How to use WMI to query to distinguish legacy and UEFI mode Windows?

This document covers requirements for UEFI support.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463144.aspx

One of the requirements seems to be ACPI. The Win32_BIOS class of WMI has a BIOSCharacteristics property that indicates if ACPI is supported. See this link for properties exposed by Win32_BIOS:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394077(v=VS.85).aspx

There is a PowerShell example showing how to get this information at the bottom. You will need to study the document in the first link to see what else is required.

 

Hello,

Maybe I didn't make my question clear. My motherboard BIOS is UEFI BIOS but it supports Legacy Mode.

I can install UEFI Mode Win2K8 R2 and x64 Win7, and I can isntall regular Legacy Mode Windows also.

i want to know how to use WMI to query to distinguish Windows installed in Legacy and UEFI mode?

Superman,

Did you ever figure this out?  I have a need to do the same thing.

 

 

I don't have an answer through WMI, but I did write a utility I could use in WinPE to see if the system executing the binary is UEFI or not.

Binary:

http://xcat.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xcat/xcat-core/trunk/xCAT-server/share/xcat/netboot/windows/detectefi.exe

Source:

http://xcat.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xcat/xcat-core/trunk/xCAT-server/share/xcat/netboot/windows/detectefi.cpp

I know I came looking here for *any* way and assumed WMI was the most likely candidate in a WinPE environment, but this is what I came up with.

• Proposed as answer by Richard MuellerMVP Wednesday, September 21, 2011 7:52 PM

Thanks for the UEFI file.
now, if you wish to use it from Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 check out this link:
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/agile/archive/2012/05/06/uefidetectmdt2010.aspx

enjoy :)

Can you recompile detectEFI.exe to work on 32bit systems?  We still using WinPE4_32bit to deploy our OS since many of our systems are still Windows 7 32bit.  It might only be useful for a few years while we transition, but it is most useful compiled for 32bit.

Can you recompile detectEFI.exe to work on 32bit systems?  We still using WinPE4_32bit to deploy our OS since many of our systems are still Windows 7 32bit.  It might only be useful for a few years while we transition, but it is most useful compiled for 32bit.

That wouldn't be useful. Microsoft doesn't ship any 32-bit environments that can boot from EFI. If you're running a 32-bit environment, you definitely did NOT boot from EFI.

This is not true. Microsoft supports 32-bit UEFI for 32-bit (x86) tablet devices. This support was added in Windows 8.

I get a 403 when trying to access the detectEFI.exe source. I'd like to see the source as well.

I also needed the x86 version of this so i went ahead and compiled it, i figured someone else could use them.

x64

x86

jjj4242, if you want me to remove links please let me know.