bobdamnit Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 The only way is using a linux live usb, install gdisk and use it to convert to GPT/Protective MBR (Pure GPT). If you turn off UEFI and enable Legacy BIOS, you can still use Windows Legacy/Hybrid MBR on your laptop. This is partially true. Windows 8/8.1 can indeed use a GPT/MBR hybrid partition scheme if your BIOS makes "legacy" available, however most of the "newer" (2013+) machines do not allow you to select "legacy" for a BIOS selection. (This isn't always the case, but it seems that most pre-built machines are going this way.) BIOS is migrating to UEFI, and there is nothing we can do about it. Either your BIOS supports legacy, or it does not. Not even GPT/(Protective)MBR hybrid is "pure GPT". You will run into issues if you cannot boot the Windows 8/8.1 install media in UEFI with a GPT partition scheme. If you can boot "legacy", then you can boot the Windows 8/8.1install media with a MBR partition scheme. I ran into this with my Dell Inspiron 3520. Thankfully, the 3520 has the option to boot "legacy". The best option is straight up, PURE GPT for these machines. If your machine supports "legacy" booting, then a hybrid partition scheme is the most obvious and easiest as well as only option. If not, GPT is the ONLY way you will dual boot Windows 8/8.1 and OS X. Also, I say "partially true" because the OP's machine does not support UEFI. Also, like the OP says (and backs up with links, which were a VERY good read!), using a hybrid partition scheme is very dirty and does have drawbacks. Clover is a great option for this, like the OP stated. Its a very good and informative tutorial. I'm actually surprised at the cleverness of the people that developed Clover. They seem to have done what Microsoft/Apple would or cannot do. Kudos, Clover devs! Its just a shame that Clover has such a high learning curve. I feel it steers most "just work" hackintoshers away from using it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tberdy Posted April 25, 2014 Author Share Posted April 25, 2014 The only way is using a linux live usb, install gdisk and use it to convert to GPT/Protective MBR (Pure GPT). If you turn off UEFI and enable Legacy BIOS, you can still use Windows Legacy/Hybrid MBR on your laptop. Ok, I will try with gdisk after a big backup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tberdy Posted April 25, 2014 Author Share Posted April 25, 2014 This is partially true. Windows 8/8.1 can indeed use a GPT/MBR hybrid partition scheme if your BIOS makes "legacy" available, however most of the "newer" (2013+) machines do not allow you to select "legacy" for a BIOS selection. (This isn't always the case, but it seems that most pre-built machines are going this way.) BIOS is migrating to UEFI, and there is nothing we can do about it. Either your BIOS supports legacy, or it does not. Not even GPT/(Protective)MBR hybrid is "pure GPT". You will run into issues if you cannot boot the Windows 8/8.1 install media in UEFI with a GPT partition scheme. If you can boot "legacy", then you can boot the Windows 8/8.1install media with a MBR partition scheme. I ran into this with my Dell Inspiron 3520. Thankfully, the 3520 has the option to boot "legacy". The best option is straight up, PURE GPT for these machines. If your machine supports "legacy" booting, then a hybrid partition scheme is the most obvious and easiest as well as only option. If not, GPT is the ONLY way you will dual boot Windows 8/8.1 and OS X. Also, I say "partially true" because the OP's machine does not support UEFI. Also, like the OP says (and backs up with links, which were a VERY good read!), using a hybrid partition scheme is very dirty and does have drawbacks. Clover is a great option for this, like the OP stated. Its a very good and informative tutorial. I'm actually surprised at the cleverness of the people that developed Clover. They seem to have done what Microsoft/Apple would or cannot do. Kudos, Clover devs! Its just a shame that Clover has such a high learning curve. I feel it steers most "just work" hackintoshers away from using it. Yes I agree with you, in my mind Clover provides more useful options than Chameleon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pokenguyen Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 This is partially true. Windows 8/8.1 can indeed use a GPT/MBR hybrid partition scheme if your BIOS makes "legacy" available, however most of the "newer" (2013+) machines do not allow you to select "legacy" for a BIOS selection. (This isn't always the case, but it seems that most pre-built machines are going this way.) BIOS is migrating to UEFI, and there is nothing we can do about it. Either your BIOS supports legacy, or it does not. Not even GPT/(Protective)MBR hybrid is "pure GPT". You will run into issues if you cannot boot the Windows 8/8.1 install media in UEFI with a GPT partition scheme. If you can boot "legacy", then you can boot the Windows 8/8.1install media with a MBR partition scheme. I ran into this with my Dell Inspiron 3520. Thankfully, the 3520 has the option to boot "legacy". The best option is straight up, PURE GPT for these machines. If your machine supports "legacy" booting, then a hybrid partition scheme is the most obvious and easiest as well as only option. If not, GPT is the ONLY way you will dual boot Windows 8/8.1 and OS X. Also, I say "partially true" because the OP's machine does not support UEFI. Also, like the OP says (and backs up with links, which were a VERY good read!), using a hybrid partition scheme is very dirty and does have drawbacks. Clover is a great option for this, like the OP stated. Its a very good and informative tutorial. I'm actually surprised at the cleverness of the people that developed Clover. They seem to have done what Microsoft/Apple would or cannot do. Kudos, Clover devs! Its just a shame that Clover has such a high learning curve. I feel it steers most "just work" hackintoshers away from using it. Not true, GPT/Protective MBR is considered as Pure GPT. I reformatted my hdd, use GPT from begin and they still report as GPT/Protective MBR. Enable Legacy or CSM will enable legacy boot. I believe all the latest system still have either of these, or both. Btw, I use Clover UEFI in all my guides (my signature), it's easier to support/update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobdamnit Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 My ex-wife has a 2013 HP Envy that does not allow for legacy or CSM booting. It only allowed UEFI booting. So, not all machines support legacy booting. Also, it appears you are correct. Protective MBR is indeed GPT. The first sector is still used as the MBR to allow for backwards compatibility. However, you will run into issues when using an MBR disk utility (Windows 7, Vista, XP etc...) to repartition a disk or overwrite a partition on the disk. Thats where I was running into the confusion. I apologize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milindsmart Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 You don't need UEFI to boot into pure GPT : check this out http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/320700-boot-windows-7-8-gpt-bios-system-no-hybrid-mbrs-duet.html The windows bootmanager+loader is a lot more capable than it lets on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tberdy Posted September 13, 2014 Author Share Posted September 13, 2014 I think you didn't read the whole link you posted in the previous post : the guy is using an MBR disk to boot his windows install on a GPT disk. This is just a big mess. 1) He uses a MBR disk : the title of the topic talks about GPT only ; I don't resintall windows on GPT to have an another disk on MBR ! 2) He must use two drives. Well, in desktop so it can be fine to have an old USB plugged in at the back. But I'm using a laptop and I don't want to dedicate one whole drive to a boot loader ! Or to plug in an usn drive to start my laptop ! Welcome back to 199* when computer was started by floppy 3) Yes we are using duet which is a complicated software but thanks to Slice and the others dev, duet is built into Clover, an easier soft with a beautiful GUI. I think that this guy doesn't know clover and that's to bad because it's a very nice bootloader which can be used even without OS X. I'm using clover to boot my windows to go key which is GPT and EFI boot only. I boot directly with boomgfw.efi if I'm on an uefi computer or I use clover if I'm on a legacy one. It's better than bringing to USB key to boot windows to go ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milindsmart Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Hi, Well first of all, I wrote that post (check nick) Regarding the USB, it could be any other disk, including another HDD. The major point in favour of using a small MBR disk is that it allows you to keep all your big disks in GPT, which actually need them. It doesn't matter for reliability, or flexibility when your 2GB drive is either MBR or GPT. It does matter for your 1TB Hard Disk because of the number of partitions and the amount of data that is at stake. But I get your point about the floppy thing, another chap also made the comparison I know about DUET/Clover, but then you'll be lying to your OS that the firmware is UEFI, which is unnecessary. One reason that DUET is not ideal is that it doesn't work on all computers, according to http://www.rodsbooks.com/bios2uefi/ . If Clover is solid and works well across different machines, that's nice too, and perhaps someone should port back some changes to the DUET project. We have multiple other single-disk solutions, which are basically using a tiny disk image of bootmgr and bcd. You can use this image from either Grub, Grub4Dos, or Syslinux. You needn't actually have an image, you can dynamically generate it on the spot too. The main development is actually happening on another site. A list of important posts with the actual methods is here : http://reboot.pro/topic/19516-hack-bootmgr-to-boot-windows-in-bios-to-gpt/page-5?do=findComment&comment=187175 . You can read the thread too to get an idea of the possibilities. You must ultimately recognize that all current solutions are trying to work around Microsoft's restriction on using UEFI only to boot from GPT disks. So if you have only BIOS, you either pretend that the firmware is UEFI, so Windows agrees to boot from GPT. This is what DUET/Clover does. pretend that the disk is MBR, so Windows agrees to boot from it in BIOS, not realizing that it's also a GPT device. This is what the Hybrid MBR from bootcamp does. This solution is a modification of (2) in the sense that the disk pretends to be MBR only at boot time. After starting the boot Windows knows that the disk is GPT and is fine with it. I have a much cleaner solution under development though, more on that once I have something real. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Bronxteck Posted September 13, 2014 Administrators Share Posted September 13, 2014 Nice! that will come quite useful to the Hackintosh community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tberdy Posted September 14, 2014 Author Share Posted September 14, 2014 Hi yes the two solutions you explained work indeed I like a lot the solution of the disk image and I'm thinking about using it for my Windows To Go which I use on a lot of different computers ; and I can't be sure that Clover will work on them, so thanks for that However, with a standard install of windows, I'll prefer Clover for one reason. First of all, even if I'm lying Windows that it is running on UEFI, it's to use the latest techs : UEFI is replacing all BIOS computers. Yes at the beginning I was angry when I realize that my new laptop was sold with an UEFI BIOS. But after one year, I can say UEFI (and Apple EFI) is a good thing which simplifie the boot process : no more bootsector, just only a .efi binary to load from a FAT32 partition Loading are faster and booting (and preparing) is easier. But there is one more problem. A lot of computers are still working with a BIOS and UEFI computers have different UEFI with different fonctions. I see in the Clover project a wish to make a big unification of the boot process. I managed the three laptop of my family. Only mine is UEFI (Asus), the other one is an HP and the third is an ThinkPad. And Clover is working on the three. When I need to install an OS I don't have to think if I'm on BIOS or UEFI or to enter the BIOS to select boot drive : clover does the job. I just have to insert USB key and boot (in UEFI) and this works with all modern amd64 OSes Clover is in the same time the UEFI BIOS and the bootloader and it can be common on a lot of computer But I'm maybe not more than a poor idealist who dreams of seeing unified open source coming to the people However your solution is working and it can be used in all case even in some case where clover doesn't work. My previous post was a little hard with you and I apologize. You were and you are still in the true and, even if a prefer the clover's solution, your solution is working all the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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