wait, im sorry, first, i dont have an issue with the gpt mbr **** anymore. Second, not sure what the difference between OEM and retail, but when i put my product key in to see if it was eligible, it got approved.
MBR partition table? Windows 7 won't install on hard drive that previously had win7.
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Anonymous
(long story) Alright, so I have had this same exact harddrive for a while, and out of nowhere, I get a message: Microsoft Windows has stopped responding. I think, oh ****! I gotta restart it! And so I hard-restart it and now windows won't load. I get the bios, but not the OS. So I try to save my files and reinstall windows7 by using a linux usb to save my stuff, except that doesnt work. So I accept my fate, use GParted to format the partition to NTFS and then I restart and boot up from the windows install disc. And I go to install windows on the empty partition (also I guess I should mention there is another partition that's 100mb and says sytem reserved, I never touched that one) and I get this and I quote "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." and thats it. And the weird thing is, I installed win7 on that SAME harddrive before with now problems. So did my Hard drive poop out on me? Is windows just being a butt? Help pls, I NEED my computer, I am in a programming for game design class and I need my PC in order to make my end of the year project. (Oh, I guess I should also mention I am currently using a Lubuntu usb stick to type this... if that is relevant at all...) Oh, and the windows version is 7 ultimate.
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Anonymous
2016-02-15T22:04:09+00:00 -
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Greg Carmack 24,780 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator2016-02-15T18:26:26+00:00 The legend to the right of the BIOS' SATA compatibility settings says it is for IDE disks. Do you have an IDE hard drive? That is not the compatibility setting for allowing Legacy BIOS mode.
The Microsoft Software Recovery download site requires a retail key to work. As this is not retail Windows 7 but OEM, try one of the other methods in Step 1 of Clean Reinstall Windows 7 to obtain safe reinstallation media and correctly burn to DVD or write to Stick for UEFI and Legacy installs.
As you have a Toshiba hard drive I would use SeaTools | Seagate bootable CD or Boot SeaTools off of a USB Driveto find out the condition of the hard drive. Booting either of these will also demonstrate if a disk can be booted and run without UEFI. If it fails then I'd try burning a Partition Wizard CD to run it's Surface Test. If it passes, use that CD to create a Primary partition, mark Active, to try install to MBR disk again with known-good formatting, and marking Active which also solves Windows 7 installation failures.
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Anonymous
2016-02-15T15:14:09+00:00 We don't know why the original Windows installation you had stopped working, it could be that the disk is failing...or it could be anything else. You should go to the disk manufacturer's web site and get a diagnostic utility that will tell you if the disk is bad. Most of these utilities also have options to zero fill fill the beginning of the disk, maybe the newer ones also have options to fill the end of the disk, that would take care of the GPT/MBR confusion, the disk would then be seen as a new never used disk. If the disk diagnostic utility doesn't have a selective zero fill/wipe option then you can get a disk editor like Active@ Disk Editor that will selectively allow you to zero fill sectors at the beginning and end of the disk, filling the first and last 100 sectors will put a definitive end to the MBR/GPT debacle, the disk will be seen as new one. If the manufacturer's disk diagnostic utility reports the disk as good and if the beginning and ending sectors are wiped then the problem is not the disk itself.
John
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Anonymous
2016-02-15T12:46:55+00:00 Ok, so I finally got rid of one of the errors, it seems setting the SATA mode to compatible in combination with the MBR setting on diskpart seems to remove the error telling me that my computer may not be able to boot from the disk. But everytime i try to format the partitions or continue with the install, i get the same error.. the code is 0x80070057 I think i might have a bad disk... I dont know.. I found Microsoft's page where I can download the iso file i need, so im going to make my own boot disk later... cant do it currently because for whatever reason, english isnt an option for the download... which i think might be linux... then again maybe not.
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Anonymous
2016-02-15T02:38:41+00:00 ok i tried the things you mentioned except for making boot media i dont think i cam do that now, i have no access to dvds right now and i have a 4gb isb stick on me so ill try that at home, but im going to try the install again and take pictures of the process...