What do you think of the UEFI BIOS?

[xoiio]

Alright, so I finally had someone bring me a Windows 8 laptop to service, more specifically, to downgrade to Windows 7, and man, it was a pain in the ass.

First of all was figuring out how to get into the BIOS menu on this thing. I figured out all I needed on the OS in five minutes or so, but it refused to let me into the bios, until I found out that they basically use a hibernate shutdown, so I used the full shutdown command in cmd (shutdown /g)to let me do that, it took way too long to find out that info though.

Next was getting windows 7 to install, first it didn't like the GPT table, so I tried to use parted magic to format it, well, that didn't work, until I found the legacy boot option, that did work and I was able to install windows 7, however, after installing the Windows 7 driver for the display from acer's website, it turned fuzzy and totally unusable (this is the acer v5-431)

So, I tried going back to the UEFI, and turns out that it also screws up old versions of windows, not just other OS'es like Linux. The setup always froze, so I went back to Legacy, and after a couple more installs trying various other drivers I gave up, and have to keep the default "Generic pnp" driver otherwise it screws up.

Not to mention that most of my other ISO's don't work now, and I find out parted magic is now paid, I found a free download though. I'd pay for it once gladly but either a year subscription or pay for every update? hell no.


*sigh* all in all this has turned out to be a MASSIVE pain in the arse, and I have a strong distaste for UEFI in my mouth, I am really not a fan, not to mention how it will affect overclocking if I want to do that on a gaming rig I make.

Anyways after all this, when I finally have enough to build a gaming rig I am going to be looking for a motherboard without UEFI bios, unless something changes and makes it less of a damn pain.

It also doesn't help that the touchpad is acting up too, but hopefully some updates fix that. I just hope as new motherboards come out they don't screw over windows 7 too.


So, what do you think of UEFI. Do you love it or hate it?

 

[ssddx]

really? i just made a system on an asrock board with uefi with a windows 7 install and things went flawlessly smooth.

provided that driver support is available for windows 7 on that windows 8 laptop why didnt you just hook the drive up to another system and format it from there then place it back in the system? it shouldnt be that hard for someone used to doing such things. honestly the only thing which would worry me is having driver support

i have no qualms with boards which have uefi.

 

[xoiio]

really? i just made a system on an asrock board with uefi with a windows 7 install and things went flawlessly smooth.

provided that driver support is available for windows 7 on that windows 8 laptop why didnt you just hook the drive up to another system and format it from there then place it back in the system? it shouldnt be that hard for someone used to doing such things. honestly the only thing which would worry me is having driver support

i have no qualms with boards which have uefi.

I would if I had more time, but I wanted to get this guy's computer done faster, and didn't feel like taking it apart, and if I had I probably would have wasted all that time, if the windows 7 install cd didn't boot I doubt windows would. I guess maybe it's just one stubborn computer. hopefully I get some more newer ones so I can remove my bias against UEFI

 

[ssddx]

didnt feel like taking it apart? it literally takes 3 minutes to take the hard drive out of most computers. or at least on most. another few minutes to boot your other pc and format then another few minutes to put it back in. overall probably less time spent than fighting with it as you did.

the path of least resistance is always the best path to pick

the windows 7 64 install disk worked fine for me. i re-used a ssd i had laying around which originally was part of a raid1 with windows on it. a full format and it played nice with a uefi board with the windows 7 64 oem disk i purchased for the build.

as i said the only real issue should have been driver support and if the laptop vendor has any for that model and windows 7

i think you just got a touchy computer or it had some wonky settings which gave you trouble. laptops tend to be much more of a pain than desktops anyways. both from a driver and hardware standpoint.

in any case i think you should wait until you have quite a bit more uefi boards worked on before you lay down a judgement.

 

[xoiio]

The hard drive from this one doesn't have a door to get to it, just the ram based on the size of the door, so I would have needed to take the whole thing apart.

 

[ssddx]

ah now i see. one of those pain in the ass models. that explains alot.