{"id":652,"date":"2014-11-27T01:07:43","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T23:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=652"},"modified":"2014-11-27T01:07:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T23:07:43","slug":"how-to-make-a-uefi-capable-usb-windows-7-install","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/2014\/11\/27\/how-to-make-a-uefi-capable-usb-windows-7-install\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make a UEFI-capable USB Windows 7 Install"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I bought a PC without an OS in order to get a copy of Windows 7 on it (because there\u2019s no way in hell I\u2019m going to let Windows 8 into my abode).\u00a0 That PC was hyped to the gills (here’s my review of the manufacturer<\/a>), and my RAID setup was using UEFI drivers and GPT-capable drives.\u00a0 In order to use these properly and complete the installation of the OS, I needed to bridge the gap between the newfangled BIOS and the old-fangled DVD drive.<\/p>\n

After a few adventurous attempts (all of which refused to show me the fancy-pants drive setups I have established in this case), I got fed up.\u00a0 I finally decided to make a USB key into a Windows installer \u2013 and didn\u2019t realize how painless it would be once I did.\u00a0 That thing installed FAST.\u00a0 So here\u2019s my attempt to share the how-to\u2019s with you.<\/p>\n

First, you\u2019re going to need a PC.\u00a0 Set it up with RAID as you want it through your BIOS.<\/p>\n

You will also need a genuine Windows install DVD (because I\u2019m not going to recommend a pirated one, and I\u2019m not going to answer questions regarding why your pirate copy won\u2019t work right).<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll need a compression app installed (I\u2019ve got 7zip, that works fine, there are others but I don\u2019t know if they support the file formats you\u2019ll be digging into).<\/p>\n

Lastly you\u2019ll need a USB memory stick with at least 4GB of space on it (my Windows Ultimate install was about 3.1 GB, but if you\u2019re installing something else as well, you might need more).<\/p>\n

Using another Windows PC (your old one, or a work one or whatever \u2013 note that I used a Win 7 one, I don\u2019t know if the following description\u2019s tools are available on earlier versions), you need to make that USB stick look like a boot drive.\u00a0 Here\u2019s how (you might want to copy these steps into a blank doc and print them out, then check them off as you do them):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Log into your system with Administrator privileges<\/li>\n
  2. Plug in your USB stick<\/li>\n
  3. If Windows gives you the option to \u201copen folder to view files\u201d, do that. Otherwise open Windows Explorer (not <\/strong>Internet Explorer, I mean the Windows Explorer that shows you all your drives) and select the USB stick you just plugged in<\/li>\n
  4. Open a command-line interface (Start menu > enter \u201cCMD\u201d and press enter \u2013 you\u2019ll get a DOS box).<\/li>\n
  5. In the command line interface, enter \u201cdiskpart\u201d<\/li>\n
  6. You\u2019ll get a new DOS box with a prompt of \u201cDISKPART>\u201d<\/li>\n
  7. In that DISKPART prompt, enter \u201clist disk\u201d<\/li>\n
  8. You\u2019ll get a listing of all the possible storage media (and some that might not even be there, like if you have a card-reader or something, it\u2019ll show empty sockets as 0-size disks) on the system<\/li>\n
  9. Figure out which one among that list is your USB stick. You probably don\u2019t have many disks as small as the USB stick you just plugged in.\u00a0 Mine was a \u201c16GB\u201d model, it showed up as 14GB in this exercise.\u00a0 \"Diskpart\"See the pic for an example.<\/li>\n
  10. Now that you know which disk is the right one (make ABSOLUTELY sure for what you\u2019re about to do), enter \u201cselect disk XX\u201d where \u201cXX\u201d is the number shown in the list (#10 in my case).<\/li>\n
  11. Now enter \u201cclean\u201d \u2013 this will wipe the drive of any contents it had (which is why you are making absolutely sure you\u2019re on the right disk)<\/li>\n
  12. Now enter \u201ccreate partition primary\u201d to make a basic partition on it<\/li>\n
  13. Enter \u201cactive\u201d to make that partition bootable<\/li>\n
  14. Now enter \u201cformat quick fs=FAT32\u201d to guarantee it is readable by even basic drivers<\/li>\n
  15. Enter \u201cassign\u201d to give it a drive letter<\/li>\n
  16. Enter \u201cexit\u201d to quit the DISKPART window and return to the CMD window<\/li>\n
  17. Enter \u201cexit\u201d to quit the CMD window<\/li>\n
  18. Now stick that Windows install DVD in your drive. Exit any autoloaded stuff that might start up.<\/li>\n
  19. Switch over to that Windows Explorer window you had open from before. Select the DVD drive containing the Install DVD.<\/li>\n
  20. Highlight anything in the right-side pane and press CTRL+A to select all the contents of the drive.<\/li>\n
  21. Next press CTRL+C to \u201ccopy\u201d the contents<\/li>\n
  22. Now select the empty USB stick from among the drives in the left-hand pane<\/li>\n
  23. Press CTRL+V to \u201cpaste\u201d the copied stuff\n
      \n
    1. (steps 20-23 could be done drag-drop if you are comfortable doing so)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    2. Congrats, you now have a bootable install USB stick! But you\u2019re not done, as this one doesn\u2019t yet have UEFI \/ GPT support.<\/li>\n
    3. Now that it\u2019s all copied you\u2019re going to need to rearrange some stuff on it.<\/li>\n
    4. On the USB stick, navigate to the folder \u201c..\\efi\u201d (.. means the root of the drive \u2013 so if it\u2019s \u201cC:\u201d that means \u201cC:\\efi\u201d)<\/li>\n
    5. Inside this folder, create a new folder and name it \u201cboot\u201d<\/li>\n
    6. Now navigate to the folder \u201c..\\efi\\microsoft\\boot\u201d<\/li>\n
    7. Copy everything in there using the CTRL+A then CTRL+C move you did before<\/li>\n
    8. Return to the directory you just created (..\\efi\\boot) and CTRL+V all that stuff there to copy it there.<\/li>\n
    9. If you\u2019re currently on a Windows 7 machine, grab a copy of \u201cbootmgfw.efi\u201d from the directory \u201cC:\\Windows\\Boot\\EFI\u201d (drive letter might be different if you\u2019re booting from a drive other than C:\\), and copy that file into the USB stick\u2019s ..\\efi\\boot directory.\n
        \n
      1. If you were able to do this, skip to step 37, otherwise proceed to 32.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
      2. Go to the directory \u201c..\\sources\u201d and locate the file \u201cinstall.wim\u201d \u2013 this is an archive containing some drivers you\u2019ll need.<\/li>\n
      3. Open \u201cinstall.wim\u201d using your compression app (7zip in my case)<\/li>\n
      4. Inside this file, navigate to the directory \u201c1\\Windows\\boot\\efi\\\u201d<\/li>\n
      5. Find the file \u201cbootmgfw.efi\u201d in there<\/li>\n
      6. Make a copy of that file (I had to extract one to my desktop to get it out of the archive, 7zip doesn\u2019t support direct CTRL+C inside archives) and drop a copy of it into that \u201c..\\efi\\boot\\\u201d directory you created in step 27.<\/li>\n
      7. Now that it\u2019s in the ..\\efi\\boot directory, rename \u201cbootmgfw.efi\u201d to \u201cbootx64.efi\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Congrats!\u00a0 You are all set up with a bootable USB stick that has UEFI drivers for Windows to use during install.<\/p>\n

        Next make sure your BIOS boot options on the new PC includes the potential for \u201cremovable media\u201d or \u201cUSB\u201d or whatever term it uses for \u201cboot off my damn memory stick.\u201d\u00a0 In the case of my ASUS I think it was removable media.<\/p>\n

        Turn off the new PC.\u00a0 Plug in your USB stick.\u00a0 Turn the PC on.\u00a0 You should now be booting up into a Windows installation \u2013 and when it comes time to pick the drive on which to install, it\u2019ll show all your UEFI drives (like RAID setups) as options!\u00a0 The rest follows pretty standard vanilla installation instructions for Windows, and you can probably handle that yourself.<\/p>\n

        Point of note \u2013 you might want to lock that USB stick into read-only mode and just park it somewhere in case you ever need to re-install (like if one of your drives fails and you have to recover from scratch).\u00a0 Or burn it to a bootable DVD or something like that.<\/p>\n

        Happy computing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Recently I bought a PC without an OS in order to get a copy of Windows 7 on it (because there\u2019s no way in hell I\u2019m going to let Windows 8 into my abode).\u00a0 That PC was hyped to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,42,13,17,19,26,49,1,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-configurations","category-disk-management","category-hardware","category-pc-stuff","category-problem-solving","category-software","category-uefi","category-uncategorized","category-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}