- May 28, 2009
- 1,806
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TL;DR: Wife's PC got a virus. Decided to nuke problem by reinstalling Win 8.1 Pro completely. Wouldn't let me install, giving me a cryptic error that Google turned up no relevant results for. Switched to IDE mode in BIOS settings, worked fine.
SSD: Crucial M100X 256GB
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit
CPU: Ivy Bridge Intel I3 (can't remember exact model)
Mobo: Gigabyte H61 chipset Mini-ITX form factor (can't remember exact model)
Memory: 8GB Kingston 1600Mhz
GPU: Intel IGP
I'm recanting this from memory after the fact, as I managed to get around this issue. But here goes.
Background:
My wife decided to go and get her PC infected with a nasty virus masquerading as a Chrome extension. It kept popping open Chrome tabs whatever she did on there. Even after removing the offending things manually, running virus scans and poking around in the registry, it kept resurfacing after a restart. So, I decided to just nuke the problem and totally re-install Windows 8. It wouldn't be a massive problem, she uses her PC mostly for Office/Email, and all her stuff is on Dropbox.
Issue:
When I first did the installation, I made a 50GB partition for a recovery. When Windows 8 was installed on the main partition, and all drivers etc we're sorted, I went through the standard Windows recovery maker program and sent it to the partition. So, when it came to this problem, I tried the recovery to see if I could easily get it back to a 'factory setting'. This didn't work, it gave me some weird error. So I dug out the disk and fired up the Win 8 installation. I should note that the initial installation went perfectly well with no issues whatsoever.
I go through all the steps as usual and into custom setup. I see my two partitions created last time, and I decide to delete and format them both to get the whole disk back into one contiguous partition. I create a whole new partition since I couldn't be bothered messing around with the flaky recovery process again. It appears to create fine, and I click next. Except I get a cryptic error message on clicking it. I can't remember it precisely, and for that I apologise, but it went something along the lines of "Windows cannot be installed to that partition". I try deleting the partition, formatting and re-creating the partition. Still the same issue.
I reboot, go into the Win 8 install command prompt and try doing a full format of the disk that took a while. I create the partition in the command prompt, go to install, and still the same error. I go to Google this error and there were no relevant results for this problem. Google turned up results, but delving into the forum posts revealed that while the problem sounded similar, it actually wasn't in reality. So I felt a little on my own, and decided to try playing around. The installation was clearly a non-starter, so I went into the BIOS. In the HDD settings portion of the BIOS, I changed the driver mode from AHCI to IDE. I did this as a bit of a hail mary at this point. When I rebooted and went to install, Win 8 accepted the disk and went ahead with the installation.
I'm glad I got it fixed, but it always niggles in the back of my mind that the installation is running on IDE and not AHCI. I'm worried that if I ever have to work on this PC again, I'll be getting strange results and even rejected installations. Does anybody have any insight as to what happened?
Thanks.
SSD: Crucial M100X 256GB
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit
CPU: Ivy Bridge Intel I3 (can't remember exact model)
Mobo: Gigabyte H61 chipset Mini-ITX form factor (can't remember exact model)
Memory: 8GB Kingston 1600Mhz
GPU: Intel IGP
I'm recanting this from memory after the fact, as I managed to get around this issue. But here goes.
Background:
My wife decided to go and get her PC infected with a nasty virus masquerading as a Chrome extension. It kept popping open Chrome tabs whatever she did on there. Even after removing the offending things manually, running virus scans and poking around in the registry, it kept resurfacing after a restart. So, I decided to just nuke the problem and totally re-install Windows 8. It wouldn't be a massive problem, she uses her PC mostly for Office/Email, and all her stuff is on Dropbox.
Issue:
When I first did the installation, I made a 50GB partition for a recovery. When Windows 8 was installed on the main partition, and all drivers etc we're sorted, I went through the standard Windows recovery maker program and sent it to the partition. So, when it came to this problem, I tried the recovery to see if I could easily get it back to a 'factory setting'. This didn't work, it gave me some weird error. So I dug out the disk and fired up the Win 8 installation. I should note that the initial installation went perfectly well with no issues whatsoever.
I go through all the steps as usual and into custom setup. I see my two partitions created last time, and I decide to delete and format them both to get the whole disk back into one contiguous partition. I create a whole new partition since I couldn't be bothered messing around with the flaky recovery process again. It appears to create fine, and I click next. Except I get a cryptic error message on clicking it. I can't remember it precisely, and for that I apologise, but it went something along the lines of "Windows cannot be installed to that partition". I try deleting the partition, formatting and re-creating the partition. Still the same issue.
I reboot, go into the Win 8 install command prompt and try doing a full format of the disk that took a while. I create the partition in the command prompt, go to install, and still the same error. I go to Google this error and there were no relevant results for this problem. Google turned up results, but delving into the forum posts revealed that while the problem sounded similar, it actually wasn't in reality. So I felt a little on my own, and decided to try playing around. The installation was clearly a non-starter, so I went into the BIOS. In the HDD settings portion of the BIOS, I changed the driver mode from AHCI to IDE. I did this as a bit of a hail mary at this point. When I rebooted and went to install, Win 8 accepted the disk and went ahead with the installation.
I'm glad I got it fixed, but it always niggles in the back of my mind that the installation is running on IDE and not AHCI. I'm worried that if I ever have to work on this PC again, I'll be getting strange results and even rejected installations. Does anybody have any insight as to what happened?
Thanks.
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