Hello! I have an Acer Aspire 5745G-644G50MNKS notebook with preinstalled OEM win 7 home premium. Specs as following: Core i7 640M Processor (2.87GHz, 4MB L3 Cache) 4 GB DDR3 RAM 500 GB HDD 15.6" 16:9 HD LED Display DVD RW 1 GB VGA (NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 420M) WIFI / Bluetooth / Card Reader / Web Cam I'm wishing to update my system into Windows 8 Pro or Enterprises. But unfortunately my model isn't appears in Acer's Windows 8 Eligible Models list or Affected Models List. I think my system has more than enough performance to run Windows 8. But my bios don't have UEFI support. So, i just wanna know will my computer be able to run Windows 8 without any troubles without that secure boot option. i"v run Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant Tool in my system and it says everything is okay except Secure Boot option. also I'v checked individual hardware vendor sites for the latest drivers for windows 8. Most products has the drivers, And the current drivers also compatible with Windows 8 according to the upgrade assistant. What should i do so? Will the win 8 upgrade useless in my system? or it will be better than the current win 7? Please explain me about this in details. Thanks in advance before.
Are there any way to add UEFI support to my current legacy bios? According to Acer, they will not provide any bios updates or Windows 8 compatible drivers to my system But it's better if it's possible with mods. BIOS Version/Date : INSYDE V1.19, 12/6/2005
You can run without UEFI. I'm running Windows 8 on an old Panasonic ToughBook from 2004 with an IDE hard drive and it runs like a dream. It even bypasses the bios screen on startup so that it boots faster. My UEFI motherboard doesn't even allow it to bypass it, so if anything a non-UEFI system could be better in the long run.
Seriously, it always bypasses the legacy bios to boot faster.. previously I thought it some kind of bug..
Got it Thank you very much! I just wanna confirm whether it's possible or not. Sounds cool here. It's awesome feature brother! Is that mean i'm not able to launch bios settings with win 8? My Acer also have a branding logo for a second while booting, not texts like old mbs. anyway ur words gonna double my interest that i have to install win 8 Thanks for the info brother! Glad to hear mate. But did u know the model 5742, 5749 are already has bios update that enables UEFI in Acer site? they are also in win 8 eligible models as well and drivers too. I dunno why they have skipped my system
It's all depend on the Mainboard used! And that you couldn't change! But no problem to run Windows 8 any version on it! And I hardly believe that there would be any problem with drivers! Win8 will even run better than Win7! The EFI isn't really a need. what the hell makes it so huge difference to either boot in maybe 5sec+ or up to a minute depend on installed Apps which will start with windows as well?!
You can still change bios settings by "restarting" windows 8 instead of "shutting down". Or if you have an issue and Windows 8 won't boot, just hold the power button until your laptop turns off and when you turn it back on, it should let you access the bios. My ToughBook also uses a splash screen logo while booting, so I'm sure your Acer will most likely also bypass the bios screen.
Most UEFI bios have a compatibility mode where you can boot into a legacy device. When choosing your boot device, just make sure it doesn't say "UEFI: blahblah" Sometimes you have to disable Secure Boot so that it won't try to match GUID. That being said, there's not really a downside to using UEFI. The only thing I've noticed is that it seems to take up a few hundred megs more for system partitions. Boot speeds are roughly the same. Waking from sleep is actually a lot faster with UEFI.