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. 4 Option 3: Use GRUB2 EFI as your main boot manager.2 Option 1: Disable UEFI and Secure Boot.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.
I’ll discuss the issue in later steps.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. Some systems don’t let you change the secure boot option without setting an admin password. All you have to do is to access the UEFI firmware settings, go to the Boot option and disbale it.ĭon’t worry. The good thing is that you can easily disable the secure boot. Sometimes, it may also create problems in dual booting with Linux. The downside of secure boot is that if you want to boot from a Linux USB or if you want to use a bootable Windows USB, it won’t allow that. This security feature prevents rootkit malware and provides an additional layer of security.
With UEFI comes the feature of “secure boot” which boots only those bootloaders that are signed in to UEFI firmware. Some Mac devices have been using UEFI for a longer time. UEFI is not something that Microsoft invented, instead it is a protocol existing even before Windows 8. These days, if you buy a computer pre-installed with Windows, it comes with UEFI boot system.