I wonder how many times I’ve heard people complain that they can’t boot their Linux Live USB flash drives, or can’t install this or another operating system. I myself have cursed some devices more than once for only having EFI boot.
The GPT format has certainly brought issues but also obvious advantages. The latest editions of Windows 10 are compatible and improve things like boot and safety performance.
Many factory devices come preinstalled with this partition system that reduces boot speeds, especially between the time the BIOS starts and the system boot begins. Up to four times faster (we have seen a boost from 2.5 seconds with MBR to only 1.2 seconds with an average device with a not very modern bios but consistent with this system).
To ensure that Windows partitions our disk in GPT mode we have to activate any of our BIOS’ fast-boot modes and activate the Secure Boot. For that we’ll need a UEFI compatible bios. It is not that rare, nor that modern, my testing device for this trick uses this type of bios and it’s a Core i3 Sandy Bridge Socket 1155.
With these two conditions set in the bios, every bios is a world of its own so you’ll have to look at the manufacturer’s documentation, we can already start installing Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 as usual (I highly recommend using a pendrive).
When selecting the drive where Windows will be installed, and with the right conditions set in our system’s UEFI bios, we can make a manual adjustment of the disk’s partitions. The system creates the partition’s characteristic distribution (4 partitions instead of the usual 2 in MBR) and we can now install normally.
Select Windows startup as a priority in bios.
With this mode enabled we can only boot our operating system in compatible bios’. This is important to consider. The advantage is that we’ll have the Secure Boot’s security and substantially improve the system’s boot speed.
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