Installing Windows 8 on a second partition

Hi Brad,

Thanks for posting your query in Microsoft Community Forums.

From your Description I understand that when you try to install Windows 8 on the secondary partition using Dual boot it shows no partition and asks to download the drive.

To resolve this issue I would recommend you to follow the suggestions provided below:

Follow the steps:

a)  Turn on your computer and open the DVD drive tray. Place a Windows 8 installation disc in your tray. Power your computer off and on. Your system will ask you to press any key to boot to a CD or DVD.

b)  Press any key on your keyboard and the OS begins to load the Windows files into memory

c)  Choose your language and click the "Install Now" button to begin installing Windows 8.

d)  Type a legal product key and accept Microsoft's End User license Agreement.

e)  Choose the path where you want to install Windows. You can accept the defaults and click "Load Driver" from the lower left-hand corner.

f)   Insert a USB flash key in the computer. The flash key should have the correct drivers on it that you downloaded from the vendors site. For example, if the vendor is Seagate, you would go to their website and download the specific SATA driver needed for communication.

g)  Click OK and Windows searches the media for the correct driver. When it detects the driver, select the correct driver and Windows continues installing the new OS. You have successfully loaded your SATA driver via USB.

Hope it helps. If you have any query related to Windows feel free to post. I will be glad to help you.

Thanks & Regards!

Hi Anhsul,

     Thanks for your quick reply and ideas. I am not sure why you said in a the following:

"a) Turn on your computer and open the DVD drive tray. Place a Windows Vista or Windows 7 installation disc in your tray. Power your computer off and on. Your system will ask you to press any key to boot to a CD or DVD."

     Why are you taking about Vista or Win 7 as I am trying to install Win 8 in the double boot? From

there on what you say makes sense if I can find out how to the get the information about my hard drive which bured  inside my new HP laptop. I will try taking the back off and see what happens.

     Thanks again and I will let you know ow it goes.

     Brad

Hi,

If you go to Disk Management from within windows, you will get a diagram of your Hard drive...

If there is a problem, it should show up...

When you are installing Win 8, do a CUSTOM install... It may bring up a window with more options...

I'm not quite sure if you are booting with a Win 8 installation DVD, or installing from within windows...

My hard drive Make is HGST and I think the model is Travelstar 5K1000. The HGST site does not offer any driver downloads that I can see.  I plan to call them tomorrow as they show a Silicon Valley office.

Know anything about them?

Hi,

To get to Disk Management you need to be in Windows...

Right click on COMPUTER, and select MANAGE... DM will be one of the choices on the left.

There is nothing in the way of drivers that you will need... a hard drive requires nothing special....

I have read of problems with Win 8 having a problem recognizing Hitachi drives, but mostly when used as an external drive... Does it show up in your Bios?

Hi and thanks for your response. I got the drivers and now that step is taken care of.

Next problem: In the next  part of the setup process this message appears;

"Windows can not be installed on this DISK. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."

Here  I am really lost. Do you know what they are talking about and how to deal with it?

     HELP                                           HELP                                HELP

INTERESTING ENOUGH both my Vista disk and my Windows 8 disk stop me at the above step relating to the MBR table.

When is use my Win 7 disk, nothing is memtioned about MBR partition table and the installatiion goes right on. ???

Hi,

Until somewhat recently, the only option to format\initialize a hard disk in Windows was as a MBR type... Master Boot Record... how the locations of data are stored.

Now there is also a GPT type partition as an option, or sometimes mandatory...

Especially for drives over 2TB...

It more than likely is not possible to change your boot drive to GPT without erasing everything on it.

You might want to do a Bing or Google search for "Convert MBR to GPT"...

It will give you a better idea of what you are up against better than what I can here...

You might investigate switching your motherboards EFI\UEFI Bios to legacy mode and see if that will work...

You could try installing Win 8 to a different hard drive initialized as GPT, and when finished installing, create an image with something like a bootable Acronis TrueImage CD, and then try to restore the image to the other drive partition you want it on...

Or just install it to a second GPT HDD instead of a different partition on the existing one.