Installing Windows 8 Build 8061

[johndoe123]

Hi, I've attempted to install Windows 8 Build 8061 but I am stuck at the winload.efi digital signature invalid screen and I can't disable driver signature enforcement because pressing F8 is not an option. Please advise me on what I can do to get past this error.

[skywalker06]

Sounds like a broken download, have you tried downloading it again

[cmd]

Hi, I've attempted to install Windows 8 Build 8061 but I am stuck at the winload.efi digital signature invalid screen and I can't disable driver signature enforcement because pressing F8 is not an option. Please advise me on what I can do to get past this error.

It may be a problem with winload itself, I tried to replace winload several times to solve the problem, but stuck in the logo interface and cannot start.

[johndoe123]

Sounds like a broken download, have you tried downloading it again

This is an arm32 build

[Meow_2004]

I patched both winload.efi, and acpi.sys, it got to the Welcome Screen with the Windows "Beta" fish icon and it just freezes (similar to what cmd is experiencing), I am attempting this on QEMU with the TianoCore EDK II Firmware with no luck with that either. Looks like however, this build works on a Surface RT which the CPU is a Cortex-A9, QEMU does not have an option for that specific CPU (not in the source code, and attempting it as a parameter crashes). Anyone have any idea on somehow patching QEMU to support the Cortex-A9 CPU?

[Meow]

This would explain, easily, why this doesn't work in QEMU.

Taken straight from the Internet Archive page:
WIM dump of Windows 8 Developer Preview build 6.2.8061.0 (fbl_core1_soc.110803-1830) ARM32/WoA, Ultimate SKU. Originally staged from seperate set of components. Includes hals for Tegra 2/3 and Texas Instruments OMAP4 (Cortex-A9).

The WIM file does not have any support for the generic hardware the virt machine in QEMU emulates. This was dumped from a device likely not too dissimilar to the Surface RT, which is why it works there but nowhere else.

Edit: Entirely forgot there was a branch of QEMU that specifically supports Windows RT 8, 8.1, and it's beta builds (and also seems to emulate the Surface RT, at least partially) (https://github.com/binarymaster/qemu), so I ran the prebuilt executable under WINE (because it refuses to compile on my system), yet still nothing, even after replacing the modified winload and acpi. Picture if anyone wants to see it:

Seems like more thorough emulation of the Surface RT is required to get this working.
I will note, that this probably got through some of the stages of bootup. My laptop's fans were running at different rates for like 5 minutes, and then they settled and ran at a constant speed, which likely means the emulator is stuck (or it booted successfully, but no graphics, who knows).

[Meow_2004]

Yea, that's also where I have been stuck for this build, only way around is if someone creates a build of QEMU-ARM that emulates similar specs of a Surface RT.... Then we can possibly get this to boot.

[Meow]

Yea, that's also where I have been stuck for this build, only way around is if someone creates a build of QEMU-ARM that emulates similar specs of a Surface RT.... Then we can possibly get this to boot.

Not even similar specs, the entire SoC (or at least a huge chunk of it) has to be emulated so that the hals work.

QEMU’s Cortex-a9 also does not work with the “virt” machine, but it does with versatilepb. I wonder why.

[Meow_2004]

Is it possible to run the build from versatilepb instead of virt?

[Meow]

Is it possible to run the build from versatilepb instead of virt?

It doesn’t look like it, as that machine emulates different hardware than the virt machine. Also, apparently only 256M of ram is supported, and it emulates a very old CPU according to the QEMU docs (https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/ARM)