MBR partition table? Windows 7 won't install on hard drive that previously had win7.

Anonymous
2016-02-13T12:25:28+00:00

(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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  1. Anonymous
    2016-02-27T07:03:00+00:00
    1. I got the iso from some german-based website that has the digitalriver iso, and yes, I checked the SHA1 number and it matched perfectly
    2. yes it works
    3. no, for the, I don't know, third time I dont have a uefi sytem! The bios doesnt have any settings or info or anything related to it and the usb comes up as a lexar usb device.(and yes, it is a lexar usb drive)

    and finally, I believe I have come to some sort of conclusion, I tried actually installing the linux distro ive been using to access my computer and it failed. I also tried formatting and creating a new primary NTFS partition using Gparted, but that failed as well, giving me an error related to I/O problems, so I'm guessing it is, in fact, my hard drive thats been giving me issues. Which is the ONE THING i was hoping would NOT be the problem. Is there any way that the SATA working mode(or whatever its caled, its the setting in the bios that I can set to AHCI or compatible) could help the I/O error?

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  2. Greg Carmack 24,780 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-27T07:25:18+00:00

    I finally had time to review your thread uninterrupted by email replies every few minutes. 

    This is a very unusual case because you have an error reported in your first post that only occurs when you have a UEFI System and are trying to install in UEFI mode to a Legacy MBR formatted hard drive.  The specs of the PC show it has UEFI but there are no settings supporting this.  And what ultimately determines this is if the installation media will boot as a UEFI device.  If that choice is not there then there will be no UEFI install. 

    To be sure something has not slipped I would first reset Setup to defaults as shown in your screenshot, then assure AHCI is set. You definitely want the AHCI setting in BIOS and not Compatibility which in that case is only for IDE drives as it says in the Legend.   Be sure to save Settings.  Then compare them to the pictures you took before to see if anything changed.  Did the Boot Priority order change any? 

    Then I would format the USB stick only using Windows 7 USB-DVD Download Tool  which always works best for Legacy MBR installs.  If it rejects the ISO (it can be fussy) then use  UltraISO Software To Create Bootable USB Flash Drive which always works for me.  If either fail then try the DVD again if any of these settings are different than your earlier attempts.

    If this doesn't help then wipe the hard drive with the steps to run Clean Command and format a  full disk Active partition in Troubleshoot Windows 7 Installation Failures.  Before closing the Command Prompt from boot, I'd also run a full Disk Check on the full disk partition to get an idea of the hard drive condition. If it causes further doubt then you can also run the maker's HD Diagnostic  extended CD scan; if none listed for your maker then use SeaTools.  SeaTools for a USB Drive

    Make sure all other steps are done from Troubleshoot Windows 7 Installation Failures   as well since they cover every possible failure cause.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-27T23:12:14+00:00

    I tried using diskpart to make an active, primary NTFS partition before, and after about 2 hours it gave me an error on 100percent telling me to look at the event logs, I tried to do the same exact thing using gparted in lubuntu, and after a while, it gave some error regarding I/o issues.. I will try using the windows 7 usb maker tho, I used rufus before but I got the same error 0x80070057...

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