Solved: Notebook won't boot without EFI - HP Support Community

milliganp · ‎03-08-2018

I am trying to use a third party boot manager (EasyBCD) to allow booting into a utility program. EasyBCD gives the error "EasyBCD has detected that your machine is booting in EFI mode. Due to limitations set by Microsoft, many of EasyBCD's multi-booting features cannot be used in EFI mode and have been disabled'.

If I go into the BIOS, enable legacy support and try to boot from the hard drive, I get 'no operating system installed'.

I realise this is Microsoft excluding competition while claiming they are doing it for security reasons but I own the PC, have paid hard cash and would like to be able to do as I please with Microsoft blocking me.

Is there a work around for this?

jorkki · ‎03-09-2018

Take a deep breath..I have no affiliations with Microsoft, Intel, HP or anyone else. I have had at least the same share of grief with them as anyone you know.

I'm just using my precious free time using the little I know trying to help people left in the cold with their computer trouble.

It should be fairly obvious that if the drive is already using GPT partitions you need to boot it in UEFI mode i.e. you need to repartition & install.

Your nemesis even has a guide how to do it either way:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-setup-installing-using...

I would be surprised if the licensing would not be based on the computer ID in BIOS.

People are using their precious remaining lifetime to try and help, so it is common courtesy to come back and tell what the solution eventually was even if you found it elsewhere. It is for the benefit of everyone.

View solution in original post

jorkki · ‎03-08-2018

Actually UEFI is an industry standard originally started by Intel. It is for greater good as it offers much better security etc.

The partition table format is different from legacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

and the entire boot process is different.

As long as the operating systems you plan to use are able to install in an UEFI/GPT environment, the Windows boot manager should work just fine without anything extra.

If you don't want to mess with the internal drives you can even create bootable USB 3 hard disks with Rufus from .iso images.

People are using their precious remaining lifetime to try and help, so it is common courtesy to come back and tell what the solution eventually was even if you found it elsewhere. It is for the benefit of everyone.

milliganp · ‎03-09-2018

It seems to be the universal rule of support forums that the first response will be both accurate and useless. My particular need is to bypass UEFI and do an old fashioned Winows XP/7 style boot. All I wanted to know is how to do this.

To be more precise I want to use a utility EasyBCD which allows booting from either an ISO image or a VHD image. I know from experience that EasyBCD works with Windows 7/8.x as long as they boot from BIOS.

I suspect that what I will have to do is the old trick of formatting the hard drive, installing Windows 7 in BIOS mode and then 'upgrade' to Windows 10. The million dollar moment will be if I find that Microsoft have locked the licence of Windows 10 on HP hardware to UEFI boot.

The alleged security benefits of UEFI are much overated outside of corporate desktops where there is a real need to lock down user machines. A technology that prevents me from doing what I want with my own PC is not of much value to me. Both Intel and Microsoft make money out of restricting user choice. I'm typing this response on an incredibly good price performance laptop which would have been $300 more and 40% slower if AMD hadn't forced Intel into upping it's game.

jorkki · ‎03-09-2018

Take a deep breath..I have no affiliations with Microsoft, Intel, HP or anyone else. I have had at least the same share of grief with them as anyone you know.

I'm just using my precious free time using the little I know trying to help people left in the cold with their computer trouble.

It should be fairly obvious that if the drive is already using GPT partitions you need to boot it in UEFI mode i.e. you need to repartition & install.

Your nemesis even has a guide how to do it either way:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-setup-installing-using...

I would be surprised if the licensing would not be based on the computer ID in BIOS.

People are using their precious remaining lifetime to try and help, so it is common courtesy to come back and tell what the solution eventually was even if you found it elsewhere. It is for the benefit of everyone.

milliganp · ‎03-09-2018

Sorry for being grumpy and thank you. I was hoping that there might be an 'easy' solution but I'll follow the links and presume that they will do the trick.

jorkki · ‎03-09-2018

No problem..:smileyhappy:

Hope it works for you and if not, there are some clever cookies here that probably have more ideas. It's easy to get one tracked without a group.

People are using their precious remaining lifetime to try and help, so it is common courtesy to come back and tell what the solution eventually was even if you found it elsewhere. It is for the benefit of everyone.

CherylG · ‎03-09-2018

@milliganp

EasyBCD offers up some advice also:

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/uefi/

@jorkki

You are a great new asset to the forum. A master of search, and always helpful and polite-it does get tougher the longer you do it.:smileyhappy:

**Click Accept as Solution on a Reply that solves your issue**
***Click the "YES" button if you think this response was helpful.***

milliganp · ‎03-10-2018

Just for completeness, secure boot requires UEFI and GPT but it is possible to use GPT on it's own, including with legacy OS that do not support secure boot and signed partitions - I've been doing that for years.

What was different in this situation was that the install of windows 10 refused to boot once I turned off UEFI mode in the BIOS.

However your hints are useful. Just for completeness the HP page on BIOS/UEFI boot is at: https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c04784866

You may ask "why do you want to do this?". Many laptops now come without CD/DVD drive but utilities like Acronis boot from CD. EasyBCD allows you to place a copy of the ISO file on your hard drive and boot from it. This saves having to always carry a set of utility USB sticks.

jorkki · ‎03-10-2018

I'm using the Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic as my volume backup solution.

I transferred the bootable WinPE backup/restore environment from the .iso file to the USB 3 backup disk using the free Rufus program.

Good to have it on the backup media itself should the whole system disk go pear shaped.

I Did not play with different options as the one I picked first seems to work just fine. My external disk is now GPT and a single NTFS volume. Boots nicely either from Windows or from BIOS.

I have not used it myself but the AIO Boot program might be worth a look if you need a more complex setup.

People are using their precious remaining lifetime to try and help, so it is common courtesy to come back and tell what the solution eventually was even if you found it elsewhere. It is for the benefit of everyone.

Notebook won't boot without EFI

Create an account on the HP Community to personalize your profile and ask a question