct? Thanks again to everyone. MDL community is the best!
Question to mods: Are we going to need a new Windows 10 thread tomorrow or are we sticking to this thread?