Windows 10: Windows 10 Clean Install - Legacy BIOS/MBR vs. UEFI/GPT

My computer is several years old, but the main boot drive was replaced less than 3 months ago. Earlier this week an attempt to apply the version 2004 update rendered the computer unbootable 0xc0000098. After much googling, trying many things, and a help forum thread, I ended up doing a clean install of Windows.


One of the potential problems discovered during the process was that the earlier Windows install from May had formatted the boot drive as GPT, whereas the motherboard is apparently a legacy BIOS and thus the boot drive should be formatted as MBR. I navigated through the CMOS settings for the computer and after a pretty thorough search could not find any settings to do with EFI/UEFI or any mention thereof. Here's a link to a webpage about this model motherboard: https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/760GM-P34-FX/Overview. Before the most recent clean install I had changed the drive format to MBR. Nevertheless, Windows install still thought the drive was EFI and changed the drive back to GPT during the install process.


Considering this may be the reason my computer was rendered unbootable and unrecoverable by the Windows Update, I'm concerned that it may be a time bomb that could go off anytime I apply a Windows update.


This leads to a couple of questions:

1. Is there a way to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt whether my motherboard supports EFI?

2. Depending on the answer to #1, since Windows install insists on treating it as EFI/GPT, is there a way to force an override and install as Legacy BIOS/MBR?


Thanks for any information you may be able to offer.

:)

 

Bitlocker with Windows 10 and EFI/UEFI Bios and Legacy Bios + MBR or GPT disk

Below is a document from Microsoft on the requirements.

you don't need UEFI if you have a TCG compliant BIOS.

So legacy mode yes you do need UEFI.

Doesn't say anything about MBR vs GPT but I am running bitlocker and it is GPT and have used GPT for all my drives with Bitlocker.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/securi...

Hope this clarify things.

 

Windows 10 AU clean install UEFI vs Legacy

Honestly the choice is yours, I always install in Legacy Mode as I find it easier to recover from potential System Failures.

Some Information on the 2 Systems, may help you decide:

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface(UEFI) is the successor to BIOS. UEFI uses the GUID Partition Table (GPT) whereas BIOS uses the Master Boot Record(MBR) partitioning scheme. GPT and MBR are both formats specifying physical
partitioning information on the hard disk. Below I have listed the difference:

• Max partition size in MBR is ~2TB whereas in UEFI it is ~9 ZetaBytes
• MBR can have at max 4 primary partition whereas GPT can have 128.
• MBR can store only one bootloader whereas GPT has a separate dedicated EFI System Partition(ESP) for storing multiple bootloaders. This is very helpful if you have two or more operating systems which require different bootloaders.
• UEFI offers secure boot which can prevent boot-time viruses from loading.

I hope this Helps!

 

Windows 10 AU clean install UEFI vs Legacy

I am planning to do a clean install shortly of the Windows 10 AU. I currently have Windows 10 1511 installed on an SSD (MBR) which I believe it means it is installed in Legacy mode. I built this computer and did the original install of Windows 8 on it
around 3 years ago. When I did the install back then didn't really know about UEFI vs Legacy install and must have just defaulted to Legacy. I have the following questions.

1. Is there any major advantage to doing the AU clean install now in UEFI? In my online research the only thing I have determined is that UEFI secure boot is better for malware attacks of the OS and may be slightly faster in POST.

2. If I do install in UEFI I understand my SSD will be formated now in GPT. If the clean install presents problems can I restore to a saved Windows 10 1511 system image (Legacy mode) that was done using Reflect. Will the restore of the image reset the
SSD back to MBR?

Thanks for any replies.