Install Windows 8.1 on Intel NUC (D54250WY)

My latest home project involves using a Intel NUC (D54250WY) as a HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer), or in short I will use at as a media client for either Plex or XBMC (haven't quite made up my mind yet). I put 16 GB of RAM in the device, and a 240 GB mSATA hard drive. The media files will be streamed from my HP MicroServer in which I added a 480 GB SSD for the OS (didn't have any smaller around) and 4 x 4 TB SATA disks, and created a storage pool in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Back to the Intel NUC: Of course I wanted to use the UEFI capabilities on the device so I upgraded to latest BIOS, enabled UEFI, and installed Windows 8.1 on the device.

I installed the device from a MDT 2013 offline media (USB 3.0), and I had added the drivers to the deployment share as well. The setup took about 5 – 6 minutes, but when logging in I noted a message in the right-hand corner: "SecureBoot isn't configured correctly."

SecureBoot
Message in the right-hand corner saying: "SecureBoot isn't configured correctly."

Fixing the Secure Boot message

First, I was a bit puzzled because I did enable Secure Boot at the same time as I enabled UEFI in BIOS. Problem was I forgot to check the "Install Intel Platform Key" which was not enabled by default. As soon as both Secure Boot options were enabled, the message went away.

BIOS003 - Copy
Setting BIOS for Windows 8.1 when having UEFI enabled.

Note: The BIOS screen dump was taken with my trustworthy Epiphan DVI2USB 3.0, a great frame grabber.

SecureBoot002
Desktop after BIOS was correctly configured.

/ Johan

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Johan Arwidmark

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Admin
Admin
9 years ago

Hi hgreenwood, well I have been planning on updating my driver-signing post for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 anyway. I'll ping you when it's done

/ Johan

hgreenwood
hgreenwood
9 years ago

I am trying to install windows 2012 r2 via MDT to NUC . However I am having problems with the network driver. Intel did not write support for windows server into the driver. I have found posts on the internet on how to modify the .inf file and to disable driver signing. But this is a manual process and defeats the object of mdt. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

mmarable
mmarable
9 years ago

"… which I added a 480 GB SSD for the OS (didn't have any smaller around)…"

Oh to have such hardships! 🙂

Vargar
Vargar
9 years ago

I see you're using Storage Spaces. I migrated my WHS v2 over to a Server 2012 R2 and used storage spaces. I started with 2 x 3TB drives mirrored. When I ran out of space I added another pair of 3TB drives. I was kind of surprised that the volume load wasn't rebalanced to take advantage of all of the drives. The old drives were full and the new ones remained empty. It is also kind of a pain that you can only expand the mirror with a pair of drives the same size (if they're different sized then the… Read more »


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