Booting Windows from a GPT drive with EFI

It took me days to get a Windows 7 install back up when I lost a drive with the MBR record that booted to my GPT drive. The windows booting and install processes are just REALLY finicky and temperamental. One of my largest problems was that I couldn’t find certain required files online, so the only way to acquire them was to unhook all but 1 GPT partitioned drive from the computer and install Windows to it.

Here are the files needed to boot Windows 7 x64 from a GPT drive, assuming your mother board supports EFI. The first step is creating a system partition anywhere on the drive (you may have to shrink another partition) and extract these files to that partition. This blog post has good instructions on the entire process, however, instead of using bcdboot, I recommend using “bootrec /ScanOS” followed by “bootrec /RebuildBCD”. You MAY also need a “bootrec /FixMBR”.

These files were obtained from a Windows 7 x64 Ultimate install, so it should work if your install type matches. I expect it will work for any Windows version of an x64 install.

Here is a list of the files:

EFI
├── Boot
│   └── bootx64.efi
└── Microsoft
    └── Boot
        ├── bootmgfw.efi
        ├── bootmgr.efi
        ├── BOOTSTAT.DAT
        ├── cs-CZ
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── da-DK
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── de-DE
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── el-GR
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── en-US
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   ├── bootmgr.efi.mui
        │   └── memtest.efi.mui
        ├── es-ES
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── fi-FI
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── Fonts
        │   ├── chs_boot.ttf
        │   ├── cht_boot.ttf
        │   ├── jpn_boot.ttf
        │   ├── kor_boot.ttf
        │   └── wgl4_boot.ttf
        ├── fr-FR
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── hu-HU
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── it-IT
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── ja-JP
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── ko-KR
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── memtest.efi
        ├── nb-NO
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── nl-NL
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── pl-PL
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── pt-BR
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── pt-PT
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── ru-RU
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── sv-SE
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── tr-TR
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── zh-CN
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        ├── zh-HK
        │   ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
        │   └── bootmgr.efi.mui
        └── zh-TW
            ├── bootmgfw.efi.mui
            └── bootmgr.efi.mui

27 directories, 57 files

“EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD” is not included because it is computer dependent and is created with the bootrec command.
“EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD.LOG*” are not included for obvious reasons.