Windows 7 - The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks

I have Asus P8Z68 Deluxe mother board with EFI . Already on one TB WD Black Caviar Hard Disk 64 bit Windows Seven is installed. On the other one TB WD Black Caviar Hard Disk I am trying to install Windows 8 but I get this error. I press ESC on boot it does not take me to the EFI boot manager as you suggested  only delete does. By pressing delete I can choose the selected DVD drive to boot but cannot get rid of this error. So what to do?

salemstardust

you are replying to a very old   original question   it may take a very long time to get an answer this way .

may i ask you to post a new question  , with details. 

 other people or myself will help you  on your new question .

thanks

      tyrred

While trying to install Windows 8  64 bit Consumer Perview I get the error "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. MIcrosoft MVP AndreDa Costa suggested to press Escape while booting up to go to EFI boot manager and select trhe DVD Drive. It does not work that way with Asus motherboards, I have to press Delete to get to the Setup and select the DVD Drive. AAfter selecting the DVD drve with the iso Windows 8 I still get the error.

So I booted into Windows Seven  and deleted al the partitions of the 2nd Black Caviar Hard Disk. After that I converted the 2nd HDD MBR into GPT and made 4 GPT partitions. I then again tried to iclean install Windows 8 consumer Perview on one of the GPT partitions of the 2nd disk but now I get the error"We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files. So I converted the Disk MBR into GPT and land up wioth this error & so where do I go from here? As per setup log files they are in Windows 7 64 bit  but they pertain to the setup of Winhdows 7 not windows 8 and that too only confined to Roxio 12. In fact I am trying to have a dual boot with Windows Seven 64 bit & Windows 8 64 bit Consumer Perview.

salem

if you have win 7 installed  ,it set all the drives  to  itself.

now you are trying to install win 8 and it is trying to  set up the drives  for itself.

there is a conflickt that way..

you need a hard drive partition that is not set up by win 7 .  and big enouph to hold win8.

create a big blank  unformated(by win7) partition ,give the unformated partition a letter ,choose a letter  that is not in use..

reinstall win 8 .it will see the  partition you made and its letter, tell win8 to install itself  on that letter partition .

then you can duel boot.

        thanks

               tyrred

@salemStardust - Very curious to know if you were able to solve this problem.  I have the same motherboard as you and the same problem.  I have a single 1TB Caviar Black drive, on which I installed Windows 7 after leaving a 200GB partition for Windows 8 CP.  But Windows 8 CP refuses to install, saying that it needs a GPT partition. 

But I didn't think even Windows 7 would install on an EFI system except on a GPT partition. So how do I tell if my system really does have GPT partitions and the Windows 8 install is giving me an incorrect error message.

I will try tyrred's suggestion, but confidence is not high.

Thanks,

Eric

small-mountain

i  am wrighting this on an asus  x79 deluxe m.b. , win7 ,64 bit , i7- 2011-system  , ufi ,gpt , 2 ssds,

1-1 t.b. hhd .

i  got a hard lesson on gpt partitions when the system crashed .. to find infomation  on this system

or any like it is   to say the least , DIFFICULT .

if you have a regular bios  like  the kind xp 32 bit has , it is not  ufi or gpt .

win 7 help and support  is obsolete for these systems . teck net  has info if you can find it . i gave up there ,becouse  they cater to  big system users.

win 8  should load to a  compleatly  blank partition that win 7  has  no trace on ,it  should  build its own  partitions on that partition.

if you want to find out if you have gpt  go to disk management  .

what error is win 8 giveing you ?

gpt is short form of  guid-partition.

type >gpt partition < into bing search  , microsoft has a  gpt article, so does wikipedia .

the ufi  bios and gpt walk hand in hand . , the bios has to hand over to the opperating system.

gamers know more and so do server people  , the i7- 39xx chips are cut down zeon server chips .

win8 may crash your disk . backup first. or better yet put it on its own hard drive ..

this thread and others of the like are going to get very long , a lot of people are going to have trouble with this stuff .

andre da costa may come back with  info  more technical .

            thanks

                   tyrred

I believe I understand what happened in my case.  Someone on the ASUS forum said something that caused a light bulb to go off.  I'm pretty sure that when I installed Windows 7 on this system, I did it in BIOS mode, not UEFI mode, so that's why Windows 7 made MBR partitions I guess.  I didn't realize that, at least for ASUS, you turn UEFI mode on by picking a boot device that has UEFI enabled rather than one that doesn't. It was only fairly recently that I noticed that some of the boot devices were marked as UEFI devices.  Anyway, then later when I tried installing Windows 8 CP, I booted from the UEFI DVD device (by then I had noticed the difference), and that's why Windows 8 didn't like my MBR partitions.  Today, I booted from the non-UEFI DVD device into Window 8 CP setup, and it installed on my MBR partition just fine.

So, if you have a UEFI system, make sure you understand whether you are booting in UEFI mode or not.  Maybe I'm not the only one who built a system without first understanding this.

Thanks,

Eric 

small-mountain

and here is another twist to this story , my rig has win 7 64 bit gpt not mbr, the board come with a bios that had to be updated  first . becouse 32 bit is not the same as 64 bit , and uefi and bios`s are not compattable ..

it would be nice if some one in the know  would post a sticky  about whats what  about this stuff.

when people post problems with these systems it would be most helpfull to state the exact   system and parts thay have and  exactly what  they want to do or what exact problem they have .

it looks like simple things are getting simply more compicated  , there are a lot of things in the

uifi bios`s that need to be set  in differrent ways . simple onece or twice done , but not so simple  whithout priore expereance .

        thanks

               tyrred