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The situation is as follows:
- this is a new Dell Precision M3800;
- it comes with a Windows 8.1 pro version and a USB recovery medium;
- the machine uses UEFI;
- I immediately scratched Windows and installed Ubuntu 15.04 on it;
- and my Windows version now runs in a VM.
The VM is as follows:
- it is a qemu x86_64 VM (virt-manager shows the emulator as being
/usr/bin/kvm-spice); - legacy firmware, not UEFI;
- there are two disks: the second is a dump (using
dd) of the USB recovery medium, the first is the disk where the Windows install actually resides.
But as I went a little too fast, I botched the install somewhat and the disk where Windows resides is not bootable; I have to keep the dump of the USB recovery medium...
There are a lot of documentations on the net about EFI, GPT, etc but I have failed so far to find a guide telling me how to go about creating a simple "EFI disk" to replace that USB dump. If that helps, I do have another external USB medium which boots Ubuntu, so I can probably use that, I just don't know how...
So, is it possible to replace that USB dump with a more simple, "bare bones" EFI disk image? If yes, how to proceed?
fge
Posted 2015-07-17T06:25:13.573
Reputation: 573
if you just want a UEFI bootable windows installation disk, format the USB to FAT32 then copy all contents from Windows 8.1 ISO to it. – Chris.C – 2015-07-17T08:51:17.940
@Chris.C this is what I already have in fact (by having
dded the raw USB device to a file); what I'd like is a minimal EFI boot manager instead of the full dump – fge – 2015-07-17T08:56:17.157the UEFI bios is capable of selecting and booting multiple EFI systems which kinda serve the purpose of traditional boot manager, or maybe sth. like this? http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
– Chris.C – 2015-07-17T09:06:46.780@Chris.C uh, I am not familiar with (U)EFI; it looks like it would be able to fit my needs, but then what about OVMF as a firmware? Really, I have a lot of trouble understanding all of this :/ – fge – 2015-07-17T10:01:56.077