Bios to UEFI

[Adr4]

Good morning,
I have an hpz600 workstation that allows booting in bios / legacy.
Is it possible to update the bios that allows me to choose between bios / UEFI?
Or is there a method with which to do the above?
Thank you

[Grzwacz]

Greetings,

Welcome to the forum.

I am not a HP employee.

Your PC's motherboard has an LGA 1366 socket. This socket was discontinued in 2012. This is about the time HP introduced UEFI BIOS systems.

There is a very good chance your PC does not support UEFI.

There is a HP BIOS update to mitigate Meltdown and Spectre (Link). I don't think this BIOS update will give you UEFI.

Regards

[Adr4]

Ok

thanks

[DoctorWizard]

I needed UEFI functionality on my Z600 so that I could boot from an NVMe drive.  The solution is to boot first from a flash drive containing either "Clover" or "Duet" which adds UEFI support.  I never could get Clover to work on my Z600 although others aparently have.  I ended up using Duet instead, which is simpler and lighter weight anyway.

See this forum/guide: Fernando's Win-Raid Forum

Getting it properly configured took much trial and error.  PM me and I can send you an image file of my USB flash drive with Duet.

[Adr4]

I installed duet on usb but when the system reboots, it can not find the uefi partition and then starts from the beginning ..... can you help me?

[DoctorWizard]

No surpise you are having problems.  It took me several days and I discovered several gotchas in the process.  Fortunately for you, I just had to redo it all recently, so the steps are fresh in my mind.

Gotcha #1: Duet's CreateUSB.cmd does not run properly under Windows 10.  You will need to make your Duet Boot Flash drive on a Windows 7 machine, or use a technician's boot disk such as Hiren's, FalconFour's, or Gandalf's.  Did you watch carefully as you made the Duet boot flash drive?  Did you see any error messages?  This could be the first problem.

Gotcha #2: It does not appear possible to clone another drive to the NVMe PCIe drive and get it to actually boot [all the way].  I tried every piece of cloning sofware I could get my hands on, including Samsung's.  I tried startup repair, diskpart, bootrec, partitioning tools, I researched error codes...  I spent days trying without success.  I ended up installing a fresh clean copy of Windows 10 onto the NVMe and reinstalling all my apps and restoring personal files.  That does work.  I also suggest that you temporarily disconnect any other SATA hard drive until after Windows is installed and running on the new NVMe.

Gotcha #3: Duet is very picky about which brands and models of flash drives it will recognize (for Windows 10 USB Install/Boot).  Does not appear to be related to how it's partitioned and/or formatted as I tried every combination I could think of and it just wouldn't recognize certain brands of flash drives.  Samsung Fit works.

Troubleshooting Tip #1: You did install the NvmExpressDxe-64.efi file into /EFI/Drivers and the Bootx64.efi file into /EFI/Boot, as per these instructions, right?

Troubleshooting Tip #2: Edit the startup.nsh file in /EFI/Boot, temporarily remark out the third line that says "fs0:\EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi" by putting a # at the beginning of the line.

Once you have created the startup.nsh file (with the third line remarked) reboot.  Watch for a status message stating the NVMe Driver was installed, and another status message stating the drives were mapped.  Good so far?...

You will now be dropped into the EFI shell which is similar to DOS.  But valid drives will be labeled fs0: fs1: fs2: and so on instead of C: 😧 E: etc.  After the remap, the duet flash drive usually becomes fs1: and your NVMe drive typically becomes fs0:--- assuming you have no other SATA drives plugged in.  If the NVMe has not been partitioned and formatted, it will not be assigned a drive number, but if not, don't worry.

To install a new copy of Windows onto the new NVMe drive, you will need to make a USB install disk using Microsoft's Media Creation Tool, and it must be on a brand/model of flash drive that Duet recognizes - See Gotcha #3 above.  Plug in both the Duet and the Windows flash drives and reboot.  Use the F9 Boot menu to make sure it goes to and boots from the Duet drive first.  If the NVMe is partitioned/formatted, it should be fs0: and the Windows install disk is probably fs2:.  At the shell prompt you can type fs2:⏎ and then dir⏎ to make sure you have the right drive.  Start the windows installer by typing fs2:\EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi⏎  (or substitute the appropriate drive if necessary)

Once Windows has finished installing, and it reboots itself, and it boots to the duet drive, you will get dropped at the EFI shell prompt again.  At this point, Windows (the real copy, not the installer) should definately be on fs0: at this point.  Type fs0:\EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi⏎ and Windows should start!!  Now replug any SATA drives, reinstall your software, and restore your personal documents.  Edit the startup.nsh file in \EFI\Boot on the Duet drive, and remove the remark (#) that you put at the beginning of line 3.

If that doesn't do it for ya, give me more details about where you are getting stuck and any error messages.

[Grzwacz]

Hi DoctorWizard,

Very interesting work around to get UEFI options on a Legacy BIOS.

You are the wizard!

This may be out side the scope of the average user. I would try it but don't have any Legacy BIOS PCs to mess around with.

Regards