[SOLVED] Bios setup for win 10

[Novel8]

I had earlier this year a nice updated version of Win 10...2h or something like that as i faintly recall. All went well for awhile until my desktop acted funny and i was having problems with it. It came to the point that i deleted it and since then been trying to reinstall with the creation tool. I read somewhere that i have to setup my Bios ...UEFI or legacy or both and am confused as hell with these terms. Up to now i never tinkered with the Bios, especially in installing a system. I have 2 hd's, and on one i have Win 7, without knowing anything about those above terms that i mentioned, and its been working just fine. Why do i have this problem now in just hoping to get what i had with the past constant updates? I didn't have a problem when i had those updates of win 10 working just fine, until it crashed.

 

[Colif]

Looks at other thread - https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/i-read-the-tutorial-installing-win-10.3734909/#post-22519207

So I take it you worked out your confusion? Is win 10 installed as UEFI or Legacy?
It will make adding win 7 back in more interesting if you intend to do that.

If win 7 was added first and win 10 added later, its likely win 10 added itself to the win 7 boot partition.
But since you removed win 7 hdd this time before putting win 10 on drive, its likely windows 10 threw GPT errors at you when you tried to reinstall. That is because Win 10 prefers to use UEFI boot method if it recognizes PC can run it.

I don't know what format windows ended up using, as some motherboards swap their boot methods on start up if it doesn't work first time, so you could be on legacy or UEFI

explanation of terms (see spoiler)

Spoiler

Up until 2009 all PC used Legacy bios.

They didn't know what a mouse was, you had to use arrow keys on kb to navigate them. They weren't very modifiable, they had to be a certain size and were only 32bit.

They only used Legacy boot method (it wasn't called legacy yet)

it uses MBR - MBR stands for Master Boot record

MBR drives can only have 4 partitions and max drive size is 2.2tb

Boot partition on MBR drives is always 1st partition on drive



In 2009 UEFI was released to replace Legacy bios. UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

it uses a graphical inteface that knows what a mouse is

It can be expanded and have new features added

It can use UEFI or Legacy boot method

It can boot legacy drives since it was made to replace BIOS, can't not be backwards compatable.

It supports GPT drives. GPT stands for GUID Partition Table
GUID = Global Unique ID - every GPT drive on earth has its own unique Identification number

GPT drives can have up to 256 partitions and max drive size is a silly 18.8 million tb

Boot partition on a GPT drive can be anywhere. Doesn't even have to be a drive.



All PC before win 7 used MBR

Win 7 32bit uses MBR only

Win 7 64bit can be MBR or GPT

win 10 64 bit can also be either but it prefers GPT

Win 11 only supports GPT



UEFI boot method can boot both MBR & GPT drives (as you found in other thread)

Legacy can only boot MBR, it doesn't know what GPT is for booting

 

[Novel8]

HI, sorry i forgot this thread and only remembered it after your link to this thread in my other thread. That thread got off the wrong gist of my question, when it got involved on getting the boot menu. I did get that solved wit a small pgm BCD. The gist of that other thread was that towards the end of installing win 10, somehow Google and Microsoft got involved, and so i went along with it in fear i may lose my installation. Now i have them both working, with that boot menu. I just wanted to know if I can or should reinstall win 10, like someone said with not the internet connected and have local, without Google and Microsoft pestering me.