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Installing with EFI

Posted: 7. Dec 2009, 03:15
by Entegy
I see VB has added EFI support. However, I can't seem to boot from the ISO of Windows 7 I attached to the virtual machine. It says boot failed for every possible device to boot from, then gives me a shell prompt. How would I get this thing to boot from the ISO in EFI?

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 7. Dec 2009, 04:47
by Hachiman
Entegy wrote:I see VB has added EFI support. However, I can't seem to boot from the ISO of Windows 7 I attached to the virtual machine. It says boot failed for every possible device to boot from, then gives me a shell prompt. How would I get this thing to boot from the ISO in EFI?
Windows 7 and Vista UEFI boot still requires some changes in VBox EFI boot, atm, and we are woking on that. But the the picture you get bit different from expected (it won't boot, but bootloader should anyway ask if you'd like to boot from CD/DVD). Could you please make sure, that you selected OS type Win7/64 on VM creation (bitness here controls bitnes of firmware being loaded) and that your ISO image is a image of Win7 x64? Win7 i386 hasn't got EFI boot loader.

Currently you might play with EFI boot of FC11(i386/x86_64) and FC12(i386 with kernel command line acpi=off).

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 10. Dec 2009, 06:48
by Entegy
I was originally using a 32-bit ISO of Windows 7. I changed the VM type to Windows 7 (64-bit) and used a 64-bit ISO, but the exact same thing happens: I get "boot failed" on every device possible and then a shell prompt whether or not I press Esc to skip startup.nsh

This is the screen.

I'll try Fedora 12 for now though, thanks.

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 10. Dec 2009, 08:52
by Hachiman
Entegy wrote:I was originally using a 32-bit ISO of Windows 7. I changed the VM type to Windows 7 (64-bit) and used a 64-bit ISO, but the exact same thing happens: I get "boot failed" on every device possible and then a shell prompt whether or not I press Esc to skip startup.nsh

This is the screen.
Will try reproduce it here, but note we're still unable load Win(Vista/7) further "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD". That happens because WinX loader can't build right page table basing on Memory map provided by Vbox/EFI. We're in working on this and hope soon we'll able to make you happy with Windows UEFI guests.
Entegy wrote: I'll try Fedora 12 for now though, thanks.
I'd recommend Fedora 11 (x86/x86_64) liveCD. FC12 has changed their requirement to ACPI especially for x86_64, so if you'll play with FC12 don't forget add acpi=off in grub menu in kernel start parameters. The suggestions in http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=24456 is still relevant, we're working with Fedora community to clarify missed parts in EFI or X to make liveCD booting as seamless as possible.

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 10. Dec 2009, 19:16
by Entegy
Oh I should be using the LiveCD? I download the install-only one (64-bit), which just gave me a black screen in the VM. The machine didn't even reach the VirtualBox logo splash screen.

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 12. Dec 2009, 08:11
by Hachiman
Entegy wrote:Oh I should be using the LiveCD? I download the install-only one (64-bit), which just gave me a black screen in the VM. The machine didn't even reach the VirtualBox logo splash screen.
Right, you need liveCD or netinstall, e.g.
http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releas ... os/images/
http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releas ... os/images/
you need boot.iso, livecds available from fedoraproject.org links here points to fc12 release, but I recommend try FC 11 atm.

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 30. Sep 2010, 10:56
by Ivan Sidorin
Hello,

Any progress with booting Windows 7 with EFI support?

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 12. Apr 2011, 12:12
by kinimod
I'm too very interested in this. Still getting the same error in 4.0.4.

Any progress please?

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 1. Jul 2011, 04:19
by slownumb
also another one interested in this feature....

Re: Installing with EFI

Posted: 21. Sep 2011, 14:34
by EarthQ
I am trying to install Windows 8 Developer Preview x64 in a VM with EFI enabled on VB 4.1.2r73507 on Windows 7 x64 host.
The EFI-enabled VM boots the ISO image properly, but "Loading Files" goes deadly slow compared to non-EFI configuration.
After finish, it goes black and nothing else seems to be going on ...

In my W8DP case, the ISO booted itself, but if go to EFI shell, you may try http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... S.10).aspx