[How To] Clevo USB EFI Install Windows 8

Alright fellas, spent a lot of time trying to get it just right and I think I have and thought I'd share it with you all.

Download Windows 8 legally from DigitalRiver here:
The Official Windows 8 Repository

Install the latest BIOS/EC. Risk is all yours. I got the BIOS for my P150EM at MySn.de since I was too impatient to always be calling/emailing Sager for them. It's getting old.

First you have to create a EFI ready USB drive:
1. In an elevated command prompt type diskpart
2. List Disk
3. Select Disk # (# is your USB drive)
4. Clean
5. Convert GPT
6. Create Partition Primary
7. Select Partition 1
8. Format FS=FAT32
9. Assign
10. Exit

Next use 7zip, and unzip the Windows 8 ISO you downloaded and transfer over to your USB drive. No need to use any special programs, just drag and drop the files.

Reboot and press F2. Just to make sure, choose the Load Startup Defaults again (or whatever it's called). Save and exit.

F2 and into BIOS again. This time you will go to the boot menu and you'll see an option to choose OS, you will choose Windows 8 and enable UEFI. Now go back to security and you will enable secure boot. Save and exit.

F2 again and go into BIOS and you want to verify it's all good. The Secure Boot is enabled, you see the user enabled part, and you see your USB drive has UEFI next to it.

Choose to boot from UEFI USB. Once in the Windows Install, type in your product code. Choose custom install. On the disk menu, click advanced and delete the disk you are going to install Windows 8 on. After it's deleted, press SHIFT + F10. Do steps 1-5 from above. Then just click new on the disk and it will make sure it has EFI, GPT and ready to rock. And just install as normal.

You should have Windows 8 installed EFI with secure boot now.

How do you know Secure Boot install succeeded? First off, with UEFI boot, you start right off the bat at 1080p. So the splash logo or the bios boot initiation stuff all are now smaller, and crisp, like 1080p. Next if you have Secure Boot enabled, you don't see the initial logo splash or the bios initiation part, you'll just seeing a Sager or Style Note (whichever BIOS you got) logo with the circle loading (Windows 8) and boots straight to Windows 8. This is one reason why booting is faster. Also because you never shutdown it seems, Windows 8 makes use of hibernation or something. Dunno, can disable hibernation and still boots as fast, so not sure about all that.

Windows 8 is HUGE, I lost space on my HDD/SSD! I've seen this posted a few times. When you do a clean install, Windows 8 allocates the equivalent amount of ram you have to pagefile. So just go to the system/advanced and set your pagefile to 2GB. You get your space back. If you want more, then disable hibernation with elevated command prompt.



Oh and while looking for ways to customize my Windows 8, I found this, and had to have it.

 

Glad you finally got it to work!

Just a note though...

To simplify this process, you can just do a standard FAT32 format and extract the contents of the *.ISO to the USB drive. (Works for both 7/8)

I actually had done mine with YUMI. 2-3 clicks, super simple. I have yet to verify if it'll work with booting Linux in EFI mode as well. It does make a damn good multiboot USB drive though!

 

Great post. So I'm guessing you no longer have to go into bios and select boot efi every time?

How fast does win8 boot up for you now?

 

yep would also be interested in a comparison of boot times between bios and efi also, could u provide screenshots of the efi boot menu? what kinda options and functionality does it give u?

thx in advance

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Well fastest part to me is that you don't see the normal BIOS boot. It goes straight to Windows loading, and that's only about 3-5 seconds. And then you're in. Yeah about a 10 second boot, maybe less.

 

Can I do this off the ISO on a DVD as well? I do t have a flash drive over 2gb.

 

Yes. You can boot your DVD drive UEFI also.

 

I actually managed to do this with an old HDD USB enclosure with a 30gb drive I had to reduce the size of the volume to 10 gb and format and follow the instructions above.

I guess it's time to buy a new USB 3.0 flash drive.

 

Sweet, I finally got around to reinstalling last night and man this system is super fast. From power on to in windows is ~4 seconds.
Secure boot wasn't enabled for me, so I found this intel site explaining how to set it up and how to test it.

 

Now it looks like hotkey is messed up from something with .net framework installing Microsoft office, outlook connector, iCloud, or iTunes.

I uninstalled everything in reinstalled hot key. However I am having the same result where I cannot even open the program and it does not give an error code.

I am going to try the reset button in Windows 8 to see if I can fix this issue without having to reinstall everything.

 

Just re-installed Windows 8 with UEFI and the boot time is ridiculously fast!

I also had to go to into the BIOS and loaded the Keys to have Secure Boot enabled like @custom90gt mentioned.

 

hm im wondering if an UEFI install is possible on my HM machine without secure boot enabled? (since that feature is not supported in the BIOS). those superfast boot times would be pretty sweet to have!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

If your bios supports UEFI then you are good to go. Secure boot doesn't help with speed, only security.

 

yep, thats why i was wondering if its possible. how and where can i check if my bios supports uefi? would there have to be a specific option fot it?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Try to check it with HWiNFO64.. I have EM machine and it shows EFI BIOS: Capable

>Motherboard

 

huh! it says capable, nice thx for the info

 

That is propably good news for every HM users
EFI.. here we come!!

 

The question now becomes has CLEVO implemented it in your model?

Looking at MySN.de, which seems to always be up to date on BIOS stuff, the last update for your model was back in 2011.

Have you tried going through the BIOS sections to see if there were options to Enable/Disable (U)EFI?

 

How do you check the bios on mysn? He downloads page brings me to a page that asks me to log in.

 

Guys..
Heavy pressure to CLEVO and get one more BIOS update to HM!!!

 

The HM's are already UEFI capable, all of our 2011 models are UEFI boot capable already (one of the changes we made in our BIOS), so its more a call your builder / reseller, as Clevo already had the option.

 

hm,interesting. does that mean that u modified the bios as to implement a toggle for UEFI boot? mine doesnt show any specific uefi options.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

We didn't set a toggle, we just enabled it, so it'll enumerate anything that is UEFI capable.. AKA stick a UEFI capable USB it'll show up as 2 boot entries, a non-UEFI and a UEFI entry, same as a DVD, etc. We've had a few customers install Win7 on their laptops in UEFI mode.

 

Interesting... Any chance you have the same thing setup for the W150ER? In order to EFI boot on this I need to toggle EFI on. To boot off anything else, I need to toggle it off.

 

Whats your BIOS version, it seems like you have a 1.02.XX version where some versions of the BIOS set hard-codes (AKA UEFI only), but that can be changed if needed. We work around that on our W1x0ER BIOS

 

Mhmmm great guess.

1.02.17

 

If you want to link up the BIOS's on this thread (HM and new 2012 models) I'll see what I can do to get EFI boot to work properly on them, but please note if it eats your laptop or your dog we aren't responsible but I can toss yours into our tools and see if we can't get it going. If you don't know how to read out your BIOS, then you just need a DOS boot USB, and then afudos <filename> /O using a current version of AFUDOS (just grab it from the latest Clevo BIOS thread from the latest BIOS in there, the latest versions will work just fine on 2011 models also)

 

Here ya are:

Download W150ER.ROM from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

 

Absolutely fantastic. Mythlogic exceeds my expectations of service all the time.

 

agreed

ill upload mine shortly... (version 1.01.14)

edit: here it is - https://www.box.com/s/x1tbbbjzte4yjzu2d73h

thanks in advance!

 

double post

 

Ok

Here is the W150ER Fixed BIOS: Download W150ERM.ROM from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

@jaybee83 the BIOS you sent me is all setup already for UEFI boot its enabled in all 3 places that it could be enabled at, so you should be good to go already.

 

Awesome, thanks! Works great now... Have no complaints. It was as simple as changing a couple values? I feel dumb now. -.-

Check your PM's when you have time, I was curious about the availability of a component.

 

nice, thanks a lot for checking myth! just wanted to make sure before i go ahead with an OS reinstall

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Great guide! Thanks.

A couple tips:

You can format your USB stick in the DISKPART utility by using:

FORMAT FS=FAT32 QUICK

the 'QUICK' flag will do a quick format instead of waiting for a full format.

You don't have to do the: CONVERT GPT step either.

Another thing I realized is that EFI can't read NTFS, so if your USB drive was formatted for NTFS it won't be recognizable as an EFI boot drive, and won't be able to install Windows under EFI either. So make sure it is formatted as FAT32.

 

I have Clevo p150hm with Clevo EC/KBC V 1.00.13 & BIOS V 1.01.14.

EFI booting does not work. I have followed instructions in first post as close as possible in regards to setting up USB stick and configuring BIOS. EFI booting is never provided as an option. When the USB stick is selected as a boot device the system detects the USB drive as unbootable, bypasses it, and uses the first available HDD instead.

 

That can't be right... Looking at the latest BIOS (v14), EFI is enabled by default. Hitting F7 should give you the boot menu stating FlashDriveX & EFI FlashDriveX.

If you can, upload your BIOS ROM using afudos or afuwin.

 

http://blacky.bestmail.ws/CLEVO BIOS/P150HM/P150HM_last.zip

from:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/556299-clevo-bios-older-models.html

 

Is it possible to do this on a Clevo P150HM ?
as the Current Bios v14 and EC 13 do not have those options.

A few posts above me someone tried it and reported it's faster and his signature says he has a NP8150.

 

@Mythlogic:
This is the most recent P370EM BIOS , that I'm aware of (its the one from mySN.de since my local reseller is a bit behind on the BIOS stuff, they had the NVIDIA drivers from *after* it shipped but the BIOS and EC was still the initial ones so... ), still doesn't have any automatic UEFI support at all (actually looking at the load times I think it still uses BIOS initialization). If you could try to add the UEFI/Secure Boot stuff to this I'd appreciate it.

http://www.kalanyr.com/P370EM.zip

Thanks

 

Please remember that this is a 1.00.xx ROM, and so it doesn't have the secureboot features that the 1.02.xx ROM's do. The 1.02.xx roms are beginning to be out for the P370EM, and which case you'll be able to UEFI boot those pretty easily. But in the meantime here is your rom back fixed Download P370EM.ROM from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

 

Thank you very much.

Man that was quick.

 

Could I get EFI support on this one ?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/41502623/BIOS 1.01.14 TDP 60W_70W_32s.zip

HWINFO64 shows EFI Capable, but there's no option in the BIOS whatsoever =[

 

There won't be an option on the HM series, EFI is just enabled so it will show the boot option if/when you have something that CAN UEFI bootup. (Properly formatted etc)

 

Hmm strange, did all the steps on first post to create a EFI ready USB, reboot and it just doesn't recognize it as EFI =[

 

After the install there seems to be a folder called EFI inside my C:/Windows/Boot/EFI

Does this mean it's installed correctly?

 

Run Msinfo32.exe

Scroll down and look for BIOS Mode. It should say wither BIOS or UEFI.

 

It says, Bios Mode; Verouderd -> " Old " 0.o

 

Well, it sounds like you haven't installed it via EFI then. =/ Just format the USB drive as fat32 and drag/drop the files over. Should boot the installer in EFI mode without any issues.

 

the correct term would probably be "Legacy" thats what it says in mine

hope u can get it to work mirabis! afaik ure the first p150hm user to try this