for a clean Win 7 install - UEFI or legacy BIOS? GBT or MBR partition?

[mirileh]

About to downgrade a T440S to Windows 7 - and I totally forgot which and why to choose UEFI or legacy BIOS, and GBT or MBR partition. Please help me with this one (I remember this giving me a headache deciding the last time around)!

[dr_st]

So, the BIOS style and the partition style must go together. UEFI+GPT or Legacy+MBR.

In theory, Win7 supports installation in UEFI+GPT mode (even Vista SP1+ supports it), but in practice, it will not always work well. Some vendors' implementations may not be sufficiently compatible with what Windows expects, and you may run into an issue of the install stuck on the Windows logo and never continuing or something along these lines.

UEFI theoretically provides faster boot capabilities, but the benchmark results I've seen have not been very conclusive. For a hassle-free installation, legacy BIOS + MBR will probably be best.