You could also look at your boot menu (or bios boot order). ie, Press F11 on MSI notebook for boot menu. If "Windows Boot Manager" is a boot option, it's a uefi install...
To install windows 8 in UEFI with a file over 4GB is simple,you just need two usb sticks,first one FAT32 with all windows setup files on it except install.wim,second NTFS with all windows setup files including over 4gb install.wim,boot from the FAT32 one,and when you are prompted to press the big INSTALL button,swap the stick with the NTFS one,simple and noob friendly ,just make sure you have the windows setup files on a FAT32 stick to boot into UEFI,then swap and install from the NTFS stick
Thanks Flipper, i knew about the preview ADK. I just wondered if it was final yet. I never mess with the beta adks. WinPESE won't work with the preview btw, says "needs win8 source"
Sadly, that didn't work for me.I'm getting either "Selected boot image did not Authenticate. Press <Enter> to continue" or "Invalid signature Verification Failed Failed to load Grub" I tried using an old external 40gig HDD with 2 partitions.First is Fat32 with about 150 meg, second NTFS, set as active , with the remaining storage,then I extracted your WindowsBCD_GrubEFI iso to the Fat32.The bootx64.efi file inside efi\boot folder is exactly the same as the one in my ubuntu 13.04 iso (i checked using hashcalc), so i didnt replaced anything.Trying to boot from the HDD with secure boot enabled gave me the errors described above but worked fine turning it off.Am i doing anything wrong? I also noticed that the checkwim.exe files in boot\resources\ and boot\grub\windows\ are detected as trojan by my AV (Bitdefender Total security 2013).Are they mandatory for the boot process or only to launch the files when trying to install? Last thing : I also extracted your iso to the NTFS partition, then copied 2 isos in _ISO folder , but still can't (or dont know how to) launch them.How should i proceed? (Sorry if it's a stupid question, but this is a bit confusing for me.)
Sorry that was my "before-bedtime" post, so, just post some screen-shots to show that your installed win8/8.1 is in UEFI mode, tks. Edit: Just read your post again, it involves extracting the windows installer, remove install.wim from sources folder, then copy the whole 1G thing into a USB FD, all these jobs just for loading the 50KB NTFS driver in the windows installer. While I could do the same with a EFI shell command to load the Clover NTFS driver. .......... unable to see the simplicity, even if it works, please forget that I asked.
I renamed grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi in fat32:\efi\boot , still no luck, i get the same error message.Can anyone try it keeping secure boot enabled?I'm not sure, but the failure might be related to the computer im testing on. Disabling it boots makes it work fine , but it would have been perfect to be able to bypass it. Well on my first try i put two of them (ubuntu 13.04 and fedora Live 19, none have been extracted) in NTFS\_ISO\LINUX\ . This time i let them in NTFS\_ISO\AUTO\ , but nothing changed. From the refind menu, i go to GRUB , but my isos are nowhere to be found: Linux Distros EFI shows "Try Ubuntu/Install Ubuntu/untested Fedora-18-x86_64-Live-Desktop", but selecting any of those lines return errors. ISO bootable distros EFI returns various "can't find command..." errors before logging into a windows with "sysrescuecd" Detect any operating system does nothing , same goes for all choices up to Grub4dos efi and GRUB4DOS , both freezing the system. Going into Syslinux (from the main REFIND menu) returns "Load error returned from Syslinux_x64.efi" It might not be working for me, but that's probably a gem you shared with us.That thing has a lot of potential, and it would be extremely appreciated if you started a dedicated thread with more explanations, or even a detailed tutorial on how to use it. EDIT: i don't know if that will help you in any way, but when disabling secure boot, i get this message before logging into the REFIND menu : "NOTE : refind.conf's 'scanfor' line specifies scanning for one or more legacy (BIOS) boot options; however, this is not possible because your computer lacks the necessary Compatibility Support Module (CSM) support."
Halikus, a dedicated thread would be great!!! Anything you can share with us on this topic is very appreciated, your explainations are very clear and your ISO is very useful indeed!
To-day's Sunday, so made the 2 script files needed, updated OP's attachment pack that includes the 3 files; and edited post#2 with a small explanation on how it works with loop. To launch windows EFI install, just follow these simple steps: 1. Copy the windows installer into a NTFS partition, there will be no 4GB size limitation. 2. Copy the 3 files (NTFS.efi; startup.nsh; wsetup.nsh) into the FAT partition of no smaller than 150KB. 3. Boot into the FAT partition, when it finishes loading the NTFS driver(within 1 sec.); in the efi shell prompt enter : wsetup - that's it, installation starts (almost) immediately.