Win 8.1 upgrade not possible from 8.0 due to CPU?

[fuddam]

Anyone else have this problem on Hexus and found a solution?

Bought a Dell Precision 470 with dual Xeon cpus, off ebay. 100% legit Win 8.0, by the way - boxed product etc.

Details of problem states certain cpus aren't compatible, esp if missing certain extensions - SSE, NX & one other, IIRC. Coreinfo reveals all those extensions ARE installed on the Xeon cores.

Some peeps managed to format disk, install XP, go through upgrade sequence to 8.0, and then 8.1 became installable, but that doesn't work for all.

any ideas?

[shaithis]

CPU probably doesn't support the CMPXCHG16b command or your bios needs modding because it's masking out some cpu support.

[jcgriff2]

Dell Support shows the latest BIOS = March 2006

hxxp://ftp.dell.com/Pages/Drivers/precision-470.html#BIOS

(Can't post hyper-links due to post count < 5 ATM! -- change HXXP to HTTP)

BIOS does seem to be the issue w/ W8.1

[artturnip]

Is anything CPU wise disabled in there?

[fuddam]

Disabling: not that I know of. I turned on something in the security settings of the BIOS, on recommendation, but wasn't sufficient I guess.

[artturnip]

Do you happen to know what motherboard you have?

[azrael-]

CPU probably doesn't support the CMPXCHG16b command or your bios needs modding because it's masking out some cpu support.

This sounds like the most likely cause of the problem. The thing is, it might be the motherboard, that's the culprit, as well. There's more on this issue here.

EDIT: Seems that one thing you could try is to install the Win 8.1 standalone trial version. Some people have had success doing that, which seems to indicate that whether or not you can install 8.1 on "legacy hardware" depends on what you're trying to upgrade from.

[fuddam]

JCGRIFF2: thanks for the BIOS versions. Current BIOS is v6, so downloaded v7. Has been a long time since I flashed a BIOS - when it was only do-able via DOS. This came as an .exe file, but Win 8 doesn't like my attempts to run it.

Said I must relogin as Admin to do so.

I tried to run the .exe as Admin but failed again.

Windows Configuration Error

An error was encountered trying to configure Windows to allow flashing. Pls reboot and try again.

Any ideas?

Not sure which motherboard. will have to open case later and see.

[fuddam]

Motherboard: Dell 0XC838
Serial: CN1374063J011G
800mhz
BIOS A06 2005

(all hail Belarc Advisor! )

[azrael-]

JCGRIFF2: thanks for the BIOS versions. Current BIOS is v6, so downloaded v7. Has been a long time since I flashed a BIOS - when it was only do-able via DOS. This came as an .exe file, but Win 8 doesn't like my attempts to run it.

Said I must relogin as Admin to do so.

I tried to run the .exe as Admin but failed again.

Windows Configuration Error

An error was encountered trying to configure Windows to allow flashing. Pls reboot and try again.

Any ideas?

Not sure which motherboard. will have to open case later and see.

Have you considered downloading the "BIN" Linux version instead and trying to update the BIOS from some sort of Linux live system like Knoppix?

[stilkun]

Not sure if the desktop BIOS executable support this as I have done this for server. Create an MS-DOS (Win98 version) USB bootable and copy the .exe onto it (rename it something short like A07BIOS.EXE). Boot MS-DOS from the USB stick and type in A07BIOS.exe and hopefully it should execute it from there.

Edit: Look like I was right... from this page: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/...driverid=KCD76

This file format consists of a BIOS executable file. The Universal (Windows/MS DOS) format can be used to install from Windows XP, Windows 2000, NT, Windows 9X, Windows ME or a MS DOS environment

The dos of Windows 8 is different version of ms-dos so you will need to create MS-DOS bootable disk and run upgrade from there.

[fuddam]

Have you considered downloading the "BIN" Linux version instead and trying to update the BIOS from some sort of Linux live system like Knoppix?

wow, never used Linux before, but this looks sweet!

Thanks!

[fuddam]

Not sure if the desktop BIOS executable support this as I have done this for server. Create an MS-DOS (Win98 version) USB bootable and copy the .exe onto it (rename it something short like A07BIOS.EXE). Boot MS-DOS from the USB stick and type in A07BIOS.exe and hopefully it should execute it from there.

Edit: Look like I was right... from this page: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/...driverid=KCD76

The dos of Windows 8 is different version of ms-dos so you will need to create MS-DOS bootable disk and run upgrade from there.

Excellent. Between the USB and Linux options, I WILL succeed! Oh yes, it shall be a sunny day!

[azrael-]

Booting from USB would be the easiest solution, but I'm not sure a system of this age supports booting from USB. It's definitely worth a try, though.

As for the Linux approach, even though it may not look like it, that BIN file is also an executable. When looking at it with a hex editor you can clearly see it has embedded scripting to run the upgrade process. All things being equal it should be possible to just open a command prompt (probably BASH) and then just run the file as you would an executable in DOS.

BTW, thanks for the thanks, but it's really not necessary!

[fuddam]

A07 installed. USB method was simplest.

Didn't make any difference to the upgradeability to 8.1, but it feels like wearing clean underwear - all good!

Thanks for the help on the BIOS front.

[azrael-]

Was wondering if you got around to trying out that Win 8.1 standalone version? If not, there're two ways that immediately come to mind. You can either download the Win 8.1 Enterprise trial or you can download/create an ISO file based on your Win 8 key. Paul Thurrot explains how.

This latter method is preferable because you end up with ISO for a clean install of Win 8.1. There's one caveat, though. A clean install of Win 8.1 doesn't accept your Win 8 key. Only Microsoft knows why.

What you do instead is use a generic product key, which you can use to install, but not activate Windows. Once installed, if you should be so lucky after all, you can change the key to your own genuine Win 8 key and activate Windows.

EDIT: You might have to use the generic key mentioned here instead.