winnvram.efi and winldfw.efi in Longhorn 5112: It works

[BetaNewbie]

Actually the help message of winnvram.efi is valid, and it is meant to be used like that.


But VMware's built in EFI Shell shows wrong device names for whatever reason, results in setting incorrect file paths to the EFI boot entry you create with winnvram.efi.

On my setup, MBR partition table with two main partition. C partition is FAT32 active for boot files, and NTFS D partition for Windows.

Install 5112 in D partition in BIOS mode as normal.

Then set VM to UEFI mode, use a newer EFI Shell instead of the built-in one, I use the one in EDK2 UDK2018: https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/ ... /UefiShell

If everything is right, you should see blk1/fs0 for C partition, and blk2 for D partition (which incorrectly shows as blk1 in VMware's shell).

Go to fs0:\boot, then run winnvram.efi to create your EFI boot entry:

Code: Select all

winnvram.efi fs0:\boot\winldfw.efi blk2:\WINDOWS\ "Windows Longhorn" "/NOEXECUTE=OPTIN"

Exit shell, you should see "Windows Longhorn" in the EFI boot manager, which boots straight to Windows.

[BetaNewbie]

winldfw.efi is basically winload.efi complied as an actual EFI application, you can clearly see that in the F8 menu:



Notice the name of the boot entry is blank, because bootmgr is completely out of the boot chain. ESC just goes back to UEFI itself.

[Beta12]

Longhorn 32 or 64-bit? If 64 then try this shell and bcfg to add/remove NVRAM boot entry.

[AlphaBeta]

Notice the name of the boot entry is blank, because bootmgr is completely out of the boot chain. ESC just goes back to UEFI itself.

Maybe it's supposed to show the name of the UEFI boot entry that would have invoked it.

[BetaNewbie]

Longhorn 32 or 64-bit? If 64 then try this shell and bcfg to add/remove NVRAM boot entry.

32-bit. I doubt the x64 build have these files.
Also winnvram.efi wrote quite a few extra blobs, not just a simple boot entry.