How the heck do I get EFI to boot an OS install CD?

[jdmulloy]

I don't understand how EFI works. All it does is boot into a useless shell. I've tried the Windows 8 DVD ISO as well as Fedora 16. Am I missing something? Is there some command I have to type in? Why doesn't EFI just boot from the DVD drive like a real BIOS?

[BillG]

Because it is different!

http://www.uefi.org/about/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011 ... -uefi.aspx

[wearywanderer]

I'm trying to create a EFI guest running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 on a Windows 7 Ent SP1 host with VirtualBox 4.1.18

Screenshot of the settings of the VM showing EFI enabled:

1.JPG (48.03 KiB) Viewed 193725 times

Screenshot of the settings of the VM showing VT-x enabled:

2.JPG (31.91 KiB) Viewed 193725 times

Screenshot of the settings of the VM showing the image loaded onto the CD/DVD Drive:

3.JPG (49.03 KiB) Viewed 193725 times

contd...

[wearywanderer]

When I start the VM it asks me to "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD..."

4.JPG (21.56 KiB) Viewed 193725 times

No matter how hard or how often I'm hitting it boots to the EFI Shell
Based on the Microsoft Technet article, Installing Windows to an EFI-Based Computer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 21(v=ws.10)) I "select the device with the Windows installation media, and then start the EFI boot application":

5.JPG (83.97 KiB) Viewed 193725 times

But it does nothing:

6.JPG (18.82 KiB) Viewed 193725 times

What am I doing wrong?

[BillG]

I have never tried it, but this is what the manual says.

Note that the VirtualBox EFI support is experimental and will be enhanced as EFI matures and becomes more widespread. While Mac OS X and Linux guests are known to work fine, Windows guests are currently unable to boot with the VirtualBox EFI implementation.

[Kennyngston]

Hi,

I am facing the same issue.

I'm trying to boot a Win8 (64 bit) ISO (bootable ISO9660) on VM 4.2.12 with EFI, and I get the shell as well.
Is there any progress with this issue?

I get this error, while the virtual machine is booting:

I get this error while VM boots

win8isoerror.png (22.49 KiB) Viewed 193042 times

This is the shell, while the ISO is added as storage to the VM.
(BLK1:\ ls produces the same output as fs0:\ ls, just didn't fit in the screen shot)

efi shell

win8isoefishell.png (33.69 KiB) Viewed 193042 times

The boot file is in fact on the ISO:

bootx64.efi

win8isoefibootfile.png (18.64 KiB) Viewed 193042 times

In the motherboard config I have EFI enabled with 1GB RAM (tried with 4 as well), on the processor tab I have PAE/NX enabled, on the acceleration tab I have enabled the VT-x/AMD-V and Nested Paging (if needed I can attach screenshots as well).


Side note: the ISO boots when I'm not using EFI on the VM.

Is there anything I'm doing wrong?

[Perryg]

@Kennyngston,

You didn't read the last post before you added this.

Here is the link to the section in the users manual if you don't believe what BillG said.
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#idp18308032

[Kennyngston]

@Kennyngston,

You didn't read the last post before you added this.

Here is the link to the section in the users manual if you don't believe what BillG said.

Actually I did, I was just hoping for an implementation since July

Regards,
Kenny

[tom12454]

This is how I got Kubuntu 15.04, 64 bit running an a VM with EFI enabled:

Settings:
* System -> Motherboard -> Extended Features: Enable EFI
* Boot HDD must be attached to SATA controller! IDE, SCSI or SAS will not work (bug report: Ticket #14142)

EFI Boot Screen:

When the UEFI boot screen appears, it should show blkX: and fsX: devices. fsX: are file systems accessible by the boot loader. If the EFI boot partition does not appear as fsX:, the boot manager will not be able to boot. This will happen if the EFI partition is on a disk attached to an IDE, SCSI or SAS controller (see above).

Boot from the EFI boot shell (for Ubuntu system, others may be different):

efi\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

Once you know what to boot (in my case: efi\ubuntu\grubx64.efi), put this line into a new file startup.nsh in the root directory of the EFI file system. Then, the EFI boot loader will boot it automatically after 5s.

[Lei12]

* Boot HDD must be attached to SATA controller!

How can we do that ?
In storage, Host Drive 'E:' is attached to Controller: IDE and it cannot be changed

[mpack]

In storage, Host Drive 'E:' is attached to Controller: IDE and it cannot be changed

Sure it can, provided the VM is shut down.

[Lei12]

With Boot HDD effectively attached to SATA controller,
after trying Debian 8.4.0 (64bit), Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (64bit) and a Ubuntu 32bit version,
I could only get the VM installed with a Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (64bit),
with no need to deal with any of the previous UEFI menu.

All 3 first attempts did not succeed since startup.nsh file access permission was denied.

[Rootman]

I have setup a Windows 10 EFI boot without issue.

Just as a reminder, you also have to remember you can only EFI boot a 64 bit OS on a 64 bit processor, 32 bit OS will not work.

[socratis]

Just out of curiosity... Why do you have to boot from EFI? Isn't BIOS good enough? Especially when VBox says it's not supported?

[Rootman]

Just out of curiosity... Why do you have to boot from EFI? Isn't BIOS good enough? Especially when VBox says it's not supported?

Just to test it, there were previous messages just like the OP's - "How do I boot EFI" or "Does EFI work?" I did it to prove it works, and it does. I seldom use the VM as Windows 10 still has a lot of performance issues under Virtualbox.

I did a Win 7 updated Win 10 that boots MBR and a previous 32 bit Win 10 that's MBR. Just wanted to prove it works.