(solved) Anyone successfully switch existing Server 2008 R2 to UEFI boot?

[fastgeek]

As the subject says. I've tried all sorts of ways that supposedly allows this to happen; but wind up with a red screen (red text, black background) after switching boot type to UEFI.

[just occurred to me that this red screen could be due to an add-in video card; going to remove and try again.]

Unfortunately I have to make this legacy system image work on modern hardware. I've successfully cleared this initial hurdle with the server booting in Legacy mode (plus updating all the core system drivers via WinPE and dism); however there are restrictions to using legacy mode that I'd like to avoid if possible. Hence trying to convert to UEFI.

If anyone has pulled this off, I'm interested in hearing how you did it.

Thanks!

 

[fastgeek]

So, quite the mess, some of it my own fault. Since we never know if someone else might search and come across this post... here we go.

Wound up making a current WinPE 1803 disc, along with all the needed drivers, to try and use mbr2gpt. Had treid before with a slightly older 17xx version of PE, UT apparently that won't do. While the utility ran, and the disc was supposedly now mbr, the partitions were unchanged; which didn't sync with what's supposed to happen.

Wound up manually recreating the boot following this great guide. It went well beyond the usual "create a 100mb efi and 128mb msr" stuff and really got into the proper steps of rebuilding the boot records by hand. A little tedious, perhaps, but exactly what was needed.

Of course this was a big step in the right direction; but the red text error at boot was still there. This time though, it was a little different. Some Googling revealed said red text screen is a issue with HPE servers and Server 2008 R2. Disable UEFI boot optimization and it goes away... and 2008 R2 finally boots.

Now to see if the system properly behaves.