Install Windows 7 in UEFI mode

Installing Windows 7 on a GPT partition was not a very pleasant experience for me. I usually create usb media to install Linux (and Windows on an MBR partition) using the trusty dd method:

dd if=img.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M

However, the above does not work for GPT partitions. Through much trial and error I finally got it to work using the following relatively simple (!) steps. However, the one thing to note here is that the Windows 7 UEFI installer is broken. What we’re going to do here is to use the Windows 10 installer, and replace a file install.wim with its similarly named counterpart from the Windows 7 installation disk.

1. Mount the iso files like so:

   [root@love ~]$ mkdir /mnt/win7
   [root@love ~]$ mkdir /mnt/win10
   [root@love ~]$ mount -o loop win7.iso /mnt/win7
   [root@love ~]$ mount -o loop win10.iso /mnt/win10

2. Copy over the Windows 10 files to a usb drive by using your favorite file manager.
3. Replace the file install.wim in the sources folder on the usb drive with the one from the Windows 7 iso.
4. You’re done!

Install Windows by booting from the usb drive as you normally would. Note that in most modern bios systems you can usually select a UEFI boot disk by pressing F12 or some other key during system start up.

Or, to avoid this whole problem, just use Linux 🙂