EFI system partition is the disk partition used by computer system to adhere particularly to EFI scheme. This partition is refereed by ID 0xEF in MBR partition table scheme. Microsoft recommends that when you partition a hard disk, you should set EFI system partition as the first partition of the disk. But at times, specifically when you try to install Windows, you might experience that Text-mode fails to work, as expected. This behavior is particularly observed if partition other than EFI partition is the first hard disk partition.
In such cases, you need to delete this first and any existing ESI partition from the hard disk, which causes data loss. If you don’t have backup that could restore the data after deleting the partition, you should use powerful Partition Recovery Software to extract the lost data.
For an instance, consider that you try to install Itanium-based version of Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. You experience that text-mode part of the Setup fails to work and return an error message.
Cause
You might observe the above discussed symptoms while installing Windows if the Setup tries to create an EFI system partition or you manually try to do so. This particularly occurs if the first hard disk partition is not an EFI partition.
Solution
You need to delete the existing EFI and first partition of the hard drive. You can then run the Setup that will automatically create an EFI system partition as the drive first partition. To delete the partition, you can use Windows Recovery Console to run the Diskpart utility as:
Use the Windows startup disk to start the system
Type ‘R’ enter the Recovery Console
Type ‘diskpart’ at the command prompt
Select the first drive partition and press ‘D’ to delete it
Select the partition containing [Reserved] text and press ‘D’ to delete it
Press ‘ENTER’ to confirm the partition deletion
Press ‘L’ and then ‘ESC’
Restart your computer and restore lost partitions’ data from backup
You can alternatively use Windows PE or a third-party format utility to delete the partitions. But if you find data backup as incomplete or invalid to restore the required data, use efficient Windows Partition Recovery utility to recover it. Partition Recovery Software are third-party tools designed to recover lost, deleted or corrupt disk partitions safely.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is completely reliable and advanced partition recovery utility for Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000 based systems. It is a comprehensive Windows Partition Recovery tool with graphically rich user interface and options. The tool provides safe data recovery from FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 based drives.