![]() With EasyBCD, it is possible to add entries for Linux and older versions of Windows to the top-level BCD menu seen when your machine first boots. Option 3: Use GRUB2 EFI as your main boot managerĮasyBCD controls the Windows boot menu, and has traditionally been used as the primary boot manager. On older machines or machines with restricted amounts of RAM (under 4 or 8 GiB) available, this can be a taxing workload for your PC, however. This approach is fully compatible (and independent from) the MBR/UEFI issue, and should work fine on most modern machines. Using any of the popular, free virtualization software like Windows Virtual PC ( 32-bit version), VirtualBox, or VMware Server it is possible to install Linux, older versions of Windows, DOS, and other operating systems in a so-called “virtual machine” which looks and acts like another PC but runs in a window on your desktop – no rebooting required – letting you run both operating systems at once. With improvements to virtualization technologies in recent years, it’s no longer hard or painful to run another operating system (or several, for that matter) in a virtual machine instead of dual-booting natively. You may need to give legacy/bios mode loading priority over UEFI in your BIOS setup/configuration (“load legacy first”). Performing a single “Automated Repair” run in EasyRE is sufficient to make your Windows installation bootable in legacy/MBR mode as well as EFI/GPT mode. However, your Windows installation is already in UEFI/GPT mode, and UEFI installations of Windows cannot be booted via the legacy MBR approach! You will need to either format ( making sure to completely reinitialize the disk to get rid of the GPT) and reinstall Windows, or else use a utility like Easy Recovery Essentials which can convert your existing installation to be bootable in both UEFI/GPT and BIOS/MBR mode in-place, without losing any data. These steps do not turn off UEFI (which isn’t possible, since that’s what your motherboard is running), but they do enable you to boot into Windows the traditional way (via the MBR). Two separate steps are often required to fully achieve this we have documented both with visual guides and sample images taken from the more-common UEFI configuration pages: Most PCs and laptops currently shipping with and using the UEFI firmware and bootloader can be configured to disable UEFI entirely and instead revert to “legacy” MBR boot mode. ![]() These limitations are not short comings of EasyBCD nor can they be lightly bypassed, they have been put in place by Microsoft. It abides by the restrictions Microsoft has placed on the bootloader that will block any attempts to load non-Microsoft-signed kernels (including chainloaders) from the top-level BCD menu, and it will create 100%-compliant UEFI entries other installed Windows operating systems on your PC. In UEFI mode, much of EasyBCD’s functionality will be disabled for the safety of your PC. You can add multiple Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 entries and you can also boot into BCD-based portable media, such as WinPE 2.0+ images.ĮasyBCD is 100% UEFI-ready. You also cannot add DOS, Linux, BSD, or Mac entries. This means that you can no longer use EasyBCD to add Windows 9x, XP, or Server 2003 entries to the BCD bootloader menu. If your Windows PC is booting in EFI mode, Microsoft has blocked the loading of legacy or non-Windows operating systems from the BCD menu. Press ‘OK’ to continue or ‘Help’ to read more about these limitations and possible workarounds. ![]() Due to limitations set by Microsoft, many of EasyBCD’s multi-booting features cannot be used in EFI mode and have been disabled. Upon starting EasyBCD on a machine that is currently booting in UEFI mode, the following dialog will be seen:ĮasyBCD has detected that your machine is currently booting in EFI mode. It is not fundamentally incompatible with dual-booting, but the way that Microsoft and PC manufacturers have implemented UEFI, it makes it a lot harder to do so. Newer computers are shipping with a BIOS replacement called UEFI – short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface – that completely changes the way operating systems interact with and are loaded from the hardware in your PC. The changes are not small and have had a massive effect on the process of dual-booting on a Windows machine. With the release of Windows 8 and Windows 10, many new computers are shipping with something known as the UEFI firmware and boot manager in place of the traditional BIOS and MBR approach to starting up your PC.
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