Hello: I just got a Lenovo G580 laptop that originally came with Windows 7 Home Premium installed. I'd like to load Windows 7 Ultimate and use the loader. In Bios, it says UEFI BOOT (Enabled) but it also says Legacy is Enabled. It does not say UEFI SECURITY BOOT! Does anyone know under these circumstances, if I should or have too disable the UEFI BOOT in order to load Windows 7 Ultimate and use the loader? Thank you and I wish a very good new year for everyone at MDL! carburetorguy
As it comes with Windows 7, then you already have SLIC 2.1. You can choose both - install as UEFI or as MBR; you don't need any loader.
But Win7 does NOT work in pure UEFI. In addition one needs to have Legacy Bios also enabled. (actual naming depends on manufacturer of course) That has nothing to do with activation, just worth remembering.
Windows 7 image needs altering slightly to enable UEFI install. maybe this helps ? Works for me. use a UDb to install and when you enter the BIOS the USB with have the little UEFI icon, select this to boot and install Windows 7 UEFI enabled.
Perhaps install Win7 x64 Enterprise EFI and use KMSpico. You must have secure boot disabled if using Win7, but if its EFI you don't need csm or legacy support enabled; only if you wish to be able to boot something mbr like a usb.
Yes of course you have to use the uefi (bootx64.efi) loader... AFAIK the loader will be selected if it's find on UEFI enabled machines. I'm not UEFI expert but I guess the stucture with efi\microsoft\boot\*.efi is forced by uefi specifications. So I expect that full uefi supported board will automatically try to load the efi file instead of bootmgr (no (efi) extension) if it finds something. My personal notebook says it has uefi only for development and is kind of experimental (4-5y old), so I had to select the bootloader by hand (in uefi boot-settings "search for efi file"). Anyway you also can place the boot64x.efi (or another copy) in the root of your usb/iso and delete the bootmgr. Than your installation media is forced to use the bootx64.efi and in result uefi setup. Hm... I don't think you have to enable legacy support for booting regular/mbr UFDs or something. I think this will be handled independently. All about USB installation... never did ISO/DVD anymore since Vista.
With cd, efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin is used to boot. It has the same that is needed for usb booting, efi\boot\bootx64.efi. Win 8 has this file already, win7 has it absent on the dvd. With Win 7 EFI, secure boot won't work as it didn't exist yet. As for legacy support and csm and mbr, it really depends on the bios, what you have enabled, what boot preferences you have, and if you have dual (efi and bios) selectable via (ie f12.