Dogway

jaclaz, your last post here had me scratching my head. In that thread I was just explaining that there wasn't any refrain for installing XP on a board with a UEFI chip, because for the time being UEFI isn't mandatory (yet), so I wasn't worried about that. About whether I could use UEFI or not, now re-reading this thread I remember why I wasn't concerned about it anymore since I had already planted on my mind the idea that I would be able to run UEFI (basically thanks to this post). I now finally got to understand it. I checked the mobo documentation as allen2 suggested and there's an option called CSM (Compatibility Support Module) which basically is whether to enable UEFI in BIOS mode, or UEFI mode (or as MBR boot capable or not kind of thing), so unlike my previous thinking, there are not "2 BIOS'es" but only one which you can choose to use in legacy mode or not. You started talking about bootcamp, hybrid partitioning, etc and really got my head spinning hehe, now all is clear, not without hurdles I suspect, but surprises will come after I build the rig. I still have a question, do I need to partitionate a fresh out of the BOX SSD in windows, or can I do it in UEFI?

Thanks a lot for help j7n, it seems realtek really improved something. I'm not going to need much more than the basics for audio, stereo mix and no more distracting interferences are basic on my mind. I can always buy a card if I need something else. I really like this board because it looks stable from the electric current standpoint. You said that all components have drivers, but I can't agree, USB3 or AHCI are 2 examples. The rest of drivers are hidden, you gotta rummage deeply to find (if you are lucky and persistant) an already obsolete driver. If you call that support... If you squeeze it, you could say this is the last generation for XP, and that's only by chance, we already know Intel only openly supported XP up to last Ivy generation.

Yes radio is on the speakers, so that might be the reason. But on headphones there is a horrible noise that drives you mad in seconds, it's not bearable, and you can listen when the hard drive is actually working, etc. I doubt this could be the standard today but I'm just asking. I also would like to know if it has mixout recording ability, how do I know about that?

I don't say it can't be installed, but you would get driver issues, so for me that part related to device manager is hard to believe Did Intel supply the RST drivers in the CD or...? And the other drivers? I doubt they handed the drivers so easily, just what I think.

I go with matx because I don't want the hassle of big towers anymore. I'm not gonna plug many (if any) additional PCIe cards or anything, with a bluray driver I'm done. What Iiked about that sniper z77 was the audio card. I just want to know how crap are today realtek cards... on my acer laptop of 2009 I couldn't hear anything while on silence, but with this Dell workstation I hear the radio and a strong ugly noise. What I mean is I don't need astounding sound, I only need something that is not crappy and have mixout sound (for recording software based audio), just the basics.

It's not "officially" supported. I finally managed to find drivers (haven't tested though) for my asus mobo but it required some research. The same shady research that prevents mobo manufacturers to openly link the drivers in their mobo support pages (they would be glad to content 1/3 of the user base, after all this is not their war). You can follow my efforts in this thread. If you can add something or find an official Intel RST driver that would be cool.

Thanks allen2, with the gathered drivers here and there and your help I finally decided to go Haswell. I really don't mind whether it is officially supported or not as far as I'm able to install XP. I know this will be my last XP system. USB3 can't be helped, it would be the same story even with Ivy. The only thing I don't like of this board compared to the Gigabyte is audio, ok Gigabyte's is an awesome one, but the question is whether gryphon's is crappy or not. I really don't want to put on my headphones and hear noise or radio, what is the current standard on these new Realtek, is this normal?

yeah, too bad its only for their boards. Anyway I'm not fully sure if a chipset driver is necessary for either install XP (I don't think so but... better safe than sorry when talking about investing money) or if it would hit performance badly since my past experiences told me that built-in drivers were pretty much enough. Also a question to be sure, does Wifi (I have a wifi USB) need the Ethernet LAN controller in order to work, or it is independent?

sorry jaclaz, I faintly remember that discussion, I on purpose parked that mentally for later to focus more on hardware, as you see I still haven't fully decided what to do, what I meant is that there is no physical constraint to install XP on a board sporting UEFI (regardless whether you are gonna use it or not). I nonetheless will re-read the thread when I got more time, because you surely give out valuable insights. tomasz86: I'm not very interested on AMD, it would be to start my "research" from scratch just one month away from my purchase, and I'm more likely to hit a miss than not, I now rapidly googled a bit but it says mono-core performance is not as good, etc, normally you stick to brands that gave you good experiences and for me those are Intel, nvidia, etc because the software I use (CG) work nice on them. For the moment I mentally switched completely from the 4670k+gryphon combo to a sniper.m3+3770k, 3770k is still a bit more expensive than the new i5 but I plan on buy a second hand unit, what I lose for this generation I gain it by switching to a higher grade CPU, despite boards not being as good. Then I did a bit further research on regards of Intel XP drivers for Haswell, I found 2 drivers, for the Graphics and the SATA drivers. It seems they still make the drivers internally but not for the public, I guess they are delivered on demand for companies and stuff. So what is all I need in order to make XP work on a Haswell mobo?: 　・Audio Driver (not necessary if realtek) 　・LAN Driver (Network driver) (available inside Win7 driver package) 　・Intel 8 Series/C220 Chipset Driver (available?) 　・Intel HD Graphics Driver (available) 　・Intel Sata Driver (available official or modded) 　・Intel Management Engine (available) 　・Intel USB 3.0 Controller (never officially supported for XP so unrelated to Haswell: notes)

I don't find a reason to not work, it's UEFI just like BIOS, I would say it's quite independent of OS. I'm gonna send a mail to Intel and ask whether they are going to make XP drivers or not, my next 6 years computer depends on that. edit: By the way, only a question, is there any specific (Intel) driver tied to the z87 chipset that prevents me to download old driver versions an be good to go? Because the z77 (XP) drivers seem to be already outdated and well sorry to complain further but the Intel driver webpage is a complete mess so you never know what's actually in there.

And for new too I hope! The problem is I normally use the PC for intensive tasks, encoding, rendering, so staying at old hardware is not going to help me... : ( I'm gonna install W7 on a VM and check how far I can tweak it to feel comfortable, maybe with a classic shell ©, 7plus, some autohotkey scripts, an aaron-arts theme and some new icons I can start to feel more at home... lol Depending on that and during one month I will make my decision whether to go with a gryphon mobo (z87, W7), or a gigabyte sniper m5 (z77, Dual XP-W7)

I really don't see it. I made a quick google, and couldn't find anything serious, there are some sporadic and niche modded drivers for certain cards, etc. But I don't see a whole mobo (well actually the Intel stuff which is practically most of it) being supported by modded drivers. I hope to be wrong but... for now is more words than anything IMHO. @CharlotteTheHarlot: I know it will be futile but I was really thinking on sending a complain email to Intel. I'm "one more" annoyed customer that I expect to sum for a great number if many of us do the same. Really, what was their claim for dropping support all of sudden, did they say something on that? I mean what was the idea behind it? 1/3 of computers still use XP, and the OS is one year away from being unsupported by microsoft, what's the point of dropping support this year and not next, it doesn't make sense.

Yes, no April 2014 or whatever, XP died with the new Haswell targeted motherboards, not to manufacturer fault's but mostly Intel for its Intel parts (Audio, LAN, SATA, etc) lacking XP drivers. Intel is, just after Microsoft the one encouraging this position. This is only a personal cry out when I found out after months (4 months!) of being decided to get a new Haswell CPU and after these recent days when refining my mobo choices that to my surprise I got to know that the new ones are not XP compatible, WTF? Couldn't they just wait for the next year when XP becomes officially unsupported? are they in a hurry or what? I'm very disappointed because I had on mind to set up a DUAL BOOT with W7 to make the transition the least traumatic experience possible. I really don't know what to do, I'm surprised that after all these months reading here and there for building my rig nobody made this claim. XP is now officially outdated (only useable with old hardware), and this really pushed me to consider on building my new rig around a z77 based mobo. I have been also said that XP and boards with UEFI isn't recommended. What's wrong with it?

I didn't know XP had problems with UEFI, what's the deal? I'm very sad, this kinda sounds like a bye bye for XP against my will.

Hello I'm going to build a new miniPC rig, and I still don't want to fully make the leap to 7. I hate everything onwards XP but I'm aware that sooner than later I will see myself forced to switch to a newer OS, I just don't want it now to be that moment. Maybe for my next rig (in 6 year aprox). With this in mind I'm finding difficulties to find drivers for a mobo I had on mind, the Asus Z87 Gryphon, I find this to be a quality and solid mATX mobo, and still not overpriced. The specification says supported OS 7 and 8, does this mean I can't use XP with it? I go to its Drivers Page but there are lots of them not listed, for example I found surfing around there is a XP driver for the audio controller, but couldn't find one for the LAN I217-V, and I'm starting to think I won't find the Intel Rapid Storage drivers as well. Can anyone advise me on this?

Thank you. It's gonna be a real mess, the mix of a dual boot with xp x86 and win7 x64 AND a motherboard with UEFI and BIOS is surely gonna trigger more than one hurdle on the way. Will "annoy" back again when my hands are on it, in a few months hopefully.

Mind you that I had read all those links previously, so my questions were formulated with that on mind. I expected at this point to have things a little bit more clear... let's check what I can get from your posts. You mean this guy? He says he managed to boot windows 7 in BIOS on a UEFI board, my question is about doing that and at the same time enter UEFI and make board modifications. One "no-problem", ok. "Problem free" I mind read you, is that right? Didn't see any clarification when I read that yesterday, it only talks about partitions. I had searched before, and I found what most of us find which is the wiki. But that only talks about UEFI as a technology, not as an end product, so in terms of end-user usability the mentioned "advantages" fall into the vague category. http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038719697&postcount=2 So to simplify things up: Since I'm using a MBR partition table, I should be good to go by formatting the SSD in WindowsXP, prior to the dual boot? (I read that W7 sometimes screw the partitioning) I see people having SEVERE issues for installing W7 on a MBR disk, seems W7 wants a disk without format, but I don't want the 100Mb partition W7 makes, there comes my thought on pre-partitioning the disk on XP. Then there is the key question I did several posts above: All I read are UEFI as a new boot platform, and not what I am interested at this point which is as a motherboard tweaking platform. I'm interested on that because I want to manage UEFI BIOS setting profiles, XMP profiles, extended FAN control, etc will I still be able to do that or am I limited by booting from old BIOS?

jaclaz, can I still make a dual boot on a MBR formatted SSD and still access UEFI? Has UEFI any advantage over BIOS (more/better parameters specially for OC, like more fan control, etc)? is Windows 7 install problematic in this "MBR+Old BIOS" scenario?

I think my mobo (future mobo actually) has both BIOS and UEFI, it's a microATX, the Asus Z87M-Plus. In the specs it says: I would assume that if it has BIOS, then it allows MBR partitions as well? I think I'm being redundant here but for the sake of confirmation, UEFI needs GPT partitions no matter what, right? That would lead me to make a dual boot XP and 7 as I did before with grub4dos based on BIOS. In this situation can I still go to UEFI bios and change settings? Aside the shiny UI what else would I be missing without UEFI, more parameters/control probably (ie for OC)? edit: I'm kinda trying to ask if UEFI boot is something apart of UEFI as a BIOS... hope I'm being understood. link

hehehe meat for some weeks. straight to the point thank you, this doesn't sound as smooth as my last thread. I gave it a fast look over and it seems to have some/many drawbacks. At this point maybe I should ask if you recommend me to do that or it is too risky, having on mind that it is XP & 7, so I don't know if that makes it easier or less risky. On another note, what else would I be losing without Windows7 on UEFI? I read that it only shaves a few (~3) seconds at boot. Would I still be able to use UEFI as a BIOS replacement?

Well pretty much what the titles says. I'm a bit disappointed. I found out that I need Windows7 for some high performance jobs, for example: SSD TRIM command, AVX/AVX2 support, "better" multicore performance, VS2012 made software (XPx64 support dropped), dedicated CG Software (Mari,etc)... Ok, so I decided to switch the XPx64 of the dual boot with Win7x64, that's fine, so now I make a new rig with an SSD from which I will boot both OS's. The new mobo will be UEFI, that means among other things that the OS boot will be faster, so I decide to install XP and Win7 on UEFI. And I was happy until I find that, in order to do that it requires partitioning the SSD as GPT (instead of MBR) and that that's unsupported by XPx86, meaning... single OS Win7 on UEFI on the SSD, or Dual Boot without UEFI on the SSD!! Is that right or I am missing something, gone mad or.... please tell me, can't believe what my eyes see. PD: And just to be on the safe side, do you think the next ASUS z87 mobos will support XpSP3? I mean AHCI drivers and all. Specially the Asus Z87M-Plus which I will acquire. Thank you! PD2: seems there is a way indeed, need further research... (or not... probably I misread) PD3: Further reading on the link, it sounds as the GPT partition table makes some legacy partitions for MBR, does that means I can install both 7 on UEFI and XP without it on same SSD?

Yes I know, actually I was a bit reluctant to add video processing, because my workflow related to video is not of your typical sony vegas, and the like. I use avisynth and most filters there rely on CPU, I don't even think x264 uses CUDA, it uses AVX2 which is great but that's CPU. About Photoshop I use CS3, that's a fine version for me and IIRC previous to all the rage with GPU acceleration which I tried and disliked so much. I agree with you I need a GFX Card specially for CG, but I don't have that money now, I will go with the cheapest Quadro when I resume my CG works. In the same vein I am going with i5, i7 is a bit pricey, I will try to shave those 30% of increased performance HT gives you by overclocking the i5. I'm coming from a 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo system from 2007, DDR2 RAM at 1333. Any rig I make now will feel like blazing fast, add to that that I am building a miniPC and it's ok for me not having the latest of the latest. I'm excited though haha but still need to wait a few more months for some components.

Yeah, probably in an attempt to convince myself it was the right move I looked for the possible benefits, and it happens to be more than I thought... SSD TRIM command, AVX/AVX2 support, "better" multicore performance, VS2012 made software (XPx64 support dropped), dedicated CG Software (Mari,etc), and more than probably lack of drivers for new(er) systems. it could be interesting if there are more to add. Still main use is x86, but for the eventual renders/encodings of 100% workload W7 could be a safe bet, even as much as I hated it. Linux is another option but I'm too tired to start with a new OS from scratch, I don't have that spare time, energy to dive in, but great option too.

Yes, I know that the 840 Pro might work, with might meaning it might not work as well. I look forward more concise answers by people with experience with these drives (830, 840). One thing is that the Magician tool software is XP compatible, and another that Samsung sell their SSD to Vista and later. Which leaves me scratching my head... To add to the mix, this note on the release notes: edit: What I have at last unfortunately decided is to switch XP x64 for 7 x64 in my dual boot. I need x64 for CG work, but the samsung doesn't support XP x64, by installing Win7 I also ensure to do the TRIM once in a while... my main OS will still be WinXP so well... let's live with it, XP starts to show its age (sigh : '(

jaclaz, is there a way to remove the boot loader at all. I would like to have it only at invoked, say pressing F9 or something of that sort, is that possible? Also is this method of DUAL Boot fine for a SSD? previous SSD partition under Win7 VM? Edit: well maybe it's unrelated or not, but I will necessarily by force be urged to install Win7 in my next PC Dual Boot. My current PC which I did this Dual Boot (XPx86/XPx64) is showing its age and doesn't deliver so I'm going to buy a new one with an SSD, and XPx64 is not compatible with these drives, add to the mix that many CG software now requires Win7 and that in contrast to XPx86 it can send natively the TRIM commands I consider it to be a necessary evil... : '(