Switching to GPT Partitioning Scheme

Hello there! This is my first time posting here, so please forgive me if this is not the proper place to post this question. This is more of an issue with my system (overall) than EasyBCD, so I thought it should go here. If I was wrong in thinking such, please redirect/bump me to the proper sub-forum.

I'm currently trying to switch my computer over to GPT partitioning scheme. But, in order to do so, I need to have either EFI/UEFI (motherboard/hardware support) or a bootloader (low-level software support) that can handle GPT (in opposed to just MBR). I was looking at GRUB/GRUB2 for the bootloader, and EasyBCD happens to come with its own form of GRUB. Community assistance would be greatly appreciated.
 


Thank you for the resources. However, a good deal of that is information (besides the low-level diagrams for how GUID/GPT Partitions look on-disk) that I have already encountered in other forms across the internet. If there is something you wanted me to focus on specifically, please say so. However, to answer the question of what OS is as follows:
  • Windows 10 Enterprise
  • Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
 
I don't recommend manually reconfiguring a BIOS machine to UEFI mode or vice-versa, as there are a lot of catches and potential pitfalls. The general recommended advice is to make a backup of your important files and initialize the drive, then reinstall Windows by booting from the CD in UEFI mode.

However, if you wish to convert your current installation instead, you will need to at minimum create a fat32 partition that will serve as the ESP (the EFI "boot" partition), then boot into a Linux live CD with gdisk (gpt fdisk) installed, which you can use from the terminal to convert your drive to EFI.

Note that Windows will not boot at this point without rebuilding the boot menu configuration to work in UEFI mode, which can be done manually from the command line from the Windows setup DVD or automatically via EasyRE.
 
I don't recommend manually reconfiguring a BIOS machine to UEFI mode or vice-versa, as there are a lot of catches and potential pitfalls. The general recommended advice is to make a backup of your important files and initialize the drive, then reinstall Windows by booting from the CD in UEFI mode.

However, if you wish to convert your current installation instead, you will need to at minimum create a fat32 partition that will serve as the ESP (the EFI "boot" partition), then boot into a Linux live CD with gdisk (gpt fdisk) installed, which you can use from the terminal to convert your drive to EFI.

Note that Windows will not boot at this point without rebuilding the boot menu configuration to work in UEFI mode, which can be done manually from the command line from the Windows setup DVD or automatically via EasyRE.

I will see what I can do :smile: I'll keep you posted...
 
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