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so I got a copy of windows 7. I put it on a USB drive, made a primary partition and set it active. Copied the bcd. Set the boot order correctly. It just won't boot from the USB drive. I turned off secure boot. Booting into the drive manually from the boot menu doesn't work either, it just brings up windows 8 repair menu. Running the setup from windows 8 throws an error as follows "Windows encountered an unexpected error" right after "setup is starting"

Marshall Mathews
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  • Try to change the setting in the BIOS. Enter into the BIOS and change "advanced- system configuration -boot mode" to CSM. After this change, you could boot from USB. – BDRSuite Jun 08 '15 at 13:52

1 Answers1

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There are a few of things wrong with what is occurring, and that is:

  1. UEFI and Windows 7
  2. USB 3.0
  3. Fast Boot

Now, for #1, Windows 7 doesn't actually support full UEFI mode, and will crash at loading the BCD. To fix this, you need to either

  1. Enable UEFI with CSM (Compatibility Support Module) OR
  2. Enable Legacy Boot, i.e. BIOS.

As for #2, Windows 7 doesn't natively support USB 3 either, so you need to enable legacy USB/USB 2.0, which Windows 7 does natively support. This can also be done at the UEFI Firmware/BIOS level.

Now, onto #3. Fast Boot MUST be disabled before attempting to install any other OS. To do this:

  1. Head to Control Panel
  2. Find Power Options
  3. Within Power Options click on Choose what the power buttons do
  4. In this menu, click Change settings that are currently unavailable
  5. Untick Turn on Fast Startup
  6. Click Save Changes
  7. Reboot and attempt to install Windows, after turning on Legacy USB Support and either UEFI with CSM or Legacy Boot/BIOS modes.
td512
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  • "Now, for #1, Windows 7 doesn't actually support full UEFI mode, and will crash at loading the BCD" - I've installed Win7 on a Win8 system in native UEFI mode (not hybrid UEFI mode nor with CSM enabled or in legacy mode), and it works ok. There might be systems that have problems because many OEM implementations of UEFI are still quite buggy, but I do not think you can generalise and say Win7 doesn't support full UEFI mode. – Karan Jun 09 '15 at 07:09
  • Thank you, I was able to boot with the CMS mode. However could you take some time to look into this -http://superuser.com/questions/925946/windows-7-refuses-to-install-on-gpt-styled-partitions-in-cms-boot-mode – Marshall Mathews Jun 10 '15 at 03:18