Official Windows 10 Thread: Installation and Issues (check first post)

[RumbaMon19]

Gigabyte introduced Hybrid-EFI firmware in their boards a decade ago when UEFI was not that mainstream. It’s main selling point was ability to boot off 2 TB which is limitation of MBR.

To force the firmware to behave like EFI you need to set this switch to EFI (Which you already did) and might need to manually initialize the disk (< 2TB) to GPT before installing Windows using say DISKPART. Then your Windows 64-bit OS (Windows 7 or above) should install in EFI mode with GPT partition scheme on the HDD. The firmware still remains more or less traditional BIOS with a sort small functionality of EFI introduced in it.

I had one such board and I had done extensive testing using this mode in EFI mode. Back then it was Windows 7 64 and it warned me that the BIOS may not supporting booting to this disk, I still continued and it worked with EFI & GPT actually.

Despite being Hybrid-EFI, it had basic coverage of UEFI. You could even boot to EFI Shell externally using pen drive.

One limitation on Hybrid EFI was there were no UEFI variables. There weren’t UEFI boot entries unlike full-fledged UEFI systems. You had traditional Boot menu pointing to SATA HDD1, HDD2 etc and when set to EFI, firmware was designed to just go ahead and look for Bootx64.efi at /EFI/boot folder on EFI partition, without being aware of anything else. All Windows versions capable of UEFI booting have that fallback mechanism anyways.

The firmware is deigned to switch EFI when it detects > 2 TB HDD. Else it might fall back to BIOS by default.

Also, these boards were designed back in 2010-11 when Windows 7 was mainstream, so results with Windows 10 may not be predictable, while the UEFI booting is still the same. You may need to experiment.

To test if you are actually booting in EFI or not when switch is set to EFI, try the following

Download UEFI 64 bit shell from this link edk2/Shell.efi at UDK2018 · tianocore/edk2

Rename it as Bootx64.efi. Format a pen drive to FAT32. Create /EFI/Boot folder on it and place this Bootx64.efi therein inside Boot folder. Now disconnect the HDD and see if it can boot to UEFI Shell from this pen drive. If it does, you are in fact in EFI mode.

Mouse driver is possible in UEFI but optional. Click BIOS (Again BIOS being a misnomer used by Motherboard manufactures!) is a selling point, not a must to have underlying Firmware confirm to the UEFI Specifications. With Hybrid EFI the only focus was ability to boot off > 2TB so only bare minimum EFI specs were confirmed to.

can you tell more about uefi shell and its uses? I too have it on my lappy but on clicking it says boot device not found. how to use shell and what can i change through it?

 

[kg11sgbg]

Gigabyte introduced Hybrid-EFI firmware in their boards a decade ago when UEFI was not that mainstream. It’s main selling point was ability to boot off 2 TB which is limitation of MBR.

To force the firmware to behave like EFI you need to set this switch to EFI (Which you already did) and might need to manually initialize the disk (< 2TB) to GPT before installing Windows using say DISKPART. Then your Windows 64-bit OS (Windows 7 or above) should install in EFI mode with GPT partition scheme on the HDD. The firmware still remains more or less traditional BIOS with a sort small functionality of EFI introduced in it.

I had one such board and I had done extensive testing using this mode in EFI mode. Back then it was Windows 7 64 and it warned me that the BIOS may not supporting booting to this disk, I still continued and it worked with EFI & GPT actually.

Despite being Hybrid-EFI, it had basic coverage of UEFI. You could even boot to EFI Shell externally using pen drive.

One limitation on Hybrid EFI was there were no UEFI variables. There weren’t UEFI boot entries unlike full-fledged UEFI systems. You had traditional Boot menu pointing to SATA HDD1, HDD2 etc and when set to EFI, firmware was designed to just go ahead and look for Bootx64.efi at /EFI/boot folder on EFI partition, without being aware of anything else. All Windows versions capable of UEFI booting have that fallback mechanism anyways.

The firmware is deigned to switch EFI when it detects > 2 TB HDD. Else it might fall back to BIOS by default.

Also, these boards were designed back in 2010-11 when Windows 7 was mainstream, so results with Windows 10 may not be predictable, while the UEFI booting is still the same. You may need to experiment.

To test if you are actually booting in EFI or not when switch is set to EFI, try the following

Download UEFI 64 bit shell from this link edk2/Shell.efi at UDK2018 · tianocore/edk2

Rename it as Bootx64.efi. Format a pen drive to FAT32. Create /EFI/Boot folder on it and place this Bootx64.efi therein inside Boot folder. Now disconnect the HDD and see if it can boot to UEFI Shell from this pen drive. If it does, you are in fact in EFI mode.

Mouse driver is possible in UEFI but optional. Click BIOS (Again BIOS being a misnomer used by Motherboard manufactures!) is a selling point, not a must to have underlying Firmware confirm to the UEFI Specifications. With Hybrid EFI the only focus was ability to boot off > 2TB so only bare minimum EFI specs were confirmed to.

Very extensive and exhaustive comment with a proper diligent explanation.
Buddy my two WD(Western Digital) 1TB each HDD were in GPT mode and fully blank.
But when I installed Win 10 through pen drive,and later on checking,it was found that the HDDs were changed to MBR mode .
I had enabled EFI mode in BIOS prior to installation.

 

[patkim]

In that case your Firmware is blind enough to only really switch to EFI when it detects HDD > 2TB. That was the main purpose of Hybrid-EFI. I assume you used Rufus to create a pen drive and forced Rufus to go for only GPT-UEFI booting not including legacy.
In my case it worked at least with Windows 7 64 even with 80GB HDD!
You may still want to check booting Shell method mentioned above to just confirm if it’s really booting in EFI or not. If it does not, then it may be the same constraint of presence of 2 TB HDD applies.


@RumbaMon19

I certainly shall, however may be post Diwali holidays! In the meantime, you will gather a lot of info on the net. Just to briefly comment, your UEFI Firmware does not seem to have built-in shell, some do have others simply don’t. In that case you can externally boot to it using pen drive method or place shell.efi on EFI partition and create a boot entry to it in your UEFI boot order.

 

[kg11sgbg]

In that case your Firmware is blind enough to only really switch to EFI when it detects HDD > 2TB. That was the main purpose of Hybrid-EFI. I assume you used Rufus to create a pen drive and forced Rufus to go for only GPT-UEFI booting not including legacy.
In my case it worked at least with Windows 7 64 even with 80GB HDD!
You may still want to check booting Shell method mentioned above to just confirm if it’s really booting in EFI or not. If it does not, then it may be the same constraint of presence of 2 TB HDD applies.


@RumbaMon19

I certainly shall, however may be post Diwali holidays! In the meantime, you will gather a lot of info on the net. Just to briefly comment, your UEFI Firmware does not seem to have built-in shell, some do have others simply don’t. In that case you can externally boot to it using pen drive method or place shell.efi on EFI partition and create a boot entry to it in your UEFI boot order.

Yeah,the pen drive I had created for Windows 10 installation was definitely through Rufus,BUT IN LEGACY MODE!!!!

Through minitools partition wizard I changed the pendrive to GPT mode and booted up PC taking in account the pendrive as the first boot drive.
Boot was successful,but post Boot check screen,where the windows screen of the install pendrive is to appear,there is only a blinking cursor,blinking indefinitely..........

 

[patkim]

You should set Rufus to create a UEFI boot capable Pen drive not Legacy, if Legacy it shall boot to Legacy mode. The EFI switch has a very very limited functionality. It's not a full UEFI supported system.
I suggest you also try the shell.efi renamed as Bootx64.efi at /EFI/Boot folder on FAT formatted pen drive (The pen drive may be MBR or GPT, that does not matter here)
If it boots to UEFI Shell, your mobo does support UEFI booting. That should be the first check I believe. Also I hope you are connecting only one HDD at the time of install. That's a safer bet.

 

[kg11sgbg]

You should set Rufus to create a UEFI boot capable Pen drive not Legacy, if Legacy it shall boot to Legacy mode. The EFI switch has a very very limited functionality. It's not a full UEFI supported system.
I suggest you also try the shell.efi renamed as Bootx64.efi at /EFI/Boot folder on FAT formatted pen drive (The pen drive may be MBR or GPT, that does not matter here)
If it boots to UEFI Shell, your mobo does support UEFI booting. That should be the first check I believe. Also I hope you are connecting only one HDD at the time of install. That's a safer bet.

Okay as per your suggestions....
But do I need to convert to GPT the HDDs through "DISKPART" program?
In that case existing Windows 10 shall be erased.

 

[vidhubhushan]

Okay as per your suggestions....
But do I need to convert to GPT the HDDs through "DISKPART" program?
In that case existing Windows 10 shall be erased.

afaik there is some option for that without any data loss

 

[kg11sgbg]

afaik there is some option for that without any data loss

Then share with us....

 

[vidhubhushan]

Then share with us....

i don't remember what was it that i used some 2-3 years back to check but a simple google search throws up many results like these :

*www.diskpart.com/gpt-mbr/convert-mbr-to-gpt-without-data-loss.html

*www.easeus.com/partition-manager-s...gpt-to-mbr-using-cmd-without-losing-data.html

 

[kg11sgbg]

Thanks a Ton!!!!
Friend,@vidhubhushan

 

[vidhubhushan]

Thanks a Ton!!!!
Friend,@vidhubhushan

any time dear. glad to help though i am completely out of touch since long.

 

[kg11sgbg]

@patkim and @vidhubhushan , I tried my best to run Windows 10 within GPT disk and UEFI BIOS under Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 R2 motherboard.
BUT IN VAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You've to convert HDDs in MBR and set BIOS as non-EFI.
Only then YOU WILL BE ABLE TO INSTALL & RUN Windows 10.
The F*c@ of motherboard Gigabyte has produced!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[whitestar_999]

You've to convert HDDs in MBR and set BIOS as non-EFI.
Only then YOU WILL BE ABLE TO INSTALL & RUN Windows 10.
The F*c@ of motherboard Gigabyte has produced!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To be frank you won't be losing anything by running a less than 2TB hdd as boot drive without gpt anyway not to mention that mobo is almost 10 years old so such features not expected from it.

 

[kg11sgbg]

To be frank you won't be losing anything by running a less than 2TB hdd as boot drive without gpt anyway not to mention that mobo is almost 10 years old so such features not expected from it.

In fact my LEGACY Bios system with MBR HDDs are running good, with dual boot of Windows 10 Pro + Zorin 16...(both 64-bit)
Pleased and satisfied.....................................

 

[vidhubhushan]

In fact my LEGACY Bios system with MBR HDDs are running good, with dual boot of Windows 10 Pro + Zorin 16...(both 64-bit)
Pleased and satisfied.....................................

good to see that smile

 

[RumbaMon19]

Help me, this shi* is f**king my pc

View attachment 21078

As you can see, this antimalware thingy, it is a component of windows defender. Usually this would scan the pc once a month and not take more than 2-3hours and end up with a notification shouting "No malware found" But now since monday, this is not going and instead making my pc very slow. I didnt face any issues in zoom but today i was giving a important presentation and due to this shit taking up resource(might seem very low usage, but is actually having a very big impact on performance) the slide, even wthout any of fancy animations, was lagging in simple slide change.

Any idea how to stop this? As I said earlier, this came occasionally in a month and yes, it did fu**ed up my pc even then but this time its been a week and it has not gone, and this whole week my p had been lagging like hell

Update on it
After approx. 3 weeks of scanning it shows this

Why scan 4 times?

 

[whitestar_999]

Update on it
After approx. 3 weeks of scanning it shows this

View attachment 21123

Why scan 4 times?

No idea but MS windows bugs are not usual ones in many cases. Also I fresh installed 21H1 & that seems to have solved this issue for me but I think in my case it was probably because of some windows update corruption issue(used dism command to free up some space & later windows update stopped working which I somehow make it able to work again but it probably broke something in windows during all this).

 

[pkkumarcool]

Windows 10 is full of sh*t idk why sometimes i get blue screen sometimes my pc crashes on opening games and other lot of problems(sometimes taskbar items not working and all) windows 7 was so stable for me Idk how windows 11 will be.

 

[RumbaMon19]

Windows 10 is full of sh*t idk why sometimes i get blue screen sometimes my pc crashes on opening games and other lot of problems(sometimes taskbar items not working and all) windows 7 was so stable for me Idk how windows 11 will be.

I tried win 11 recently on a friend's laptop, it is mostly like win 10, no major performance changes. I am not upgrading to it atleast till it Eos.

 

[RumbaMon19]

Now why has this come? I am not using any insider preview/Pirated build. It is OEM installed copy.