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Thread: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

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    Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    I have tried for a month on and off to install Win7 to a HDD with a GPT partition table and can not. I have read numerous. of articles and thread regarding this.
    It appears this can't be done with the hardware I have (MB and/or optical drives).

    I have come to the conclusion that the problem is with the MB and/or the optical drives telling Win7 to install to a GPT instead of MSDOS. The O/S install program doesn't see whatit needs to to have this happen based on either the optical drive itself and/or the drivers for that drive through the MB.

    Is this correct?

    The only options in the UEFI BIOS is AHCI on or off and SATA or IDE mode. There are no additional switches.
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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    I had this problem, I assume you're booting from a GPT formatted USB stick? If you are and the installer is hanging check if a new bios is available for your GPU. That was my problem (the shipping one wasn't properly fastboot compliant).

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Windows will only install to a GPT drive if:

    • It is a 64-bit version of Windows
    • The installer was booted in UEFI mode


    Windows makes it really hard to tell whether the installer is booted in UEFI mode or BIOS mode, but there's a way:

    1. Go through the installer as far as clicking the "Install Now" button, but no further
    2. Press Shift-F10 to open a command prompt
    3. Type "notepad x:\windows\panther\setupact.log" where X is the drive letter already shown on the screen. tab-complete will help you here
    4. Search using ctrl-f for BootEnvironmentDetect


    If it's booted in BIOS mode, there are three possibilities: your firmware settings are wrong (e.g. it's configured for legacy boot); or you picked the wrong device to boot from (typically UEFI motherboards will show the DVD drive twice when that drive contains a UEFI record and a BIOS record - you need to ensure you boot from the UEFI record. It may be listed as something like "Windows Boot Manager"); or your installer only includes a BIOS record (e.g. if you download Windows 8 from Microsoft, then use the installer to burn to a DVD, that DVD is BIOS only - you need to burn to a USB stick to be able to do a UEFI install)

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    my solution, and i appreciate this doesn't exactly answer your query, was to use an SSD as the boot drive in and format the HDD as GPT with BIOS set to AHCI. despite the SSD being sata it show up as an IDE drive. No idea why but guess it's to do with needing to be recognisable to boot from

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Quote Originally Posted by ik9000 View Post
    my solution, and i appreciate this doesn't exactly answer your query, was to use an SSD as the boot drive in and format the HDD as GPT with BIOS set to AHCI. despite the SSD being sata it show up as an IDE drive. No idea why but guess it's to do with needing to be recognisable to boot from
    I tried the same thing and it worked.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    I assume you're booting from a GPT formatted USB stick?
    Bad assumption. No, a optical disc. Using RT7 Lite (the only way I do this due to all the M$ bloat), a USB stick will not boot. Besides I have always use optical drives.
    .
    Windows will only install to a GPT drive if:
    It is a 64-bit version of Windows
    The installer was booted in UEFI mode
    I have had it setup that way from the start, but it will not work.

    .
    my solution, and i appreciate this doesn't exactly answer your query, was to use an SSD as the boot drive in and format the HDD as GPT with BIOS set to AHCI.
    I have done that numerous times and it doesn't work.

    My assumption is it's a limitation of the BIOS and/or the optical drive(s) from what I have read elsewhere.
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    (typically UEFI motherboards will show the DVD drive twice when that drive contains a UEFI record and a BIOS record - you need to ensure you boot from the UEFI record.
    Not here. I have never heard of this.
    .
    your installer only includes a BIOS record (e.g. if you download Windows 8 from Microsoft, then use the installer to burn to a DVD, that DVD is BIOS only - you need to burn to a USB stick to be able to do a UEFI install)
    Never read any of that either. And this is after a month of research (or more).

    What does a USB stick have to do with anything??
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Quote Originally Posted by videobruce View Post
    Not here. I have never heard of this.
    Just because you've never heard of it, doesn't mean it's not true.



    That's one optical drive, with Windows 7 x64 downloaded from Microsoft and burned to DVD - note the two boot entries, one marked UEFI and one not.

    .Never read any of that either. And this is after a month of research (or more).
    It's not a disclosed limitation, but it's there. But since you're using Windows 7, it's not something you need to be aware of. You just need to ensure you're booting from official x64 media (or correctly remastered media with the required boot record layout, if not)

    What does a USB stick have to do with anything??
    Some people copy their Windows installer to a USB stick, e.g. for laptops without an optical drive. Sometimes they do it wrong, in a BIOS-only way.

    If you have a USB stick, and your installer definitely isn't booting in UEFI mode, you can cheat it by booting an UEFI shell or other modifiable boot loader (e.g. GRUB) from USB, then using that to run fsX:\EFI\Microsoft\bootx64.efi from the install disk (even if the boot records are not correct, the actual files themselves should be in place).

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Quote Originally Posted by videobruce View Post
    Bad assumption. No, a optical disc. Using RT7 Lite (the only way I do this due to all the M$ bloat), a USB stick will not boot. Besides I have always use optical drives.
    Thats your problem then. RT se7en doesn't (or at least I couldn't make it when I tried about a month ago) produce a UEFI bootable image. You can check by seeing if you have an \efi\boot folder on your CD. If its not there you may be able to edit the iso to include it following the instructions in post 3 of this thread. http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=35581607

    If not then you're either going to have to not use UEFI install, or do an ordinary install + manual updates.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Quote Originally Posted by videobruce View Post
    Using RT7 Lite (the only way I do this due to all the M$ bloat)
    So you're using custom tools to generate a BIOS-only disc image.

    Don't do that. Or do it better.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Just because you've never heard of it, doesn't mean it's not true.
    Didn't say it wasn't true, just it's the first I heard of it.
    .
    Thats your problem then. RT se7en doesn't (or at least I couldn't make it when I tried about a month ago) produce a UEFI bootable image.
    What/where is the problem?
    .
    If not then you're either going to have to not use UEFI install, or do an ordinary install + manual updates.
    I'm confused about "not doing a UEFI install" and a "ordinary install + manual updates".
    Am I turning AHCI off and using IDE mode? Reagrding the :"manual updates", is that referring to slipstreaming those updates into the install ISO?
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    So you're using custom tools to generate a BIOS-only disc image.
    Don't do that. Or do it better.
    I'm using a custom tool to strip as much bloat as possible without crippling the O/S and to make a fresh install far easier eliminating as many of the annoyances as possible and automatically placing it in the Full or 'Super" Administrator mode. As far as the "BIOS-only" image I never saw anything about this anywhere one way of the other.
    .
    Don't do that. Or do it better.
    Ok, I'm open for a "better" way since development has stopped with RT7 Lite.
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    I think you're confused about the difference between installing in BIOS mode and UEFI mode. The former gets you a normal install but on an SSD formatted with an ordinary MBR partition table. The latter gets you a GPT formatted disk with all the hooks turned on for windows fastbooting features. Difference on my system is around 4 seconds to desktop (with a pretty slow ssd). Unless you boot from either a GPT formatted memstick with the right configuration, or a properly mastered DVD with the efi boot info windows won't let you format your install disk as GPT.

    Edit: A very quick google suggests that writing the image to a memstick with the microsoft tool will set the efi up for you.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    Quote Originally Posted by videobruce View Post
    Am I turning AHCI off and using IDE mode? Reagrding the :"manual updates", is that referring to slipstreaming those updates into the install ISO?
    I don't think you understand what UEFI is versus BIOS.

    BIOS is the method used to boot 16-bit 8086 computers from 1975. It's been extended a bit since then, but is ultimately the same as it's always been.

    UEFI is the method used to boot Itanium computers from around 1999. It's been recompiled to be used on non-Itanium processors since then, but is ultimately the same way it's always been.

    BIOS is paired with MBR partition schemes. When an OS BIOS boots, it loads a few bytes of 16-bit 8086 machine code from the start of the first hard disk.

    UEFI is paired with GPT partition schemes. When an OS UEFI boots, it loads an UEFI application from the UEFI system partition, a FAT32 partition on any attached hard disk.

    It is TECHNICALLY possible to boot a BIOS system from a GPT disk, but Windows does not support this, so we will ignore this scenario. For your purposes, UEFI==GPT and BIOS==MBR. And only 64-bit Windows includes support for UEFI booting,

    It is possible for a UEFI motherboard to emulate BIOS, for the purposes of booting a BIOS operating system from an MBR disk. This is the default configuration for most users. Most UEFI motherboards sold prior to Q3 2012 are configured to do this by default. Only a portion of motherboards sold prior to Q3 2012 are UEFI - some are BIOS-only.

    If your motherboard is BIOS-only, then stop where you are. You cannot boot Windows from a GPT drive on a BIOS system. Either use MBR for your drive (only possible for drives 2T and smaller), add a smaller drive (e.g. an SSD) to BIOS boot from (you can use a GPT drive for data in Windows when BIOS booted, the restriction is boot-time only), or replace your motherboard with a UEFI board.

    When making a bootable CD, BIOS bootable CDs/DVDs consist of an ISO9660 or UDF disk image with the bulk of the data, plus an embedded bootable floppy disk image using the El Torito extension specification.

    When making a bootable CD, UEFI bootable CDs/DVDs consist of an ISO9660 or UDF disk image with the bulk of the data, plus an additional FAT32 disk volume containing the EFI boot loader, using the Hybrid Disc specification.

    It is possible to make a CD/DVD which contains both an El Torito BIOS boot record *and* a Hybrid UEFI boot record. If tools do not specifically advertise this functionality, you should assume they are BIOS only. Tools prior to Windows 8 are unlikely to be UEFI-aware, as UEFI booting was VERY rare prior to Windows 8 (despite support being added for it in Vista SP1)

    edit: AHCI is an irrelevance to the discussion. AHCI relates to how your disks present themselves to running OSes - either by emulating old ribbon cable IDE, or via a common extended driver interface, AHCI. This is, as with almost everything to do with modern computing, for working around tools which assume 1975 16-bit 8086 boot behaviour.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    I don't think you understand what UEFI is versus BIOS.
    Yes I do which is the reason for the original question.
    Yes the MB is a UEFI or I wouldn't of posted this.

    The reason for the question regarding AHCI is, there is no other 'switch' available regarding the UEFI function. What I don't understand what a optical drive has to do with anything regarding install the O/S in GPT mode (for lack of a better term). Sounds as another typical M$ screwup.

    .
    I think you're confused about the difference between installing in BIOS mode and UEFI mode. The former gets you a normal install but on an SSD formatted with an ordinary MBR partition table. The latter gets you a GPT formatted disk with all the hooks turned on for windows fastbooting features.
    It surely doesn't get me a GPT formatted disc that has a O/S on it.

    Since you stated it that way, why was I able to get a drive formatted to GPT that only has data on it, no O/S? The drive that I didn't care if it was MBR or GPT.
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: Unable to install Win7 with a GPT drive

    But the question regarding a substitute to RT7Lite wasn't answered. Win Reducer V2 is not ready yet and I couldn't get the add ons to work with the alpha version that is out.
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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