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Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 UEFI?

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glivo

New Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Firstly my apologies for knowing nothing (very little) about UEFI.

I recently obtained a GA-Z68AP-D3 rev 2.0 board, i5 2500 CPU and a 60GB Patriot Inferno SSD. So I put it all together and installed Windows 10 Pro 64 bit from a DVD after I first tested the motherboard and CPU with a WD 500Gb HDD that already had a standard clean W10 O/S installed. It worked straight away.

I'm fairly sure that when I disconnected the HDD and connected the SDD, when I booted from the DVD I was given boot menu options of UEFI or SATA "versions" of the DVD drive. I don't remember what I did (50/50) but I'm again pretty sure that the SDD was installed using UEFI. What I do know is that Windows wouldn't install on the SDD as it was, and I had to delete the partitions and create a new one which actually created 4. Reserved, System and Recovery (small) and Primary (59GB) or something like that. I think I had to create a GPT disk because it couldn't use MBR or something. I also know that in BIOS the 1 position for Boot priority was set to Windows Boot Manager (or similar) and then there were priority options 2, 3 and 4 for the actual drives. Why was I looking at BIOS?

Well after Windows was loaded and working I had trouble with a WiFi PCIex card, which I found was related to which slot I used. I looked in BIOS to see if the unusable slots were turned off or something to prevent them working. Obviously they weren't so I'm not sure what happened there, but the card worked in slot 1 so I moved on.

Next thing, I then had the UEFI DualBios boot loop for no apparent reason. I made no changes in the BIOS settings. I just had a look, then Exit without saving. I ended up finally fixing that using this method:http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...motherboards?p=8000334&viewfull=1#post8000334

Once I was able to restart the PC and access BIOS the best option was to load Default Optimum Settings. However, once I was here the previously bootable SSD was no longer bootable. So this time when I boot from the DVD there are no boot menu options. Plus to reinstall Windows I had to remove and recreate the partitions again. This time it told me it couldn't use GPT disk type, so I'm thinking now I have MBR again.

Now all installed drives are SATA. I’m assuming that when the Main BIOS chip was flashed from the Backup chip it has UEFI turned off.
The computer is running OK.
Is there any real benefit from having UEFI?
How could I make the change to UEFI?
I’m happy to start over if necessary.
 
For most people there is no deal breaker real advantage of EUFI over bios. Mostly, it's the ability to navigate around in the bios with a a mouse. My concern is with all this jacking around and reformatting you may have unneeded partitions left over that take up precious space on an already small SSD.
 
No stagnant partitions. 60 GB is plenty big enough for Windows. I have a 500GB HDD in as well, plus external storage if needed. I guess if I don't want to fluff about in BIOS the only other real benefit is the Fast Boot offered by UEFI.

I guess I'll just leave it as is for now.
 
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