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Problem description: I have a USB stick containing a Windows 8 Pro image obtained from Microsofts handy little "enter your product key into this tool to upgrade to Windows 8" program, and I also have a USB stick containing a bootable copy of Windows 8.1 Pro obtained from Microsoft Partner Network and burned using their Windows 7 USB/DVD Creator thingie. Booting and installing either of them on a new fresh formatted partition seems to proceed fine, but after the first reboot triggered by the install process, I just get a black screen with flashing cursor. As if there is no boot record being created. One thing I noticed, when I create a new partition in the windows install screen, it doesn't do that "we will create a reserved partition" thing. I was sure windows 8 did that on every other system I've installed it on. Attempted fixes: Disable all togglable interfaces in BIOS, try ATA and ACHI disk modes, try using disk part to manually mark the partition "active" after install. Try bootrec with all sorts of commands after install. Tried two different USB ports for install media. Recent changes: Was running 7 Pro fine for years, decided to finally fresh format and install 8, now it's unbootable. -- Operating system: windows 8 pro (non upgrade) System specs: Dell XPS 17 L702x (i7 2.0ghz 8gb RAM 2x750gb HDDs) Location: Australia I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes, for the past four hours. It's after 2am and I give up. Goin to bed. gently caress this.
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Sep 19, 2014 17:17
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 14:24 |
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Does your system have a cache SSD? If so, disable/remove it. Are the HDDs running in RAID? If not, disable or remove the second drive you are not installing to and try again. Updating the motherboard BIOS may also help. Make sure the SATA controller is set to AHCI mode!
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Sep 19, 2014 17:36
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Alereon posted:Does your system have a cache SSD? If so, disable/remove it. Are the HDDs running in RAID? If not, disable or remove the second drive you are not installing to and try again. Updating the motherboard BIOS may also help. Make sure the SATA controller is set to AHCI mode! No SSD and no RAID. I'll try to find a bootable bios update tomorrow, and if that fails (or I can't locate one) I'll remove SATA disk 2. Certainly been using AHCI, but I gave ATA a shot too.
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Sep 19, 2014 17:38
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BCDEdit is probably good for troubleshooting. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667(v=ws.10).aspx As an example, you can try to boot into the command prompt (Win 8 uses a recovery USB for this) and try "bcdedit /set {default} safeboot network" To toggle off, you boot back into the command prompt and "bcdedit /deletevalue {default} safeboot" Windows 8.1 has a lot of quirky installer issues still 
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Sep 19, 2014 21:51
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Oh my loving god Dell are you serious right now, your definition of "This universal executable can be installed from MS DOS" is pretty loving weird. Literally gonna install Windows 7 just so I can Update the fuckin' BIOS. gently caress sake Ninja edit: Holy poo poo, I put a Windows 7 DVD in, hit F12 and select "Boot from DVD", the ROM drive spins up but instead of booting to the DVD drive, it boots from the Hard Drive and Windows 8 starts. It doesn't even let me "Press any key to boot from DVD" it just goes into Windows 8. I actually can't get the machine to boot from DVD anymore. The boot process is all hosed up
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Sep 20, 2014 01:24
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Okay a chunk of the mystery solved without having to resort to physically removing the 2nd hard drive. For some reason what BIOS considers "First hard drive" has now become "Second hard drive" in the boot list. Setting "Second hard drive" to the primary boot device instead of the first now works. Not sure while the boot order did cascade like usual but whatever. edit: So I freaked out and thought maybe I'd accidentally formatted the wrong physical drive and installed 8 on that instead of the drive I intended, but no, it's still there. I had to use computer management to assign it a Drive letter though but all my stuff's still there. So I just have to permanently set the boot order to "Second Hard Drive" first and it works. I'll just need to remember that for future formats. Mug fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 01:30
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 14:24 |
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Mug posted:So I just have to permanently set the boot order to "Second Hard Drive" first and it works. I'll just need to remember that for future formats. For future reformats, only install Windows with one hard drive plugged in. It likes to spread files everywhere.
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Sep 22, 2014 14:38
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