Geek Help 'UEFI'

[Bibio]

i'm not up to scratch with new BIOS arrangements such as UEFI.

i'm putting together a new 'media box' with win7 x64 pro and KODI.

the new MB has UEFI and M.2 SSD. the M.2 will be the OS drive.

now lets see if i have this correct for loading windows to the M.2 drive and using UEFI...

insert the win7 x64 disk into the dvd/br drive
start comp and enter BIOS
select boot drive option as UEFI ''dvd/br drive''
save and exit BIOS
start comp and let windows disc get on with it then select the M.2 drive as install drive.

is there anything i'm missing?

[carelesschucca]

ME!!!! You're missing ME and my hugs.

[Bibio]

yes yes i know that... still waiting on you shaving your bum crack so we can have good times :-)

[DarrenSV650S]

Try it and see. What's the worst that could happen?


I need a new 500gb ssd because my primary is getting a bit full. I had a look at M.2 but it didn't seem worth the extra cost

[Bibio]

500gb.. ermm what..

i has 16tb of storage full of movie iso 1-1 :-)

i'm using the M.2 so i can use the 6 SATA ports as storage and no other reason.

[DarrenSV650S]

I'm guessing the 16tb isn't ssd :)

I just download, watch and delete. Don't see the point in keeping them. I mostly need the storage for games so having them on ssd helps a lot

[Bibio]

nope they are sata.

tbh ssd is not needed for storage

on the comp i'm using just now i have two 64gb ssd raided as stripe. mega fast at loading windows.

[BanannaMan]

yes yes i know that... still waiting on you shaving your bum crack so we can have good times :-)

Try it and see. What's the worst that could happen?








I"m thinking a nasty cut and an embarrassing evening at the A&E followed by a slow and painful recovery. ;-)

[andrewsmith]

I"m thinking a nasty cut and an embarrassing evening at the A&E followed by a slow and painful recovery. ;-)
And plenty of sudocreme

Sent from my D2303 using Tapatalk

[carelesschucca]

Easy people that's my derriere we're discussing... I know its nice but it's not good enough for national discussion..

[russell664]

What board is it Bibio?

I have an M2 in my Asus Rampage Extreme IV - on a x4 PCI lane.
What you want to do is set the BIOS to UEFI boot only, then boot off the USB stick/DVD Drive and install Windows. Windows 7 can be temperamental on some hardware with UEFI, and might need boot drivers.

If you know what your board is, it would be easier to guide through. ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte BIOS are quite easy to use, sometimes a bit scattered though!

[maviczap]

Try it and see. What's the worst that could happen?


I need a new 500gb ssd because my primary is getting a bit full. I had a look at M.2 but it didn't seem worth the extra cost

I'm guessing the 16tb isn't ssd :)

I just download, watch and delete. Don't see the point in keeping them. I mostly need the storage for games so having them on ssd helps a lot

Without wanting to derail Bibs thread, you can gain alot of space on an ssd by turning off or moving some of the Windows functions.

Now don't quote me, because im doing it from memory at the moment.

Turn off the Trim function

Move where the paging files are stored (only if you have more than one drive), default is always "C" drive. Mine are stored on E, as my C drive is only 120gb SSD. Helps to maintain my C drive at around 60gb.

You might be able to delete old paging files, which frees up a load of space!

I did a bit of housekeeping and deleted 14gb of temp files the other day! That was just using windows disc clean up tool

Old restore points also hogg a massive amount of disc space

I use Winstat to show which folders are hogging the most disc space.

Ignore the above if you're using a laptop with only one drive, or if I'm teaching your granny to suck eggs.

Check what ive said on Google :-)

[DarrenSV650S]

Cheers for that Mav. I'll look in to it

[russell664]

On my personal setup I have an M2 SSD for Windows and Programs (250GB) no user data is stored on it, the reasoning why is because if Windows dies, it doesn't affect any of my documents etc... I used SYSprep with an XML script upon first boot to change where 'Users' is placed, and whacked it on my Z drive named 'Usrfiles'.

Usrfiles is on 2 SSDs running in Hardware RAID 0 - so around 1GB read - 450MB write. Compared to the M2 which is 2GBs read and 1GBs write, the two SSDs are slow.

In anycase, as Mavis suggested, you can turn of hibernation - the size of your RAM space in sapce will be used with it enabled, in my case 16GB. Paging - it depends what you are doing - it can cause problems with certain programs. If you have a 250GB SSD I would recommend leaving paging enabled, and as default.

Trust me, coming from an IT guy - It can cause some weird and crazy issues down the line!

De-railing ended! :p

[Bibio]

cheers russell

my kit:
Cooler Master MasterCase 5
+ 2x 3 bay HDD trays and Water cooling top cage + cover
Cooler Master Masterliquid Pro 240
EVGA 650W G2 Fully Modular 80+ PSU
GIGABYTE GA-990X-GAMING SLI AMD AM3+ Motherboard
AMD Piledriver FX-4 Quad Core 4300 3.80Ghz AM3+ Processor
Sandisk X400 128GB SATA III M.2 2280 SSD
8GB Kinston HyperX Predator 1866
MSI R7 260 1GD5 OC Graphics card
4x 2TB Seagate HDD's
2x 4TB Segate HDD's

yes i know its OTT for a kodi box but its to replace an oppo BDP93 as the main movie player.

bit of my background in IT. networking BSc+Cisco certs etc.etc. my main interests were unattended installations so i know my way round windows :-)

just getting to grips with this new UEFI install. i have prepared a usb install of windows 7 64 pro with all the drivers included using nlite. or i can use the disc and put the drivers on a thumb drive

help and some tips would be much appreciated :-)

[Bibio]

ooohhh btw peeps dont turn off trim on SSD drives. from what i remember trim is there to keep an eye on used blocks on the chips e.g. how many transistors have been blown and replaced. turning off trim is one of the biggest causes of SSD drives failing. or i could be wrong.

[maviczap]

Well I know I turned something off that SSD's don't need, and mines been fine, whether it was Trim or som'at else.

And it was a long time ago, which is why I can't remember now :-)

[maviczap]

ooohhh btw peeps dont turn off trim on SSD drives. from what i remember trim is there to keep an eye on used blocks on the chips e.g. how many transistors have been blown and replaced. turning off trim is one of the biggest causes of SSD drives failing. or i could be wrong.

No, you're right

Having read things, then ENABLE Trim if you've got an SSD

[russell664]

I'm not certified in Cisco, although it is something I really would like to do. I tend to deal with the daily crap, as well as projects in web design and app deployment. Mainly, I tend to develop in house solutions in a SharePoint based environment. Which is quite fun, but I love networking - so plan on moving towards that for the long term - if the opportunity arises anyway.

TRIM should always be enabled - the purpose is to align all the data which is important on solid state storage. However, never ever de-frag an SSD, that is very bad for it. Windows 8 and above, automatically TRIM your drive - not sure about Windows 7.

In terms of your board, I would enable UEFI only boot, and enable 'Secure boot' and install the default keys. Once dome, whack the USB stick in there and it should boot. Once booted, if you can see your drive, you are in business.
A lot of people get caught out on installing the default keys.

Restart without the stick and it should boot. In my case it didn't, and I had to disable 'Fast boot' reboot and enable it again. Mine now boots seamlessly, could be an Asus thing though.

Give it a go, and let me know mate!

My setup - I went through a phase... A bit of an expensive one.
ASUS Rampage Extreme X79
i7 4930k @4.65ghz (blk 0.03 + skew)
16gb 1666mhz tight timings (Quad channel)
120GB Kingston SSD (Cache)
2x Hyper Savage 240GB SSDs (RAID 0)
250Gb Samsung Evo SSD (VM drive)
NVME Samsung 250gb 950 SSD (PCI)
GTX 980
1 and 2 TB WD Green HDD
Silverstone Strider 1000w gold PSU
Fully water cooled as well
2x 240mm radiators
1x 360mm radiator
Blood red coolant and 140mm res

Sunk way to much money into it, but it is a beast of a system. Of course there now needs to be a picture :p

http://i.imgur.com/szlSRhXh.jpg

But in seriousness, you need to enable UEFI only boot, enable and install the default secure boot keys, restart, and they try to install Windows :)

Let us know how you get on!

[Bibio]

sweet rig Russell :-)

build is done enough to test and install windows later so fingers crossed.

those cooler master mastercase 5 are superb. a few things i dont like (front fan mountings) but overall its a superb case and makes for a very neat install. i have upgraded mine to the pro and the new top cover comes with a nice plate that covers the grill, the 2x 3 bay drive cages fit perfect (was a bit worried about that) :-)

just waiting on 3x cooler master masterfan pro ab, a ThermalTake Commander PWM powered 10x fan hub, PWM fan extension leads and a pcie 2xsata card (for the blu-ray drive).

[russell664]

There always that guy with a blue ray drive ;) :p

Thanks mate, it's a nice machine. My favourite but is the fan controller. I have set it up to work off three temperature sensors, two being ambient, one on the lower intake, one in the upper side. The Aquero then looks at the water temp, and creates a delta between them. I have a curve to keep it below 10c delta, so you never actually hear it because the actions are so gradual. It took a long time to find the right balance, but the temps are sweet and you only hear the whoosh of air over the rads.

My case is a 780T, lovely, but the mods I have done to actually fit stuff is ridiculous.

Let us know how the install goes!
Sounds like you have a lot of hardware to fit! I have stuff all over, do if you need it, the chances are I have it somewhere in my PC box as I like to call it. So give me a shout, should you need anything anyways.

Is the thermal take commander powered by a sata lead? My previous controller was 6 channel but with two bloody molex slots! Damn thing. Looked nice though ;)

[Bibio]

install went without a hitch. set everything in bios to UEFI, win 8 set to other os, put the win7 disc in, and let it rip :-)

not happy at the M.2 drive. it takes up a SATA slot so i only have 5... gggrrrr, if i had know that i would have just got 1 3 bay drive cage. mind you i might have got the wrong type of M.2 so now wondering if the type PCIe NVMe is what i need to free the slot.

another grips is the MB cpu temp sensor is not playing ball and showing 10-12c, might just be the cpu settling in with the thermal paste i hope.

yup the TT commander is SATA power.

now to install KODI and configure it.

[Bibio]

well that was nippy. installed kodi and went about trying to set it up, no joy so tried a different graphics card, new drivers every thing till i noticed that i was still in ermm standard mode on kodi.. lol

once switched to expert then everything i needed was in the settings. i now have auto switching refresh rate for things like blu-ray 24/1080p and proper codec switching for things like truehd etc.etc

time to retire my oppo, its served me well, looking around the net the oppo still goes for £2-300 second hand :-)

[shiftin_gear98]

:compcrash:


No idea what you have been talking about, glad you got it working though.

[russell664]

install went without a hitch. set everything in bios to UEFI, win 8 set to other os, put the win7 disc in, and let it rip :-)

not happy at the M.2 drive. it takes up a SATA slot so i only have 5... gggrrrr, if i had know that i would have just got 1 3 bay drive cage. mind you i might have got the wrong type of M.2 so now wondering if the type PCIe NVMe is what i need to free the slot.

another grips is the MB cpu temp sensor is not playing ball and showing 10-12c, might just be the cpu settling in with the thermal paste i hope.

yup the TT commander is SATA power.

now to install KODI and configure it.

Unfortunately AMD CPU temperature sensors are well known for being a bit iffy. Some chips can actually show minus temps. Get Hwinfo, and look for the 'package temp' which will give you a better indication of the CPU temp as a whole.

I have only just started using Kodi, it is great, it's in my Nexus 6p too, love it!

Glad that your install went well! :smt079
NVME is really good as it is multi layered NAND (Vnand) which runs cooler and uses next to no power. They are wonderful things.

[DarrenSV650S]

With Kodi, can you stream video from your pc to your phone and view photos etc?

[Bibio]

well i contacted gigabyte and yes it seems that i need an M.2 PCIe card to be able to use all 6 of the SATA ports... which sort of good news.

With Kodi, can you stream video from your pc to your phone and view photos etc?

dont know, i haven't looked into that as i dont need it. i would guess that you just need to set your networking up and a streaming engine on the pc. i guess it would depend on what you want to do e.g. stream the picture that is playing on the tv to your phone or stream content from the pc only.

[russell664]

I use an M2 PCI card, get the Asus one. A little more expensive, but it retains bandwidth and doesn't throttle under the heat when doing many reads and writes. NvMe does run quite warm when it wants to, my 950 does anyway.

In terms of streaming, Plex is a grest tool to do exactly what you want Darren :)

[Bibio]

update

i got an M.2 PCIe NVMe drive but windows 7 does not contain the native drivers for installation :-(

no worries as i just needed to integrate the hotfixes from microsoft which i have done.

just need to test tonight and see if it works...

[Bibio]

that never worked :

buuut after a bit of googlefoo i found the drivers for the samsung pm961 loaded them onto my install usb drive then pointed to them during the install and bingo :-)

i have only managed to find the correct drivers on one website, it seems that there are a loooooot of people out there having the same problem.