By convention, all of the boot loaders for operating systems are stored in the
EFI system partition on a partitionable medium, in of the \EFI\ directory.

Windows NT versions 6.x

For Windows NT 6, the EFI boot loader is \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\Bootmgfw.efi, which is the Microsoft
Boot Manager — another boot manager, which presents a second
menu of boot options, read from a database file in a Microsoft-proprietary
format, which in turn list boot loader programs to invoke and options to pass to
them.
Windows NT 6 needlessly duplicates the functionality of the EFI boot manager,
and needlessly makes a user-visible distinction between all other operating
systems (listed on the first boot manager menu, which Microsoft configures to be
displayed for only 2 seconds in order to, in Microsoft's own words, "make it
easier" for users) and Windows NT (listed on the second boot manager menu).

Linux

For the 64-bit versions of Linux, the EFI boot loader is either
\EFI\RedHat\elilo.efi or \EFI\SuSE\elilo.efi, which
comprises a modified version of LILO, the Linux boot loader that loads and
executes the Linux kernel from files in the system volume.

ELILO, like the Microsoft Boot Manager, contains a second level of
boot options, held in a separate elilo.conf configuration file,
rather than integrating support for such multiple boot options into the EFI boot
loader and EFI variables, as it should. Unlike the Microsoft Boot Manager,
however, ELILO is a boot loader, incapable of loading any other operating system
but Linux (the different boot options merely allowing one to specify which Linux
kernel image file to use and various options specific to the Linux kernel such
as the ramdisc size), not a boot manager, and so does not needlessly duplicate
all of the functionality of the EFI boot manager.

HP/UX

For HP-UX, the EFI boot loader is \EFI\HPUX\hpux.efi, which
loads and executes the HP-UX kernel from an image file in the system volume(e.g.
/vmlinux). The HP-UX boot loader also comprises an interactive
shell, although the EFI Shell that comes with the EFI firmware provides much the
same functionality.

The UEFI Shell is a shell/terminal for the firmware which allows launching uefi applications which include uefi bootloaders. Apart from that, the shell can also be used to obtain various other information about the system or the firmware like memory map (memmap), running partitioning programs (diskpart), loading uefi drivers, editing text files (edit), hexedit etc. Few Asus and other AMI Aptio x86_64 UEFI firmware based motherboards (from Sandy Bridge onwards) provide an option called Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device . For those motherboards, download the x86_64 UEFI Shell and copy it to you EFI SYSTEM PARTITION or usb stick as /shellx64.efi (mostly /boot/efi/shellx64.efi) .

x86_64 UEFI Shell

i386 UEFI Shell

x86_64 UEFI Tools

The uefi tools contain the following:

• Diskpart a partition manager compiled for use from microsoft for the uefi shell


• Microsoft format: efifmt


• Microsofts checkdisk: efichk


• Tools for networking: ping, ftp


• Ramdisk utilities


• Python


• Text editor: edit

Requirements:

Windows 7 uEFI media - can be dvd or usb stick

uEFI capable motherboard - the Asus P5Q Deluxe is the only older board that uses uEFI. Any Asus or MSI that supports sandy bridge should have a uEFI firmware. Certain laptops with a insydeh2o firmware might have uEFI support. An example of Asus is the P8P67.

Installation:

Go into the firmware and check if the disk is detected. Make sure that the hard drives are AHCI.

Then just install as normal - boot from the media and run through the installer. Make sure that you use the uEFI version of the usb stick if you use one, because USB sticks can do both MBR which is the old method with the standard bios and uEFI which is what we want to use

--note that windows 7 uses gpt partitions for uEFI which is great for drives greater than 2TB

Media will be available from the iso links page: ISO Links

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is a replacement for the older BIOS firmware interface. UEFI is not restricted to any specific processor architecture, and can run on top of or instead of traditional BIOS implementations.

uEFI has the following advantages over BIOS

• Ability to boot from large disks (over 2 TiB)


• Faster boot-up


• CPU-independent architecture


• CPU-independent drivers


• Flexible pre-OS environment, including networking support


• Modular design

In addition to the standard PC disk partition scheme, which uses a master boot record (MBR), EFI adds support for a new partitioning scheme: GUID Partition Table (GPT). GPT does not suffer from many of the limitations of MBR. In particular, the MBR limits on the number and size of disk partitions (up to 4 partitions per disk, up to 2.2 TB (2.2 × 10¹² bytes) per disk) are relaxed. GPT allows for a maximum disk and partition size of 9.4 ZB (9.4 × 10²¹ bytes).The EFI specification does not prescribe any particular file system. The only Microsoft Windows versions that can boot from disks larger than 2.2 TB, are 64-bit Windows Vista/7 and Windows Server 2008 and later.

The UEFI processor mode can be either 32-bit (x86-32, ARM) or 64-bit (x86-64 and Itanium).64-bit UEFI supports long mode which allows applications in the pre-boot execution environment to have direct access to all of the memory using 64-bit addressing.UEFI requires the firmware and operating system to be size-matched, e.g. a 64-bit UEFI implementation can only boot a 64-bit UEFI operating system.

EFI defines two types of services: boot services and runtime services. Boot services are only available while the firmware owns the platform, i.e. before the "ExitBootServices" call. Boot services include text and graphical console support on various devices, bus, block, and file services. Runtime services are still accessible while the operating system is running; they include services such as date, time, and NVRAM access.
EFI defines protocols as set of software interfaces used for communication between two binary modules. All EFI drivers must provide services to others via protocols.
In addition to standard architecture-specific device drivers, the EFI specification provides for a processor-independent device driver environment, called EFI Byte Code or EBC. System firmware is required by the UEFI specification to carry an interpreter for any EBC images that reside in or are loaded into the environment.
Some architecture-specific (non-EBC) EFI device driver types can have interfaces for use from the operating system. This allows the OS to rely on EFI for basic graphics and network support until OS specific drivers are loaded.

An EFI boot manager is also used to select and load the operating system, removing the need for a dedicated boot loader mechanism (the OS boot loader is an EFI application).
EFI supports a shell environment.The shell can be used to execute other EFI applications.
An operating system that supports being booted from a (U)EFI is called a (U)EFI-aware OS, defined by (U)EFI specification. Here the term booted from a (U)EFI means directly booting the system using a (U)EFI OS loader stored on any storage device. The default location for the OS loader is \EFI\BOOT\boot[architecture name].efi, where the architecture name can be e.g. IA32, X64 or IA64. Some OS vendors may have their own OS loader. They may also change the default boot location.