Windows in EFI mode

[shaithis]

So, I installed Windows 8 in EFI mode a few weeks ago and thought I'd give a small post to talk about it.

Firstly, it creates an extra partition on the install drive...no biggy. Apart from that I saw nothing else during installation that was different.

The next visible thing was that on startup instead of getting the Windows logo, you get the OEM logo of your motherboard manufacturer. This was quite a shock, although I quite like it.

Now, EFI was supposed to boot faster....so I was quite gutted that it booted no faster.....BUT....it does seem to learn! Within a few reboots I was noticing some big boot time differences. In fact, it started skipping my RAID BIOS initialisations, yet RAID still functioned and still booted fine - very clever.
Now that I have been using it a while, boot times are ~20secs from cold power on.....this is with 2 RAID controllers active, 3 RAID arrays and a number of stand-alone disks - very impressive.

Day-to-day use.....everything seems the same as always.

My one problem: Resume from sleep is totally broken It sleeps fine but the PC resets when resuming and the PC goes into a full (slow!) boot. Even with all the latest Windows 8 patches this is happening. Unfortunately I didn't ever try Windows 7 in EFI mode on this PC so I cannot tell if the issue is due to EFI or EFI and Windows 8.

Overall, I am quite happy. It has reduced my boot times quite substantially and I am confident that the resume from sleep issue will be rectified by a MS patch or a BIOS update sooner-or-later.

[phil4]

I've used UEFI on Windows 7 and found no real problems or benefits. Everything works as I expect and nothing that I don't. Even to the point where I checked that UEFI was turned on.

[Apex]

How do you set Windows 7 to work in EFI mode, are there any tricks / tips ?

[pipTheGeek]

Windows 8 boot speed is probably more related to it's "fast boot" feature. Basically, when you tell Windows 8 to shutdown, it doesn't... It logs you off and then hibernates. (Actually, I think it is only kernel and device drivers that are hibernated, no user-land process remain).
@Apex, according to this technet article if the PC is EFI then windows will only install in EFI mode and the enable / disable EFI is an option in the "BIOS". So if you have Windows installed, I'm guessing it is in EFI mode.

Regards the extra partition you mention, Windows 7 has done that on all my PC's and none of them are UEFI. I thought it was just normal windows 7 / 8 behaviour.

[Apex]

Reading that just made my head exploded :s