Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

[rseiler]

My theory about this is that the BIOS has an issue, but I could easily be wrong, as there are a lot of settings in it. Here's the issue:

On a Win7 machine, I dl'd the retail Win8/Pro x64 from MSDN (it's called en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso) and burned a DVD with PowerISO.

The Win8 machine to-be: Asrock B75M-DGS (Bios 1.20), with CSM disabled. Blank SSD. It will not show the above DVD on the boot menu when booting the system. The boot menu is entirely blank, in fact.

When CSM is enabled (not that I wanted to install that way), it does show up.

When CSM is disabled again, and I use a specially-made USB stick, I'm able to choose the Win8 install and proceed. I did it this way, but thought I'd report my experience with not being able to use the DVD.

I've read of an issue like this when using a DVD created via the Win8 Upgrade Assistant, but this isn't that.

I poured over UEFI to see if there were any further settings pertaining to this, but I don't think there are. Based on another thread, I did try using Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device, but, according to the manual, all it does is search for a file called Shell64.efi, which doesn't exist (why wouldn't it search for bootx64.efi, which does exist?). If, as some of the threads mentioned, it let me open a UEFI command prompt, I apparently could have typed this to get the DVD to boot (possibly fs1: instead), but it never let me.

fs0:
\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

I installed Windows 8 from a USB flash drive in UEFI boot mode by setting Secure Boot to Enabled. Didn't change CSM at all.

So you haven't enabled Secure Boot and installed the security keys, an option in the UEFI? My installation worked fine, GPT partitioned, and when complete the CSM option did not exist in the UEFI.

I bet your installation would have gone fine with CSM enabled, unless your UEFI/BIOS did not have the Secure Boot option.

[rseiler]

Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

The UEFI installation did go fine--with the USB key, my only option. CSM is enabled by default on my board, so you definitely have to disable it for a UEFI install.

Before v1.20 of the BIOS, the situation would have been different, as you're saying CSM didn't exist back then. That makes sense, since it's not in the manual either (the manual is several months old). Secure Boot isn't listed in it either, so I had neither. But the BIOS/UEFI update in December changed all that, and both options (and more) are there now, making it essentially identical UEFI-wise to the R2.0 model, which is the manual I referenced for some of the newer settings.

With no CSM option, as you found, then choosing a "UEFI:xxxx" boot item and installing via it must have been the only way to declare that you wanted a UEFI install. Secure Boot, according to the above article, should be enabled only later, but clearly based on what you said it's OK to enable it up front.

But the mystery of the DVD remains. Has anyone actually seen a "UEFI:xxxx" in the boot menu for the Win8 DVD (or Win7, I guess, but I didn't have it to try, so I don't know if it would have shown) on the current BIOS?

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

I'm guessing the article you read assumes (perhaps correctly) that enabling Secure Boot also installs the security keys (GUID's), which is not how my boards UEFI works, the security keys were installed by me (with the available option to do so) after the UEFI OS installation. That does follow the model I read somewhere else about UEFI boot, with the Setup (for installation) and User (for running in secure boot) modes, which were displayed in my board's UEFI.

You may be correct about selecting the "UEFI:xxxx" boot item as the way to specify a UEFI install. Gosh I wish there was a clear and correct guide about what at least should be the correct implementation. Not saying ASR is wrong, I just don't know!

Yes, the DVD as a UEFI boot entry option remains a mystery.

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI

Did you check your DVD to see if the above directory and file was on there?

Bootx64 is an application while shell64.efi is like a mini OS with inbuilt commands. Think of it as something like DOS but for EFI.

It is possible to do a UEFI install with csm enabled onto GPT. Maybe this would work to get you started then switch over the other stuff later. I do not have the same board as you so can not help much but with Z77 Pro 3 and BIOS 1.90 mod I do get UEFI DVD and/or Legacy DVD depending on settings.

Here is an example of the DVD options (ATAPI) attached to intel SATA port in RAID mode.

[rseiler]

Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Yes, the disc does have that, so I think we can take the help screen in the BIOS at its word: it's not exactly what it was looking for.

What does have shell64.efi then if not Windows media?

Huh, I never would have imagined that it could be done with CSM enabled, since why does the CSM option exist then? The above article says that it "makes the motherboard actually look like a BIOS system, allowing it to boot from NTFS and MBR disk--but you lose the UEFI features and are essentially just using BIOS." Yet, if CSM is enabled, and you somehow get a UEFI DVD boot menu, installing Windows then is as if CSM was disabled?

I just assumed that Windows installs differently at a low level (beyond the GPT formatting, which you're saying happens even with CSM enabled as long as you choose UEFI on boot), with CSM disabled vs not. I guess you could test that theory by later disabling CSM and attempting to reboot Windows. The result may not be pretty.

Also, you mentioned that you could get a legacy DVD boot menu (as opposed to UEFI) with certain settings. Do you recall which ones? Because whatever that is seems to be the decider in whether you get a traditional install vs a UEFI one, not CSM.

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

reseiler, I just happened to do another Win 8 UEFI install on my board, starting in standard BIOS emulation/CSM enabled. Recall that the CSM option is displayed in my BIOS/UEFI until a final boot with the security keys installed, as they call it in the BIOS.

I tested disabling CSM while it was still available, and the reboot failed. I should say POST failed, as I got a three beep POST error. I had to enable CSM to boot successfully. Later, the CSM option was again gone from the UEFI (ATAPI screen on my board.)

I just mention this as an FYI, not that it matters for your board, just another seemingly odd difference. Don't you hate it when you don't really know what's going on...

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Yes, the disc does have that

Okay, I asked because if it were missing then that would result in the BIOS not showing it as a UEFI boot option.

What does have shell64.efi then if not Windows media?

You can place it on any FAT32 media such as a USB flash drive, the BIOS should look for it. AFAIK some BIOS also have an in-built shell. There are different pre-built versions around, if you google "shellx64.efi" and "download" that should get you some links to try.

Huh, I never would have imagined that it could be done with CSM enabled, since why does the CSM option exist then?

A quote from Compatibility Support Module - PhoenixWiki

The CSM operates in two distinct environments:

• Booting a traditional or non-EFI-aware OS.
• Loading a UEFI-aware OS a device that is controlled by a traditional Option ROM.

For instance with legacy you might possibly load a RAID option ROM, video ROM, PXE ROM and so on, EFI can have it's own drivers which which will work more efficiently with the EFI BIOS. By disabling CSM your asking to use those EFI drivers instead of the 16-bit legacy OROMs.

Also, you mentioned that you could get a legacy DVD boot menu (as opposed to UEFI) with certain settings. Do you recall which ones? Because whatever that is seems to be the decider in whether you get a traditional install vs a UEFI one, not CSM.

I do not know what you specifically have with your BIOS but it might have options to choose whether to show only UEFI boot devices, only Legacy boot devices or both.

Something also to consider is the boot options fast and ultra fast. These affect the way the BIOS interacts with UEFI booting but I do not know the specifics, maybe try with disabled if having problems (parsec?)

IMHO UEFI really has a lot of promise but is still at a stage where some things need to be ironed out and some of the older compatibility dropped, which might take some time. For instance AsRock has not gotten around to putting the RAID config menu in my Z77 Pro3 as yet, video GOP support from Graphics card manufacturers. It is still "work in progress" for a lot of systems.

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

I agree with ucode, that UEFI booting and all its potential has not been realized in even in the PC enthusiast community, since we have only begun to really use it. Also, in our plug-and-play PC world, we don't spend the time to study how it all works. But I will say finding a good guide in one place on "how it all works" is not easy, I have yet to find one. Plus as we have seen just in this thread, the implementations of the setup for UEFI booting vary between boards, with little to zero documentation on it.

Part of the "decider" or deciding depends upon what is presented to the BIOS/UEFI. As was posted earlier, in the boot listing we see "USB" and "UEFI" entries for the devices. I have a bootable USB flash drive I created (from a guide) for installing a UEFI booting Windows 8 installation, which can also be installed in the usual BIOS mode. If you look at the folders and files on the flash drive, you'll find files with a ".uefi" extension on the file name (like .exe is the file extension on an executable file.) I assume something in the BIOS is scanning the files on the devices and finds these file types, so can then display them, and use them for their intended purpose. Choose the UEFI device (or part of it) and you get a UEFI installation. Choose the USB device (default or standard I assume, but a non-intuitive name) and you get a standard BIOS (non UEFI) installation.

The guide I used described setting up a Windows 7 UEFI bootable USB flash drive, but a certain .uefi file had to be moved from one to another specific folder before it would work. That implies the decider expects a certain layout of folders and files, which makes sense. How much if any of the decision process is determined by BIOS settings is one of the puzzles, but in one case we had CSM disabled, while I had Secure Boot enabled, and disabling CSM failed on my BIOS.

Regardless, if we had explicit instructions, or a standard, we would at least know what we should do, or how it should work. I've read other manufactures boards have better labeled options for this. So we may see the marketplace fixing this in the near future.

[rseiler]

Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Lots of new information to parse above. I'll just touch on a couple for now:

-So Windows does care, post-install, whether CSM is changed. Good, because if it didn't, then the idea that Windows installs differently depending on the state of that option would have gone flying out the window. I always expected that it would care, like it does if you flip AHCI post install, though probably in a much more encompassing way.

-I've never made a Win7 UEFI bootable USB drive, but I did make a Win8 one, and (after the FAT32 formatting), it's just a straight Xcopy of the files, no special arrangement of the files once there. It does have several *.efi files in \efi, not that Asrock cared about any of them when it looked at the very same fileset on DVD (hmmmm).

Looking at Win7 now, which I didn't try on this board, it doesn't have any *.efi files at all, so I can see why there might have to be something special done there, though with a folder called \efi you would think that it would work as is regardless.

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Looking at Win7 now, which I didn't try on this board, it doesn't have any *.efi files at all, so I can see why there might have to be something special done there, though with a folder called \efi you would think that it would work as is regardless.

Is this another ISO download? On W7 retail disks the 32-bit version does not have the files (32-bit not supported) but the 64-bit version should have cdboot.efi and a no prompt version with the efisys image files containing bootx64.efi.

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Lots of new information to parse above. I'll just touch on a couple for now:

-So Windows does care, post-install, whether CSM is changed. Good, because if it didn't, then the idea that Windows installs differently depending on the state of that option would have gone flying out the window. I always expected that it would care, like it does if you flip AHCI post install, though probably in a much more encompassing way.

-I've never made a Win7 UEFI bootable USB drive, but I did make a Win8 one, and (after the FAT32 formatting), it's just a straight Xcopy of the files, no special arrangement of the files once there. It does have several *.efi files in \efi, not that Asrock cared about any of them when it looked at the very same fileset on DVD (hmmmm).

Looking at Win7 now, which I didn't try on this board, it doesn't have any *.efi files at all, so I can see why there might have to be something special done there, though with a folder called \efi you would think that it would work as is regardless.

Last things first, I can't agree that a Windows 7 bootable USB drive, created from an ISO file, does not have .efi files. I've done a UEFI installation of Windows 7, although it does not support the true secure boot feature AFAIK.

This is a quick peak at the contents of the bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive:



At the top in the root folder of the USB drive, there is an efi folder, and below is the contents of the efi\boot folder. We can also see there are two bootmgr files, one being bootmgr.efi. There are more efi files, this is just a few to show they exist.

This contents is standard (with one exception, see below) in a Windows 7 64bit ISO file and DVD, the bootable USB drive like this can be created from either media. You can install Windows 7 in the usual way, or in UEFI mode, with this one bootable USB flash drive.

The file layout created for the Windows 7 UEFI installation has one file in the wrong location, but is easily fixed. A guide to the entire USB installation drive creation process can be found here:

UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows

I used this guide to create both Windows 7 and Windows 8 bootable USB UEFI installation drives, and they work perfectly. I've installed Windows 8 four times with my USB UEFI installation drive. The first two were experiments/tests that worked fine, the last two permanent installations on different drives.

(Hey, Windows 8 naysayers, $40 for each Windows 8 Pro activation key, "upgrading" from two Windows XP keys that I... obtained, orphans from discarded PCs that still worked, what's not to like? The "upgrade" installation gives you the option to create an ISO file, which is really the full installation media. Plus what is called the ESD installation folder is written to the C: drive, which can also be used to create a bootable USB drive. Using the Windows 8 Refresh option, you can install it anywhere. But that offer is over, ended January 31, now Windows 8 Pro direct from MS is $199.99)

You kinda lost me on the, "So Windows does care, post-install, whether CSM is changed." Then again, this goes back to the how is UEFI booting enabled in the UEFI/BIOS. CSM, or Compatibility Support Module, allows a UEFI type "BIOS" to run as if it was just a plain old BIOS, which is how most people currently use the UEFI in their boards. Recall that on my board's UEFI settings, I must enable Secure Boot to get into true UEFI (non-CSM) mode, and once I get past a restart with Secure Boot enabled, my CSM option disappears from the UEFI. Also, if I simply disable CSM, while in BIOS/Compatibility mode, on restart POST fails.

I'm not sure which way or method makes more sense, or I am not understanding it either. Given the ZERO amount of documentation about this from ASR, we are on our own. It makes sense to me that disabling CSM means you want to boot in true UEFI mode, not BIOS emulated. Then, the Secure Boot option is just that, optional (or is it, I forget... ) But you've said that your board's UEFI does not have a Secure Boot option (mine is in the Security section)? Can you verify that for me? So is one way right, the other wrong, both right, just different?

So what you are saying is, Windows "cares" if it is working with a UEFI, or a BIOS/BIOS emulated UEFI, correct? I would call that a "need to know" or "be aware of" situation, but cares gets the point across. And, yeah, Windows cares about this.

The more I read about using a UEFI, the more I think we are just scratching the surface of what is possible with it. The learning curve here is kinda steep...

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Recall that on my board's UEFI settings, I must enable Secure Boot to get into true UEFI (non-CSM) mode, and once I get past a restart with Secure Boot enabled, my CSM option disappears from the UEFI. Also, if I simply disable CSM, while in BIOS\/Compatibility mode, on restart POST fails.

Are you sure CSM is disabled? For my own system secureboot works either with or without CSM. Do you find secureboot useful? I dual boot with W7 so can not use it with that OS, only W8.

If CSM is truly disabled you should not see any option rom's from your OS. I suspect CSM is still enabled due to your earlier comments in another post of using 11.2 RAID OROM and not seeing the UEFI RAID config in the BIOS setup.

Here is an example on my system where I have used secureboot and CSM enabled, as you can see legacy RAID and Graphics OROMs are used.



Regarding downloaded ISO's, the reason I mentioned this is due to some of these not having the UEFI booting capability in them.

Example of non UEFI bootable ISO - Windows 8-trap: ESD DVD not EFI bootable

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Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Given the way the CSM option works in my board's UEFI, disappearing as an option once true UEFI booting happens (via enabling the Secure Boot option, booting Win 8 installed in UEFI mode), that is a fair question. I get this from the query you posted:



So all looks good to me. Let me explain about the Intel 11.2 OROM I mentioned and you asked about.

The UEFI-CSM enabled, BIOS mode OROM on my board is of course still 11.2. That was not updated with my board's 2.80 UEFI, nor was it supposed to be, as I now understand. The 11.6 OROM is used for the UEFI-CSM disabled, UEFI mode boot, as you tried to communicate to me, which is correct. When I use the Intel RAID Configuration option (Advanced Menu) that appears in my UEFI only when UEFI booting Win 8 in Ultra Fast boot mode, the OROM version is displayed, which is 11.6. So I was confused about that, but now it makes perfect sense. OROM 11.2 is used for UEFI-CSM enabled, BIOS emulation mode, and the true UEFI boot (CSM disabled) OROM is 11.6. I also confirmed the 11.6.0.1702 OROM is being used, with the IRST UI's System Report.

My post showing the .efi files is really in response to reseiler's post about those files not being present. I also have seen that in some cases the .efi files are missing, which may be because the Win 8 upgrade download was done on a 32bit OS system, which does not support UEFI booting.

[rseiler]

Re: Installing Windows 8 with CSM disabled (full UEFI)?

Unfortunately, when I grabbed a W7 ISO just to peek into the \EFI folder, I clicked into one that wasn't x64, sorry. I haven't had a chance yet to see if the system will recognize a W7 x64 DVD, but of course it didn't W8 (my original point in posting), so I wouldn't expect it to see W7 either.

Yes, I do have the Secure Boot option with the current BIOS, but I have not tried enabling it yet. I may not, I'm still on the fence about it. It's definitely not required to be enabled when disabling CSM. MS may require Secure Boot be enabled on OEM W8 systems, I'm not sure.

What I meant about Windows "caring" if CSM is flipped after installing is just what you had said earlier, that the system doesn't boot if it's changed (therefore it's a critical setting, which was in some dispute early in the thread). Though I see now your saying that it doesn't POST when changed, but considering the microseconds between POST and the beginning of a Windows load (which begins even before the splash screen), that's probably still tied to Windows (perhaps its boot loader).