| 1 | <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
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| 3 | <topic xml:lang="en-us" id="efi">
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| 4 | <title>Alternative Firmware (EFI)</title>
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| 5 |
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| 6 | <body>
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| 7 | <p><ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> includes experimental support for the Extensible Firmware
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| 8 | Interface (EFI), which is an industry standard intended to replace the legacy BIOS as the primary interface for
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| 9 | bootstrapping computers and certain system services later. </p>
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| 10 | <p>By default, <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> uses the BIOS firmware for virtual machines. To
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| 11 | use EFI for a given virtual machine, you can enable EFI in the machine's <b outputclass="bold">Settings</b>
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| 12 | window. See <xref href="settings-motherboard.dita#settings-motherboard"/>. Alternatively, use the
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| 13 | <userinput>VBoxManage</userinput> command line interface as follows: </p>
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| 14 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --firmware efi</pre>
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| 15 | <p>To switch back to using the BIOS: </p>
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| 16 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --firmware bios</pre>
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| 17 | <p>One notable user of EFI is Apple Mac OS X. More recent Linux versions and Windows releases, starting with Vista,
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| 18 | also offer special versions that can be booted using EFI. </p>
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| 19 | <p>Another possible use of EFI in <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> is development and testing
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| 20 | of EFI applications, without booting any OS. </p>
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| 21 | <p>Note that the <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> EFI support is experimental and will be
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| 22 | enhanced as EFI matures and becomes more widespread. Mac OS X, Linux, and newer Windows guests are known to work
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| 23 | fine. Windows 7 guests are unable to boot with the <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> EFI
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| 24 | implementation. </p>
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| 25 | </body>
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| 26 | </topic>
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