I need to be in UEFI mode when PXE booting from WDS, but device comes up in BIOS mode. I am using latest Win 2008 Server R2, fully patched. The board manufacturer insists that the 'Legacy PXE option ROM' is capable of PXE booting into UEFI
mode, but I have doubts. For testing, I am using a x64 boot.wim and install.wim extracted from a recent Breckenridge (Windows Storage Server) DVD. How do I know I'm not in UEFI mode?
When booting PXE/WDS:
1. Windows setup is not able to create a partition greater than 2TB on a 3TB drive.
2. In \Windows\Panther\setupact.log I see:
Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: BIOS
When booting from a DVD (I have two choices in BIOS for DVD device, one specifies 'UEFI')
1. Setup creates a full size (2794 GB) GPT drive partition on a 3TB drive.
2. In \Windows\Panther\setupact.log I see:
Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: UEFI
In both PXE and DVD boot, I specify drivers when setup presents the 'install drivers' button, so that the full size 3TB is displayed. Diskpart shows the following after PXE installation:
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 2794 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 482 MB 0 B
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 0 B
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 60 GB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 1987 GB 60 GB
Apparently setup did not detect UEFI, and created an non-GPT disk. I thought maybe there was something I had to specify on the WDS side, but found nothing in the GUI. I did find options inwdsutil to display and set a 'default boot program' for specific architectures (my target architecture is x64). WDSUTIL /get-Server /server:SVR.Foo.local /show:Config shows:
Boot Program Policy:
Known client PXE prompt policy: OptOut
New client PXE prompt policy: OptOut
Allow N12 for new clients:
Architecture discovery: Enabled
Reset boot program: No
Default boot programs:
x86 - boot\x86\pxeboot.com
x64 - boot\x64\pxeboot.com
ia64 - boot\ia64\bootmgfw.efi
Default N12 boot programs:
x86 - boot\x86\pxeboot.n12
x64 - boot\x64\pxeboot.n12
ia64 - boot\ia64\bootmgfw.efi
So I tried changed the default boot program for x64 to (using WDSUTIL /set-Server /BootProgram:boot\x64\bootmgfw.efi Architecture:x64), to look like:
Boot Program Policy:
Known client PXE prompt policy: OptOut
New client PXE prompt policy: OptOut
Allow N12 for new clients:
Architecture discovery: Enabled
Reset boot program: No
Default boot programs:
x86 - boot\x86\pxeboot.com
x64 - boot\x64\bootmgfw.efi
ia64 - boot\ia64\bootmgfw.efi
Default N12 boot programs:
x86 - boot\x86\pxeboot.n12
x64 - boot\x64\pxeboot.n12
ia64 - boot\ia64\bootmgfw.efi
But I got the same result (Setup cannot configure > 2TB partition, setupact.log shows 'BIOS' boot environment). Am I missing something? Should this work?
Thanks,
Dave