Having recently succeeded in upgrading from The "Award" F13 to the" American Megatrends" U1e UEFI BIOS I would like to offer answers to some of the questions that led me to this point, and to pose two questions that have arisen since.
1) Is it worth the trouble?I found the reduction in boot time remarkable
: When setting up the U1e Bios I opted for the fastest boot option. The result is that there is only a second or two before Windows starts loading. No logo, no DOS echo ... straight into Windows with only two small niggles (I will come back to them at the end)
2) How do you upgrade to the UEFI BIOS on a Win 7 64bit system that does not recognise the new BIOS file and will not carry out the install using QBIOS, @Bios or the bat.file provided?After trying many blind alleys, I created a bootable USB stick using the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool V2.18" and a set of " Windows 98-Boot Disk Contents" from "allbootdisks". Then I copied the three new BIOS files (downloaded from Gigabyte) on to the USB stick. Finally I entered the existing Award BIOS to change the "First Boot" item to "USB FDD"(USB Floppy Disk Drive). With the USB stick in place I rebooted and waited while the screen displayed the process as the old BIOS was replaced with the new.
3) What do you need to change in the new BIOS setup. All settings from your earlier BIOS are lost and you have to start from scratch, with a mix of familiar, and some not so familiar entries to check. I would draw your attention to the distinction made between "Legacy" and "UEFI". I soon came to realise that the reference to UEFI in the BIOS refers to an operating system and hardware that has been installed with full UEFI compatibibility, whilst legacy refers to what I already had installed: a bog standard Win 7 (64bit) installation.
There are several BIOS entries that discriminate betweeen UEFI and Legacy, in my case I played safe and opted for the Legacy option each time.
I noticed that this had an impact on the drives that can be selected for "first boot". If you select UEFI it will only show UEFI compatible drives. This was one of my early mistakes which caused the BIOS to keep re-booting in a cycle, until I changed back to "Legacy" and the full list of available drives became available and I was able to select the correct drive for "first boot".
The old Award BIOS required you to select the AHCI option on two occasions in order to enable "hot swapping" of drives. In the UEFI BIOS you need to select each SATA drive in turn to enable hot swapping and there is also another separate option where you will need to select from IDE/RAID/AHCI.
4) Is there anything I need to do after updating the BIOS?Oooooooh Yes ... (a la Churchill) ... Once Windows boots up it will automatically start re-installing "ALL" the drivers. The mistake I made was to think that it had finished this process ... when it hadn't ! ... ... It takes a good few minutes, and just as it seems to have completed one batch of installations, it adds further items to the list. It's all automated, you just need to keep an eye on the progress by continually scrolling down the update window.
Later I discovered that I also needed to log back on to my wireless router and re-tune Windows Media Centre to my TV card and the available TV stations.
5) How do you get subsequent access to the new BIOS to overclock or modify other entries ?I really struggled with this one for a while ... Here I was with a blisteringly fast boot, no boot logo, and no on-screen prompts. I discovered that the access key was the same as for the Award BIOS (i.e. the "delete" key), but the POST was so fast that I was unable to interupt the boot process. I was also concerned that my USB keyboard might not be effective this early in the boot process and I don't have a PS2 keyboard.
Eventually I decided that the only sure way to get the BIOS to show itself was to create a BIOS fault (i.e. a power failure). So by playing around with the Start button and quickly turning off the mains power, I eventually got the BIOS to show itself. Not very satisfactory, and I am open to any other solutions.
6) Can I use any of the Gigabyte BIOS utilities that previously gave me access to the BIOS from within Windows ?No, in fact Gigabyte recommend these are uninstalled before updating to a The American Megatrends UEFI BIOS.
So, what are the problems I am left with?
1) How do I get my PC to "Sleep"?If I select "sleep" from the Start menu, a shortcut, or the Media Centre remote control, the system shuts down immediately and when I reboot I get the error screen that tells me "Windows was shutdown incorrectly ... etc".
In the old Award BIOS there were the S1 and S3 options in the "Power" section that enabled "save to Memory" or "Save to Drive". There is no reference I can find to either option in the UEFI BIOS or anything else that might affect the "Sleep" function.
Is this something I have to accept as a limitation in the new BIOS, or is there some way that I can recover this function?
2) How can I reliably access the new UEFI BIOS, without having to resort to staging a power failure (as mentioned above)?The POST (if there is such a thing on this new BIOS) is so fast that I'm unable to interupt with the delete key. This may be confounded by the fact that I am using a USB keyboard which may not be active during the POST.
Good Luck to any other BIOS adventurers, and I would be pleased to hear if anyone has a link to a manual or guide for the new U1e UEFI BIOS
Handygrandad