Win7 install on EFI system & GPI disks
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- Configuration
- Windows 7
Last response: in Windows 7
quanta23
May 16, 2011 6:18:35 PM
I've installed Win7 on a 500GB Sata II disk and was running fine. Then something happened, boot manager missing, and I need to re-install Win7 on same disk. Now I get a message, when installing on the SAME DISK: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."
What is this? This disk just had Win7 installed on it and is still there (but boot manager is still missing) so how can the disk have an MBR partition? I got this same msg. when trying to install Win7 on a clean Samsung 128GB SSD as well. I re-formatted the drive and still same msg. How can I make my disk formatted with GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions?
I can find no choices in terms of which kind of formatting and partitions that can be used when formatting disks on Win7 or XP Pro.
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows something about this arcane partition problem.
What is this? This disk just had Win7 installed on it and is still there (but boot manager is still missing) so how can the disk have an MBR partition? I got this same msg. when trying to install Win7 on a clean Samsung 128GB SSD as well. I re-formatted the drive and still same msg. How can I make my disk formatted with GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions?
I can find no choices in terms of which kind of formatting and partitions that can be used when formatting disks on Win7 or XP Pro.
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows something about this arcane partition problem.
More about : win7 install efi system gpi disks
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quanta23
May 17, 2011 8:38:24 PM
quanta23 said:
I've installed Win7 on a 500GB Sata II disk and was running fine. Then something happened, boot manager missing, and I need to re-install Win7 on same disk. Now I get a message, when installing on the SAME DISK: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."What is this? This disk just had Win7 installed on it and is still there (but boot manager is still missing) so how can the disk have an MBR partition? I got this same msg. when trying to install Win7 on a clean Samsung 128GB SSD as well. I re-formatted the drive and still same msg. How can I make my disk formatted with GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions?
I can find no choices in terms of which kind of formatting and partitions that can be used when formatting disks on Win7 or XP Pro.
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows something about this arcane partition problem.
I found the problem. Perhaps even a bug in Win7. I was trying to install Win7 from a BluRay burner. This has UEFI file system or so I assume since it had this label on it in the bios setup from ASUS. Of course the Win7 DVD is not UEFI, but the drive uses this kind of file system and Win7 sees that. Win7 then assumed that ALL disks had the same file system. When I installed from a normal DVD R I had no problems.
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Bingo123
June 17, 2012 11:27:26 PM
Audioman07070
August 5, 2012 5:59:08 PM
I agree with Quanta23 - this is a bug in Win7 install process. Thanks to Hawkeye22 for the tip - I had in fact changed the boot priority on my system between installing Win7 and WinXP on the same machine. Thought I changed it back the same, but as he noted, there were two options on my Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H and I picked the UEFI option.
However, the Gigabyte BIOS actually had the DVD burner listed twice in the boot process, first as UEFI, then again as 'P4'. This explains the fact that the 'press any key to boot from CD/DVD' message appeared twice - first in a newer font (that looked like the BIOS's font), then again in the familiar font.
If I pressed any key during the first message, my repair/install choices under the Win7 installed failed with the GPT/MBR message.
If I waited until the second 'press any key' in the familiar font appeared, then my repair worked and Win7 rebuilt its boot loader that the WinXP install wiped out. Saved me hours of rebuilding Win7, not to mention that I couldn't re-install anyway because of the same message.
Yes, this is clearly a Win7 installer bug.
BTW, I only get the UEFI/P4 choice in BIOS for the drive WHEN THE INSTALL DISC IS IN THE DRIVE. When there is no disc there, I only can choose the P4 option. This seems like a BIOS bug to me.
However, the Gigabyte BIOS actually had the DVD burner listed twice in the boot process, first as UEFI, then again as 'P4'. This explains the fact that the 'press any key to boot from CD/DVD' message appeared twice - first in a newer font (that looked like the BIOS's font), then again in the familiar font.
If I pressed any key during the first message, my repair/install choices under the Win7 installed failed with the GPT/MBR message.
If I waited until the second 'press any key' in the familiar font appeared, then my repair worked and Win7 rebuilt its boot loader that the WinXP install wiped out. Saved me hours of rebuilding Win7, not to mention that I couldn't re-install anyway because of the same message.
Yes, this is clearly a Win7 installer bug.
BTW, I only get the UEFI/P4 choice in BIOS for the drive WHEN THE INSTALL DISC IS IN THE DRIVE. When there is no disc there, I only can choose the P4 option. This seems like a BIOS bug to me.
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oblique
November 26, 2012 3:35:54 PM
Audioman07070 said:
I agree with Quanta23 - this is a bug in Win7 install process. Thanks to Hawkeye22 for the tip - I had in fact changed the boot priority on my system between installing Win7 and WinXP on the same machine. Thought I changed it back the same, but as he noted, there were two options on my Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H and I picked the UEFI option.However, the Gigabyte BIOS actually had the DVD burner listed twice in the boot process, first as UEFI, then again as 'P4'. This explains the fact that the 'press any key to boot from CD/DVD' message appeared twice - first in a newer font (that looked like the BIOS's font), then again in the familiar font.
If I pressed any key during the first message, my repair/install choices under the Win7 installed failed with the GPT/MBR message.
If I waited until the second 'press any key' in the familiar font appeared, then my repair worked and Win7 rebuilt its boot loader that the WinXP install wiped out. Saved me hours of rebuilding Win7, not to mention that I couldn't re-install anyway because of the same message.
Yes, this is clearly a Win7 installer bug.
BTW, I only get the UEFI/P4 choice in BIOS for the drive WHEN THE INSTALL DISC IS IN THE DRIVE. When there is no disc there, I only can choose the P4 option. This seems like a BIOS bug to me.
What youre experiencing is NOT a bug. Rather we're in the middle of the industry's transition from the old BIOS system that were familiar with to a newer, more capable in/out system called UEFI. Since the changeover cant happen instantly because of 'legacy' hardware thats still perfecly good and usable, manufacturer's have given us the option to use either.
Your 'bug': Windows 7 x64 allows us to boot directly into EFI mode if there is hardware support and you will see additional devices appearing on your boot priority with 'EFI' preceeding the deivce name. Choosing to boot with such a device will allow you to use the new EFI which is why youre seeing 2 separate messages when bootign from your setup DVD: The first, with EFI prefix and possibly the one with the 'newer' font is the EFI mode installer and the second would use your familiar BIOS an traditional MBR (Master Boot Record) formatted discs. EFI must use GPT formatted hard drives to function and the two are NOT interchangeable. EFI does have future-proofing advantages in terms of disk size support and a much more robust pre-OS environment.
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ishanvadera
March 27, 2013 7:15:00 PM
oblique said:
Audioman07070 said:
I agree with Quanta23 - this is a bug in Win7 install process. Thanks to Hawkeye22 for the tip - I had in fact changed the boot priority on my system between installing Win7 and WinXP on the same machine. Thought I changed it back the same, but as he noted, there were two options on my Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H and I picked the UEFI option.However, the Gigabyte BIOS actually had the DVD burner listed twice in the boot process, first as UEFI, then again as 'P4'. This explains the fact that the 'press any key to boot from CD/DVD' message appeared twice - first in a newer font (that looked like the BIOS's font), then again in the familiar font.
If I pressed any key during the first message, my repair/install choices under the Win7 installed failed with the GPT/MBR message.
If I waited until the second 'press any key' in the familiar font appeared, then my repair worked and Win7 rebuilt its boot loader that the WinXP install wiped out. Saved me hours of rebuilding Win7, not to mention that I couldn't re-install anyway because of the same message.
Yes, this is clearly a Win7 installer bug.
BTW, I only get the UEFI/P4 choice in BIOS for the drive WHEN THE INSTALL DISC IS IN THE DRIVE. When there is no disc there, I only can choose the P4 option. This seems like a BIOS bug to me.
What youre experiencing is NOT a bug. Rather we're in the middle of the industry's transition from the old BIOS system that were familiar with to a newer, more capable in/out system called UEFI. Since the changeover cant happen instantly because of 'legacy' hardware thats still perfecly good and usable, manufacturer's have given us the option to use either.
Your 'bug': Windows 7 x64 allows us to boot directly into EFI mode if there is hardware support and you will see additional devices appearing on your boot priority with 'EFI' preceeding the deivce name. Choosing to boot with such a device will allow you to use the new EFI which is why youre seeing 2 separate messages when bootign from your setup DVD: The first, with EFI prefix and possibly the one with the 'newer' font is the EFI mode installer and the second would use your familiar BIOS an traditional MBR (Master Boot Record) formatted discs. EFI must use GPT formatted hard drives to function and the two are NOT interchangeable. EFI does have future-proofing advantages in terms of disk size support and a much more robust pre-OS environment.
So what is the solution to that?
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rutger1233333
May 11, 2013 11:56:46 AM
i've got this problem too, but i wanted to re-install win7 because i had a virus. earlier i re-installed win7 the exact same way (for another reason, like a half year ago) and i never had this problem before. could the virus have done something that changed the partitions into MBR while my brand new pc (just 7 months young) only runs GPT. so that way i have to buy a new HDD because my HDD is broken?
hopefully someone can help me.
hopefully someone can help me.
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CompuHam
July 3, 2013 5:29:13 PM
Less a solution than a reaction to having created a separate thread with my experiences with this topic...........adding that posting HERE since it isn't getting any traction on its own.
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searching on this topic, I see there are a boatload of folks in similar situations as I am with slightly varying symptoms. In my case, I have a Dell Inspiron 17R SE that was originally going to ship with Win7 on it. BUT, I went past Microsoft's (apparently) "blackmail" deadline at which point Dell was evidently not allowed to ship anything Win7. SOOOOO my laptop showed up with Win8. I don't want to rip Win8 completely out, as the next upgrade path might depend on it being there (a guess) plus many of the updates from Hell, er, Dell :-) seem to assume Win8 being present. My best guess was to make the system dual-boot but I don't think I need to go too far into what a pain in the a** that turned out to be. Plan B - the laptop is designed to have a second hard drive installed, so why not have one with Win8 and put Win7 on the other - thus keeping the different boot systems separate. Well, so long as the Win8 HDD was physically IN the machine, Win7 absolutely would NOT install. I played the little games with the BIOS with legacy-this and UEFI that and finally came to the conclusion that the next best step to try was to simply remove the Win8 drive and set the laptop to boot from the optical drive with the install disk in. Ya know, that worked - Win7 installed on the new HDD slicker (and darned fast, too) that I imagined. OK, one obstacle over with. Power the system off and put the Win8 HDD back in. System complained a bit at first but eventually I got to a point where I could select which HDD to boot from. Cool. Here's where the fun (fun? who the heck am I kidding with THAT???? ) begins. When booted into Win8, the system sees the new HDD just fine. When I boot into Win7, I cannot find the Win8 drive AT ALL. That, as you might guess, is where all my other stuff is located...data files, some apps that I installed like Adobe CS6 and Microsoft Office, etc. Looking around the web at various forums, there is also the suggestion that such a Win7 install may also find itself with driver issues. I never thought of that and I probably should have; I may have subconsciously assumed that there may have been some backwards compatibility in that department. Well, so here I am to see who may have any brilliant ideas for me and/or good questions to ask that might lead to brilliant ideas and possibly solutions. If it helps any, the Win8 that came installed on the machine is Win8 Home. The Win7 that I put on the second drive is Win7 Pro AND I have a Win8 Pro upgrade disk which I have so far not attempted to use. I mention THAT because I seem to be seeing some comments that Win8 Pro *might* have some features that would make this problem easier to sort out.
So the flag is up the proverbial pole, anybody want to salute? :-)
Duane
==========
searching on this topic, I see there are a boatload of folks in similar situations as I am with slightly varying symptoms. In my case, I have a Dell Inspiron 17R SE that was originally going to ship with Win7 on it. BUT, I went past Microsoft's (apparently) "blackmail" deadline at which point Dell was evidently not allowed to ship anything Win7. SOOOOO my laptop showed up with Win8. I don't want to rip Win8 completely out, as the next upgrade path might depend on it being there (a guess) plus many of the updates from Hell, er, Dell :-) seem to assume Win8 being present. My best guess was to make the system dual-boot but I don't think I need to go too far into what a pain in the a** that turned out to be. Plan B - the laptop is designed to have a second hard drive installed, so why not have one with Win8 and put Win7 on the other - thus keeping the different boot systems separate. Well, so long as the Win8 HDD was physically IN the machine, Win7 absolutely would NOT install. I played the little games with the BIOS with legacy-this and UEFI that and finally came to the conclusion that the next best step to try was to simply remove the Win8 drive and set the laptop to boot from the optical drive with the install disk in. Ya know, that worked - Win7 installed on the new HDD slicker (and darned fast, too) that I imagined. OK, one obstacle over with. Power the system off and put the Win8 HDD back in. System complained a bit at first but eventually I got to a point where I could select which HDD to boot from. Cool. Here's where the fun (fun? who the heck am I kidding with THAT???? ) begins. When booted into Win8, the system sees the new HDD just fine. When I boot into Win7, I cannot find the Win8 drive AT ALL. That, as you might guess, is where all my other stuff is located...data files, some apps that I installed like Adobe CS6 and Microsoft Office, etc. Looking around the web at various forums, there is also the suggestion that such a Win7 install may also find itself with driver issues. I never thought of that and I probably should have; I may have subconsciously assumed that there may have been some backwards compatibility in that department. Well, so here I am to see who may have any brilliant ideas for me and/or good questions to ask that might lead to brilliant ideas and possibly solutions. If it helps any, the Win8 that came installed on the machine is Win8 Home. The Win7 that I put on the second drive is Win7 Pro AND I have a Win8 Pro upgrade disk which I have so far not attempted to use. I mention THAT because I seem to be seeing some comments that Win8 Pro *might* have some features that would make this problem easier to sort out.
So the flag is up the proverbial pole, anybody want to salute? :-)
Duane
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Nowlincod
September 8, 2013 1:10:31 AM
I have an HP laptop and had this issue arise.
My solution (based on my system's bios) was to make sure that Legacy Support was ENABLED in the bios config, and upon starting my computer I have the option to press F9 to select my boot device. In my bios my boot lists my USB CD/DVDROM as first to boot and upon pressing F9 at boot It shows my CD/DVDROM as a (UEFI) device and then 3 or 4 entries lower it shows another entry for my USB CD/DVDROM drive WITHOUT the (UEFI) label and by booting from this entry I was able to install Windows 7 successfully.
My solution (based on my system's bios) was to make sure that Legacy Support was ENABLED in the bios config, and upon starting my computer I have the option to press F9 to select my boot device. In my bios my boot lists my USB CD/DVDROM as first to boot and upon pressing F9 at boot It shows my CD/DVDROM as a (UEFI) device and then 3 or 4 entries lower it shows another entry for my USB CD/DVDROM drive WITHOUT the (UEFI) label and by booting from this entry I was able to install Windows 7 successfully.
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welshy2000
January 7, 2014 8:21:43 AM
4321zaib
January 21, 2014 10:10:43 AM
Nowlincod said:
I have an HP laptop and had this issue arise. My solution (based on my system's bios) was to make sure that Legacy Support was ENABLED in the bios config, and upon starting my computer I have the option to press F9 to select my boot device. In my bios my boot lists my USB CD/DVDROM as first to boot and upon pressing F9 at boot It shows my CD/DVDROM as a (UEFI) device and then 3 or 4 entries lower it shows another entry for my USB CD/DVDROM drive WITHOUT the (UEFI) label and by booting from this entry I was able to install Windows 7 successfully.
THANKS MAN, ATLAST GOT to breath nicly
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ibro555
March 18, 2014 4:00:17 AM
GameModeOn
March 25, 2014 10:02:56 PM
quanta23 said:
quanta23 said:
I've installed Win7 on a 500GB Sata II disk and was running fine. Then something happened, boot manager missing, and I need to re-install Win7 on same disk. Now I get a message, when installing on the SAME DISK: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."What is this? This disk just had Win7 installed on it and is still there (but boot manager is still missing) so how can the disk have an MBR partition? I got this same msg. when trying to install Win7 on a clean Samsung 128GB SSD as well. I re-formatted the drive and still same msg. How can I make my disk formatted with GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions?
I can find no choices in terms of which kind of formatting and partitions that can be used when formatting disks on Win7 or XP Pro.
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows something about this arcane partition problem.
I found the problem. Perhaps even a bug in Win7. I was trying to install Win7 from a BluRay burner. This has UEFI file system or so I assume since it had this label on it in the bios setup from ASUS. Of course the Win7 DVD is not UEFI, but the drive uses this kind of file system and Win7 sees that. Win7 then assumed that ALL disks had the same file system. When I installed from a normal DVD R I had no problems.
I have the same issue that you have. On these newer motherboard, they're using the more complex EFI or UEFI system setting. I have the MSI Z87 GD65 gaming board which is using the EFI system format. I had to delete whatever partition that was created on that hard disk drive and create a new fresh partition by converting it into GPT. Once you convert it to a GPT, You should be able to just install your OS without issues. My advice for you, try looking up on website on how to do a GPT format before you install your OS
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GameModeOn
March 26, 2014 10:46:26 PM
quanta23 said:
I've installed Win7 on a 500GB Sata II disk and was running fine. Then something happened, boot manager missing, and I need to re-install Win7 on same disk. Now I get a message, when installing on the SAME DISK: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."What is this? This disk just had Win7 installed on it and is still there (but boot manager is still missing) so how can the disk have an MBR partition? I got this same msg. when trying to install Win7 on a clean Samsung 128GB SSD as well. I re-formatted the drive and still same msg. How can I make my disk formatted with GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions?
I can find no choices in terms of which kind of formatting and partitions that can be used when formatting disks on Win7 or XP Pro.
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows something about this arcane partition problem.
To partition it into GPT. You must delete whatever partition you have on that drive before you can convert it into GPT partition on a EFI system. Otherwise you'll just run into error message telling you that this drive has a MBR which is not compatible with your GPT motherboard. Took me a while just to figure out that if you don't delete the old partition that was on there on the disk. It will not let you create a GPT partition on it unless you delete the old one and convert it into GPT format. Only then will it let you go to the next step of installing your OS on it.
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Bitskeptic
September 9, 2014 12:57:20 PM
quanta23 said:
quanta23 said:
I've installed Win7 on a 500GB Sata II disk and was running fine. Then something happened, boot manager missing, and I need to re-install Win7 on same disk. Now I get a message, when installing on the SAME DISK: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."What is this? This disk just had Win7 installed on it and is still there (but boot manager is still missing) so how can the disk have an MBR partition? I got this same msg. when trying to install Win7 on a clean Samsung 128GB SSD as well. I re-formatted the drive and still same msg. How can I make my disk formatted with GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions?
I can find no choices in terms of which kind of formatting and partitions that can be used when formatting disks on Win7 or XP Pro.
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows something about this arcane partition problem.
I found the problem. Perhaps even a bug in Win7. I was trying to install Win7 from a BluRay burner. This has UEFI file system or so I assume since it had this label on it in the bios setup from ASUS. Of course the Win7 DVD is not UEFI, but the drive uses this kind of file system and Win7 sees that. Win7 then assumed that ALL disks had the same file system. When I installed from a normal DVD R I had no problems.
YES YES YES!! -- Thank you for this post. I faced exactly this issue as I have an Asus MB, AN SSD, a Blu-ray drive and a DVD drive. Was trying to install Win 7 from the blu-ray drive. Started down the path of changing the SSD from MBR to GPT but found this before I went too far. Install worked fine simply switching to the DVD drive... THANKS!
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