No EFI for Vista

By Rudy
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Grand Master

Rudy

Posted
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Microsoft bombshell: no EFI support for Vista

Friday 10, March 2006 | By Dan Warne

From: Epinions › Hardware

Microsoft revealed today that it will not support EFI booting for Windows Vista on its launch. The news will be a shock for owners of Intel Macs who had hoped they would be able to dual-boot between Windows Vista and OS X. Intel Macs only support booting via EFI.

Speaking at Intel Developer Forum San Francisco, Microsoft development manager, Andrew Ritz, also revealed that there will never be any support for booting Windows via EFI on systems with 32-bit processors.

Although Microsoft has previously said EFI booting would be supported by Vista, Ritz admitted that EFI support won't be seen in any version of Windows until the release of Longhorn Server.

It will not be available in the release version of Windows Vista later this year – Microsoft says people will have to wait for an unspecified 'subsequent release of Windows client'. Ritz could not say whether that would be a service pack update to Vista or the next-generation of Windows.

NO EFI FOR YOU! Microsoft Development Manager Andrew Ritz has bad news for PC users hoping for next-gen booting.

Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the modern and flexible successor to the 20-year-old PC BIOS. It is responsible for initialising hardware in the PC, and importantly, device drivers are stored in the EFI flash memory rather than being loaded by the operating system. It is a major change for the PC industry and both PC makers and Microsoft have been slow to make the switch. Because the Apple Intel Mac platform is entirely new, it does not have any legacy support concerns. It was hoped that 2006 would be the year PC makers would make the switch. Microsoft's lack of Windows support is a huge blow to Intel's hopes, and removes most of the incentive for PC makers to implement it in the short term.

That's terrible news for Intel Mac users who have been hoping that they could dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X on their new Macs: not only are their processors not 64-bit (and thus will never be supported by Windows EFI booting) but Windows Vista won't boot on EFI anyway.

It said its decision to 'reprioritise' EFI development to the server version of Windows was based on a lack of available desktop PCs with EFI support on the market.

"A combination of factors changed our plans. The big one, in my opinion was platform availability. With this huge move to 64-bit based platforms and for us to support it, we needed to see a large heterogeneous sample of 64 bit implementations out there for us to feel comfortable in supporting it." said Ritz.

source: http://apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/E666E4A0A30...A25712C008166C4

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Grand Master

Hurmoth

Posted
Posted

I think this is a big mistake on Microsoft's part. I cannot imagine that it would take that much to add support for EFI (albeit I'm not a developer, so I could be wrong). We need to get rid of the aging BIOS and move to EFI and Microsoft not adding support for it means that OEMs won't add it (obviously). Bad, very bad decision.

Veteran

lostspyder

Posted
Posted
It said its decision to 'reprioritise' EFI development to the server version of Windows was based on a lack of available desktop PCs with EFI support on the market.

Well theres a lack of desktop PC's with EFI support on the market because there is a lack of operationg systems supporting EFI. This is friggin stupid. Vista support all kinds of silly features that arnt released yet, where are thoes super high reselution displays they were touting a while back which vista will support?

Grand Master

ShaneSparky_YYZ

Posted
Posted

They have a point, do any of you have a PC with EFI? I doubt it. It's useless right now. BUT...

I think new motherboards should start having them though, but I haven't heard of any PC motherboard company making the switch at all. And if Windows Vista EFI Support was only for 64-bit then its useless to Mac users since they're on 32-bit processors. For the ones that want EFI support, lets hope for a SP that adds it ;)

I find the current BIOS not user friendly at all for newbs, I've helped people over the phone with BIOS issues and its not easy since all BIOS are different. Hopefully EFI makes one standard and sets it easy.

Grand Master

gigapixels Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I think this is a big mistake on Microsoft's part. I cannot imagine that it would take that much to add support for EFI (albeit I'm not a developer, so I could be wrong). We need to get rid of the aging BIOS and move to EFI and Microsoft not adding support for it means that OEMs won't add it (obviously). Bad, very bad decision.

Call me crazy, but I think this is all politics.

I think this has something to do with the Intel Macs and the fact that many people were going to purchase them only because they could run both OS X and Windows.

Does anybody else feel like this is just a stab at Apple from MS? It seems so... Before, MS had every intention to do it, then the craze set in that people would be able to run Vista on their shiny new Intel Macs, and now MS isn't going to support it...

Strange, very strange.

Grand Master

.Kompressor

Posted
Posted

Ahh yes, Micro$haft's brilliant R & D always leading the industry with innovation................NOT!!!

One would think that a company that has 80% of the World using it's product would prefer to be in the driver seat in the industry.....but not so it's seems...instead a small company with an Apple as it's logo still leads in design with 8% of the Market share making windows users dream of the next best thing. lol They are certainly not afraid to take the bull by the horns.

Grand Master

Hurmoth

Posted
Posted

Call me crazy, but I think this is all politics.

I think this has something to do with the Intel Macs and the fact that many people were going to purchase them only because they could run both OS X and Windows.

Does anybody else feel like this is just a stab at Apple from MS? It seems so... Before, MS had every intention to do it, then the craze set in that people would be able to run Vista on their shiny new Intel Macs, and now MS isn't going to support it...

Strange, very strange.

I completely agree with you. I think this is a stab right at Apple since Apple said that they don't have a problem with users installing Vista on the new Intel-based Macs. Very poor decision on Microsoft's part.

Grand Master

Hurmoth

Posted
Posted
EFI can load any program, including a traditional BIOS.

If Apple junkies want to run XP on their new Macs, they can write a no-frills BIOS. XP only needs a few Interrupts to set up and boot.

Well it can't be that easy. If it was, then wouldn't someone already have figured out how to do it. Especially with $12,000+ on the line :p

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

They have a point, do any of you have a PC with EFI? I doubt it. It's useless right now. BUT...

I think new motherboards should start having them though...

Certain Intel mobo's have EFI, and a few Media Center PC's use EFI, but they include a CSM so Windows behaves as normal.

I completely agree with you. I think this is a stab right at Apple since Apple said that they don't have a problem with users installing Vista on the new Intel-based Macs. Very poor decision on Microsoft's part.

If anything, MS wants Windows on Mac's, that then increases their market share to PC and Mac users, making them more money.

and bob, elilo

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