[SOLVED] Dual-booting Windows 7 and Windows Vista on UEFI Ivy Bridge with 7 installed first.

[Jakob99]

Laptop:

Dell Latitude E6530

Intel Ivy Bridge, Core i5, HD 4000.

16GB of Ram

Windows 7 with UEFI mode (No Basic Display Adapter) on 4TB SSD.

 

Installation Media:

Windows Vista x64 SP2 Updated to 2017 EOL (for Extended Kernel) formatted in Rufus with UEFI\GPT settings.

 

Hi! I was wondering if anyone knows how to run Windows Vista SP2 with UEFI enabled on Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5? If so, what do I need to do, and how do I dual-boot it with Windows 7 when Windows 7 is installed first. The ISO has all the updates from Vista launch to its 2017 discontinuation. The Windows 7 installation on UEFI was made possible by deleting Basic Display Adapter after installing it through Mini Windows 10's DISM. UEFI is needed if I want to use the full 4TB SSD space. Any help on this is greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I solved this issue. You can get Windows Vista working under UEFI (on devices that support Windows 8 and later such as Sandy/Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, etc) using UEFI7. Just replace the Windows 7 ISO with the Windows Vista updated to 2017 eol ISO (if you are using that ISO). Details on how to do this can be found here: https://vinaypundith.github.io/windows_7_efi_guide/

Edited October 4, 2021 by Jakob99

[winvispixp]

maybe try copying the install.wim from that vista iso to your modified win 7 iso and delete the win 7s one 

i dont know if it works, never tried it

[Jakob99]

2 hours ago, winvispixp said:

maybe try copying the install.wim from that vista iso to your modified win 7 iso and delete the win 7s one 

i dont know if it works, never tried it

It will not unfortunately. And I did not use an ISO. I extracted its contents and installed via DISM through mini windows 10.

[SIW2]

"I extracted its contents and installed via DISM through mini windows 10."

Did you fix the drive letter after applying the vista image?

What happened when you tried to boot into it ?

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by SIW2

[SIW2]

12 hours ago, Jakob99 said:

I was wondering if anyone knows how to run Windows Vista SP2 with UEFI enabled on Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5

I had vista running fine in efi mode on an ivybridge b75m mobo with i5-3570. Didnt need to delete basic graphics.

[Jakob99]

54 minutes ago, SIW2 said:

I had vista running fine in efi mode on an ivybridge b75m mobo with i5-3570. Didnt need to delete basic graphics.

What did you do to get it working? I did a trick that involved making the drive up as UEFI in Rufus, going to USB:\efi\boot, delete the bootx64.efi file there, going to Install.wim and opening it up in 7zip, extract bootmgfw.efi and copy it to USB:\efi\boot and then rename it to bootx64. This did not work and produced a BSOD, which I think was 0x01E or something. I also just realized this same file is in Boot.wim as well. Gonna try that one and see what happens. Regardless, I am still in need of your solution in case this does not work either.

[SIW2]

The simplest way is format the usb stick fat32 using disk management.

Mark the fat32 partition active.

Extract the contents of win7 installation iso onto the usb stick.

Rename windows 7 install.wim to something like install7.wim - or delete it.

Copy the vista install.wim into the sources folder on the usb stick .

 ( If your vista install.wim is larger than 4gb, then split it first and copy install.swm and install2.swm or however many there are into the sources folder.)

Boot the usb stick in efi mode to do the installation

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by SIW2

[Jakob99]

10 minutes ago, SIW2 said:

The simplest way is format the usb stick fat32 using disk management.

Mark the fat32 partition active.

Extract the contents of win7 installation iso onto the usb stick.

Rename windows 7 install.wim to something like install7.wim - or delete it.

Copy the vista install.wim into the sources folder on the usb stick .

 ( If your vista install.wim is larger than 4gb, then split it first and copy install.swm and install2.swm into the sources folder.)

Boot the usb stick in efi mode to do the installation

 

For future reference, how do I split the install.wim?

[SIW2]

It is best to use the vanilla win7 iso, I am not sure what happens if using win7 media that has been updated with nvme updates, because the setup files are also updated versions in that case.

[SIW2]

6 minutes ago, Jakob99 said:

For future reference, how do I split the install.wim?

Lots of tools can do it. I use wimlib which is command line.

It can be done easily with gimagex, which is a free tool with simple gui https://www.autoitconsulting.com/site/software/gimagex/

[Jakob99]

Just now, SIW2 said:

Lots of tools can do it. I use wimlib which is command line.

It can be done easily with gimagex, which is a free tool with simple gui https://www.autoitconsulting.com/site/software/gimagex/

Cool! Would Windows 7 with SP1 work then?

[SIW2]

24 minutes ago, Jakob99 said:

Cool! Would Windows 7 with SP1 work then?

Yes, the SP1 "media refresh" win7 iso work fine for this.  It doesnt have the vista license files, so it shows you the win 7 equivalent. Dont worry about that, it actually installs vista.

If you want setup to allow you to choose any edition of vista that is in the install.wim, delete the ei.cfg file from the win7 sources folder on the usb stick.

Edited October 2, 2021 by SIW2

[Jakob99]

1 hour ago, SIW2 said:

Yes, the SP1 "media refresh" win7 iso work fine for this.  It doesnt have the vista license files, so it shows you the win 7 equivalent. Dont worry about that, it actually installs vista.

If you want setup to allow you to choose any edition of vista that is in the install.wim, delete the ei.cfg file from the win7 sources folder on the usb stick.

Cool! I will try this now and see what happens. Also, I am installing this alongside Windows 7 (Windows 7 is already installed and is what I am using to type this), which is also in UEFI. Do I also need to create a hidden partition for Vista or no?

[Jakob99]

8 hours ago, SIW2 said:

The simplest way is format the usb stick fat32 using disk management.

Mark the fat32 partition active.

Extract the contents of win7 installation iso onto the usb stick.

Rename windows 7 install.wim to something like install7.wim - or delete it.

Copy the vista install.wim into the sources folder on the usb stick .

 ( If your vista install.wim is larger than 4gb, then split it first and copy install.swm and install2.swm or however many there are into the sources folder.)

Boot the usb stick in efi mode to do the installation

 

I followed these steps, but my BIOS is unable to see the USB in the boot options. When I hit F2 to enter the BIOS, it only shows Windows Boot Manager as the available boot device, meaning I cannot make the USB boot first. Gonna restart and see what F12 does.

F12 allowed me into the USB drive. Will report back later on what happens.

I tried your steps and they did not work. The first time, I created as an MBR drive as I tried GPT, but could not get it to mark the drive as active, like you said to do. I booted it up with F12, it saw everything, but could not install it. I then recreated it using GPT, but when trying to boot it using F12, it told me that booting the device failed. USB was not being detected under UEFI for some reason, so I added it in manually through the BIOS, and that's where the error came from. I then ran setup through the already installed Windows 7 and chose the Vista drive I created, and it seemed to work, but when it rebooted the second time, I was greeted with this BSOD: https://imgur.com/a/EM51oPF The BSOD is 0x01E. Not sure what else to do here.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Jakob99

[SIW2]

"but could not get it to mark the drive as active, like you said to do"

At cmd prompt:

diskpart

sel vol v  ( replace v with the letter of your usb stick fat32 partition )

act

exi

Then close diskmgmt and open it again to see the change

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by SIW2