E5-571 Impossible to install Windows 7 in UEFI mode?

Hello,

for the last 2 days I have been trying to install Windows 7 x64 in UEFI mode on my laptop but it seems entirely impossible. Whatever I do, the boot menu (F12) just won't show any UEFI devices AT ALL, just the normal DVD and/or USB options. Obviously when I try to boot from either normal DVD or USB, Windows 7 setup freezes at the "Starting Windows" screen, I'm pretty sure that's because it is not running the EFI bootloader of the setup.

Has anyone managed to do this because I'm running out of ideas and am thinking of returning the laptop and getting another one instead.

For the record, I can't just install Windows 7 in Legacy/BIOS mode because it is then impossible to install the Synaptics Touchpad driver under Windows because the Touchpad device is not discovered for whatever reason. Seeing how there are various threads on these forums about this, this seems to be a common problem with Acer laptops.

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IronFly

You must be able to install windows 7 on UEFI BIOS (if UEFI v2.0+ is used), your HDD must completly wiped to successfully install.

i would suggest you to disable the "security boot" option from BIOS.

if your USB installation media is not recognised, it's not UEFI compatible.

try to "burn" the .iso to the USB media with rufus:

http://rufus.akeo.ie/?locale=en_US

choose Partition scheme: GPT for UEFI BIOS

FAT32 as file system

dolan123

Well I already did all of that. Disabling "Secure Boot" was the first thing I did because otherwise the system wouldn't even let me boot a Windows 7 Setup disk at all ("Security Boot Fail").

As I said, I then tried both a Windows 7 Prof. x64 (EN) official Microsoft Installation DVD and a USB flash drive (created manually as well as one created with the RUFUS utility). Both will only show up as DVD or USB devices in the boot menu, respectively. From my understanding each device should actually appear twice in the boot menu, once as normal DVD/USB option and once again as "UEFI DVD"/"UEFI USB" option. However that is absolutely not the case.

When I then proceed to select either DVD or USB to boot from, Windows setup freezes during the "Starting Windows" screen.

IronFly

If you try with a windows 8.1 USB media, it appears as USB UEFI?

dolan123

I don't own a copy of Windows 8 so I don't know.

IronFly

Ubuntu x64?

dolan123

Hello again,

no I don't own a copy of that either and to be honest I can't be bothered to download and try anymore. Since it's so damned hard or even impossible to use Windows 7 on this thing, I'm going to be returning it and getting a Lenovo Thinkpad instead.

Still, thanks for your efforts! Smiley Happy

IronFly

You welcome. Smiley Happy

Snuffy

Windows 7 will install in UEFI, but the BIOs has to be so that it will understand what Windows 7 is... some have been written so as not to see or allow installation of any lower the 8.1. also you might try change the BIOs set to CSM that is same as Legacy, then if you can see the Windows 7 media, use it to set the HDD properly. to you like, GPT or MBR. also you need to insure that your Copy of Windows 7 has EFI if you want to install in EFI mode.

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