UEFI BIOS: what can it do?

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videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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I'm discovering (the hard way) this supposed new & improved BIOS deal isn't what's it cracked to be. Is the following a across the board list of what this can't do?

1. The initial boot screen, the one where you can clearly see all the attached drives, flashes by in a second preventing one from seeing anything in a blink of a eye? is there a way to pause this so I can see if all the drives are there without going into the BIOS like it use to be?

2. The 'home page' (or main page if you like) doesn't show the drives either, just the processor & memory which makes that mostly useless. You have to hunt around and go into a sub menu to find that out.

3. There is no ability to isolate SATA ports, it's either all or none which kinda makes that useless if one wants to hide one or two drives for whatever reason.

More questions when I come across more issues.
 
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ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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Every motherboard is a bit different. It would be immensely helpful if you first told us what motherboard this is.:)
 
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videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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Every motherboard is a bit different. It would be immensely helpful if you first told us what motherboard this is.
Click to expand...
Not if you are talking about ASRock, Asus or Gigabyte. They all suffer the same short comings.
I had a ASRock board that I sent back. I also talked to Asus & Gigabyte tech support and had th confirmed their board are the same way. So it appears to be a across the board problme (no pun intended).

FWIW the board was a ASRock 990FX ext.4
 
Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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May 24, 2003
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What I'd like is if motherboards were all standard and used "del" to get to the bios. But everyone wants to "Be different" by using all sorts of random key combinations. So yeah when it flashes by you have to keep trying different keys till you get the right one. (typically when you're at a computer you wont have the manual in front of you. :p)

Though, if there's one thing I noticed about UEFI is that it does not flash by, but sits there for a good 10 seconds before it moves on. It has doubled my computer's boot time. I wish they would have stucked to using BASIC bios... that's what the B in bios stands for. :p My old core2duo HTPC actually boots faster than my Core i7 machine because the core2duo machine does not have UEFI so it does not dick around before actually booting.
 
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Bryf50

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Nov 11, 2006
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Red Squirrel said:
Though, if there's one thing I noticed about UEFI is that it does not flash by, but sits there for a good 10 seconds before it moves on. It has doubled my computer's boot time. I wish they would have stucked to using BASIC bios... that's what the B in bios stands for. :p My old core2duo HTPC actually boots faster than my Core i7 machine because the core2duo machine does not have UEFI so it does not dick around before actually booting.
Click to expand...

You've never tried Windows 8 with UEFI and Super Fast Boot. It is ridiculously fast. With an SSD my HTPC goes from off to the start menu before my TV displays an image.
 
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videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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Though, if there's one thing I noticed about UEFI is that it does not flash by, but sits there for a good 10 seconds before it moves on.
Click to expand...
What MB?? Sounds as a setting in the BIOS needs a tweak.
 
Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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Bryf50 said:
You've never tried Windows 8 with UEFI and Super Fast Boot. It is ridiculously fast. With an SSD my HTPC goes from off to the start menu before my TV displays an image.
Click to expand...

Oh I'm talking before the OS even starts to boot, it's bloody slow. Linux boots up in like 10 seconds once the BIOS is finally done crapping around with the 10 second black screen and the 10 second splash screen. Guess it depends on the motherboard though, some are faster than others. My motherboard is a Gigabyte X79-UD3. All the motherboards I had before that were normal BIOSes and were way faster to POST.
 
inf1nity

inf1nity

Golden Member
Mar 12, 2013
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Red Squirrel said:
Oh I'm talking before the OS even starts to boot, it's bloody slow. Linux boots up in like 10 seconds once the BIOS is finally done crapping around with the 10 second black screen and the 10 second splash screen. Guess it depends on the motherboard though, some are faster than others. My motherboard is a Gigabyte X79-UD3. All the motherboards I had before that were normal BIOSes and were way faster to POST.
Click to expand...

so what you are saying is that the MB just sits around doing nothing just so that the user can have a good look at their logo? Thats really bad on the company's part if true. and for 10 seconds?
 
Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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inf1nity said:
so what you are saying is that the MB just sits around doing nothing just so that the user can have a good look at their logo? Thats really bad on the company's part if true. and for 10 seconds?
Click to expand...

Yeah well a black screen for a while, then splash screen. 10 sec may be exaggerating, but it's bloodly slow when the OS barely takes that long.

Video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshwmSj7o30
 
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bgt

Senior member
Oct 6, 2007
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UEFI is great for boot times. All my computers boot in 6 seconds to the Start screen.
 
ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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videobruce said:
Can you point to where that came from since it is opposite from what I have read.
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Sure. Windows 7's UEFI support is so poorly thought out that it doesn't even come with a 64bit UEFI module (bootx64.efi) located in the proper directory for booting from USB flash drives and other mass storage devices. You actually have to modify the installer to install it off of a USB drive.

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=209045

Once you handle that it does work, but already it's more effort than it's worth. UEFI didn't come into its on on Windows until 8.
 
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V

videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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From what I read I was under the impression Win7 and maybe Vista had it. You are the first to say this.
 
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Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
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videobruce said:
From what I read I was under the impression Win7 and maybe Vista had it. You are the first to say this.
Click to expand...

Oh, Vista has support all right, but its a royal pain in the you-know-what to actually get it to work... :rolleyes:

(You also need an install DVD with SP1 or 2 slipstreamed. RTM can't boot to UEFI)
 
Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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May 24, 2003
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So what is this thing with "support" isint the OS completely independent of the bios? Once it POSTs and boots isn't the bios out of the picture?
 
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videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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Is Win7 any better? I don't understand why I have not read anything about this. The only warnings that came up repeatedly was trying to use XP. And I have dug into this for well mover a month with this attempted upgrade to Win7 which is not going very well. :(
 
ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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videobruce said:
From what I read I was under the impression Win7 and maybe Vista had it. You are the first to say this.
Click to expand...
As I said before Win7 technically supports UEFI. It just isn't very good.

Red Squirrel said:
So what is this thing with "support" isint the OS completely independent of the bios? Once it POSTs and boots isn't the bios out of the picture?
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No. The OS has to know how to behave on a UEFI system, and how to identify itself to UEFI for loading. So OSes that aren't UEFI compatible can never be loaded from a UEFI BIOS directly (that's where BIOS emulation comes in).
 
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V

videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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Then what does one need to load Win7? Refresh my memory, other than the glitzy GUI that I could care less about, how does UEFI (AHCI) benefit me once in the O/S?
Win7 allows recognizing memory past 4GB and drives larger than 2TB, what does using AHCI do?
 
ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
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videobruce said:
Then what does one need to load Win7? Refresh my memory, other than the glitzy GUI that I could care less about, how does UEFI (AHCI) benefit me once in the O/S?
Win7 allows recognizing memory past 4GB and drives larger than 2TB, what does using AHCI do?
Click to expand...
UEFI and AHCI are very different, practically unrelated things.

UEFI: A modern BIOS

ACHI: A modern storage device communication standard
 
V

videobruce

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2001
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Ok then, other than the glitzy GUI that I could care less about, how does AHCI benefit me once I'm in the O/S?
 
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