Installing Windows 8 in UEFI Mode from a USB Flash Drive

So, you want to install Windows 8 on your shiny new ultraportable laptop. You know, the one without a CD drive? Or perhaps you would like the speed of a USB installation instead of a DVD? You have come to the right place.

If you like defaultness, you could just use the Windows 7 USB Tool and have it format and do all that junk to the USB drive for you. But we like to do things the hard way. (Plus that tool formats the drive as NTFS and you can't do a UEFI install from NTFS media) So we'll have some fun.

1. Go get yourself a Windows 8 ISO. I imagine you can find it on the internet. Please note that only the 64-bit version will support UEFI.
2. Get the RMPrepUSB tool from http://www.rmprepusb.com/.
3. Run the  RMPrepUSB  tool with the following options:
Have RMPrepUSB automatically copy the contents of the ISO to the USB drive.
4. Make sure your BIOS is in UEFI mode.
5. Boot from the USB stick. MAKE SURE YOU BOOT IN UEFI MODE. My laptop will still let you pick legacy boot options even when in UEFI mode. The boot location will look kind of weird.
6. Once you get in the installer, hit Shift+F10 to launch a command prompt. Go to the install directory:
cd \Windows\panther
notepad setupact.log
Look for the line that says
Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: EFI 
If it says something else (BIOS, etc.) you're not in UEFI mode.

7. Do your install. As a bonus, I wasn't able to install Windows using a USB stick in normal BIOS mode because Windows couldn't determine the boot order of my SSD. But it works in UEFI mode!

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