mahcih03 Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 Some say that it's from Beta 2, others say it's Beta 1. Can anyone tell me what was the first Vista build to ever support x64 (not Itanium) EFI boot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinClient5270 Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 (edited) As far as I know, EFI support was not available in any Vista Betas (non-Itanium). It wasn't added until SP1. https://www.anandtech.com/show/2452/4 Edited July 13, 2018 by WinClient5270 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mahcih03 Posted July 13, 2018 Author Share Posted July 13, 2018 1 hour ago, WinClient5270 said: EFI support was not available in any Vista Betas. It wasn't added until SP1. https://www.anandtech.com/show/2452/4 I know the final versions didn't include EFI support until a later service pack, but apparently, it was "available in Windows Vista Beta 2 for test and development" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinClient5270 Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 10 minutes ago, mahcih03 said: I know the final versions didn't include EFI support until a later service pack, but apparently, it was "available in Windows Vista Beta 2 for test and development" Based on that image, I'd say that UEFI support wasn't added until Beta 2, though I could be wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mahcih03 Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 12 hours ago, WinClient5270 said: Based on that image, I'd say that UEFI support wasn't added until Beta 2, though I could be wrong. Yeah, not quite sure about that either. That's why I asked which exact build featured it first Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 Without an exact date when the image was made it is meaningless. If it is BEFORE March 9 2006, then its "Windows Vista Beta 2 will have ..." is just outdated material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista Quote At the Intel Developer Forum on March 9, 2006, Microsoft announced a change in their plans to support EFI in Windows Vista, the UEFI 2.0 specification (which replaces EFI 1.10) was not completed until early 2006, and at the time of Microsoft's announcement, no firmware manufacturers had completed a production implementation which could be used for testing. As a result, the decision was made to postpone the introduction of UEFI support to Windows; support for UEFI on 64-bit platforms was postponed until Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 and 32-bit UEFI will not be supported, as Microsoft does not expect many such systems to be built as the market moves to 64-bit processors. if it is after that, it may be accurate or not. Logically, Vista Beta 1 had not such support (otherwise the slide would have said "will improve" instead) Vista Beta 2 - besides - came in three different builds (April 19, 2006 with a build number of 5365, May 1, 2006 with a build number of 5381, May 18, 2006 with a build number of 5384) so, even If it had the EFI/UEFI support, it is possible that one builf had it andf another had it not. To further add to the confusion, it seems like in Vista Beta 1 there are some EFI related files, and seemingly even in some (specific) builds of XP MCE: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/windows-xp-pro-sp2-does-have-efi-support.173183/ http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=8628 but possibly the EFI files in Vista Beta 1 were a leftover of the experimenting and were not functional or fully functional for booting on EFI/UEFI (and since the change of plans was mainly due to the overlapping of the switch from EFI 1.10 to 2.0 around the same period, it is likely that those files if they work at all, work only on a specific firmware). jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mahcih03 Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 (edited) 6 hours ago, jaclaz said: Without an exact date when the image was made it is meaningless. If it is BEFORE March 9 2006, then its "Windows Vista Beta 2 will have ..." is just outdated material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista if it is after that, it may be accurate or not. Logically, Vista Beta 1 had not such support (otherwise the slide would have said "will improve" instead) Vista Beta 2 - besides - came in three different builds (April 19, 2006 with a build number of 5365, May 1, 2006 with a build number of 5381, May 18, 2006 with a build number of 5384) so, even If it had the EFI/UEFI support, it is possible that one builf had it andf another had it not. To further add to the confusion, it seems like in Vista Beta 1 there are some EFI related files, and seemingly even in some (specific) builds of XP MCE: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/windows-xp-pro-sp2-does-have-efi-support.173183/ http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=8628 but possibly the EFI files in Vista Beta 1 were a leftover of the experimenting and were not functional or fully functional for booting on EFI/UEFI (and since the change of plans was mainly due to the overlapping of the switch from EFI 1.10 to 2.0 around the same period, it is likely that those files if they work at all, work only on a specific firmware). jaclaz I've just tried loading Vista Beta 1's EFI files in the shell, but it gives an "IA32 not supported by this x64 shell", maybe the Beta 1 was supporting Itanium's EFI instead of UEFI Also, it would make sense that 5384 supports UEFI since WinHEC 2006 was on May, I'll try it and see if that's true UPDATE: I've just installed Vista Build 5384 x64 using Windows 7's UEFI PE, and after replacing winload.efi, it boots! There's only "an error while editing boot entries", but it booted up in EFI mode! Edited July 14, 2018 by mahcih03 Vista 5384 x64 works in UEFI! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 What hardware are you testing on or are you using a VM? I remember not seeing any systems with UEFI capability in the desktop boards until 2011, so there was no way for me to test these capabilities when Vista (or even SP1) came out. It was a thing on Server boards, but the ones I remember having UEFI 2.0 would only allow an EFI boot with RAID enabled. And then by 2011, I was only trying to get UEFI PXE boot to work. I recall those "early" days of UEFI 2.3.1, it took manufacturers a bit of time to iron out the bugs in their implementation. If you are using hardware for testing, you probably want to use something from 2013 or newer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mahcih03 Posted July 16, 2018 Author Share Posted July 16, 2018 1 minute ago, Tripredacus said: What hardware are you testing on or are you using a VM? I remember not seeing any systems with UEFI capability in the desktop boards until 2011, so there was no way for me to test these capabilities when Vista (or even SP1) came out. It was a thing on Server boards, but the ones I remember having UEFI 2.0 would only allow an EFI boot with RAID enabled. And then by 2011, I was only trying to get UEFI PXE boot to work. I recall those "early" days of UEFI 2.3.1, it took manufacturers a bit of time to iron out the bugs in their implementation. If you are using hardware for testing, you probably want to use something from 2013 or newer. I've used VMware Workstation 14, which uses UEFI class 2 since it's still using the legacy graphics driver Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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