Solved Win 7 x64 OEM Home Prem & UEFI Installation

[DaleN]

I purchased an AMD RX580 video card with the hopes of using my old gear for another year or two, but the RX580 requires a UEFI environment (which I thought I was using). BTW the RX580 works. I tested it another PC. Sadly my detectable boot environment is: bios. So basically I need to reinstall Windows 7 under UEFI.

My mobo is an MSI-7681 v.2.01 P67A-GD53 B3 with AMI bios v.1.19 (March 2012). It was the latest and last bios issued for Sandy Bridge processors. I have an I5 2500k Sandy Bridge.

On my PC, MSI uses an interface called Click Bios, EFI - their version of an UEFI interface so I know the board supports UEFI.

My version of Windows is Win 7 Home Edition x64 OEM DVD issued prior to SP1 which I can't seem to find a clear answer if this version can be installed under a UEFI environment.

Is UEFI doable with this hardware & my version of Win7? Recommendations? Would it be better just to buy a copy of Windows 10 load and install that OS under UEFI? I'm good with hardware troubleshooting but gawd awful terrible on the software side.

 

[johnhoh]

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[SIW2]

From winpe you could convert your existing drive to gpt, adding a small (100mb is enough) esp partition. Fire bcdboot at it. Then change your bios settings to EFI before booting back in.

Paragon partion manager ( not free ) can do it. I think the earlier version Partition Wizard free ( v9.1) can also.

 

[SIW2]

It is also possible with Aomei part assist.

1) Let part assist create winpe.

2) boot part assist winpe.

3) In booted pe part assist main window:

a) rt click your 100 mb system partition select format to fat32>Apply.

b) rt click your 100 mb system partition>advanced >change partition id>select esp partition>ok>Apply





c)rt click the windows DISK select convert to GPT>Apply

4) Open cmd prompt and type:

bcdboot windows_partition_letter:\Windows /s esp_partition letter: /f uefii

(press enter).

( e.g. bcdboot c:\windows /s h: /f UEFI )

5. Reboot machine, enter bios and set EFI booting.

 

[DaleN]

Thank you very much for the step-by-step directions. I shall follow them and report back!

 

[SIW2]

I am not sure if change id is in the free version.