Windows 10: Help, Windows 10 Pro not able to create install partition.

I bought a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVM Express drive. I was able to format it as an MBR drive and install the Windows 10 Pro operating system. It booted fine and I installed all of my programs. When I had finished I went to format an old Seagate hard drive that I did not need and when my system restarted, the bios could not find the boot record on this new SSD drive. *cry

I tried to get Windows to repair this SSD but it reported it could not be repaired. Then I put back the old system drive and tried to fix this drive using DOS Commands but those did not work either. The drive still had all the files on it, is just seems to have lost the Master Boot Record.

I formatted the drive as simple volume and then I tried to install Windows 10 Pro again on it. The install program finds the drive but when I select that drive for installing, it reports that it could not install into that partition (or something like that) and it told me for more details to looks at the install log. It would have been nice if I knew where those logs are kept.

I am not quite sure how I can fix this problem, maybe the SSD is faulty? What I am thinking of doing is creating 2 partitions on that drive and then trying to get the Windows 10 installer to install to the second partition. Anyone have some other suggestions?

Ak

:)

 

Windows 10 Pro creates 3 partitions but Home can be made to use one?

I have 5 PCs and a laptop, 3 running Windows 7 Home 3 running Windows 7 Pro.

I have forced Windows 10 Home to install on one partition by creating 4 partitions on another PC, installing windows 10 home then deleting 3 partitions and stretching.

I have tried the same with Windows 10 Pro, but it says it can't find a partition.

Deleting the First partition and installing to free space it creates 3 partitions, Reserved, System and Recovery, so 5 primary partitions!

Is this a feature of windows 10 pro that I can't get round?

Can I install Windows 10 Home instead, as I've upgraded from Windows 7 Pro?

I only had Pro due to the CPU count and Network backup limitations of Windows 7 Home, which seems to be resolved with Windows 10.

 

My Windows 10 Pro can't boot from hdd with Secure Boot enabled in BIOS. Please, I need your help!

Respect you all! I have installed now last version of Windows 10 Pro, version 1703 (OS Build 15063.138). My problem is that i cannot make my Windows boot from hdd when i have enabled Secure Boot in BIOS. Please, let me know what should i do to make
my Windows boot when i have Secure Boot enabled(BIOS)! Is there a way to solve this problem without reinstalling Windows 10 again??? My older version of Windows 10 Pro was able to boot from hdd with Secure Boot enabled in BIOS. I remember when i installed
the older version of Windows 10 Pro when i created the first partition the Windows created 3 or 4 small bonus partitions but when i created the first partition on the new version of Windows 10 Pro it was created just one bonus partition called System Reserved.
I think this seems to be the problem. When Windows creates 4 bonus partitions all is good and we can boot with the Secure Boot enabled without any problem but when Windows creates just System Reserved, in this case i cannot use Secure Boot.

Oh, i forgot somethin'. Can you help me but keeping MBR style???

 

If you want to do a complete clean reinstall of Windows 10 on the SSD only - disconnect the old HDD. Boot from the Windows 10 install media. Select the custom install option, delete all the partitions on the SSD, click on the unallocated space to install to.

What happened the first time was that you had the old hard drive installed and Windows 10 saw the boot files on it and kept the boot files there - it only updated the pointer to Windows to reflect the new location on the SSD. Bios was actually booting the computer from the old HDD before the boot files passed control to Windows located on the SSD.

What failed the second time you tried to install to the SSD with one big partition on it - there was no boot partition left on the HDD, so Windows 10 was attempting to create a boot partition on the SSD, the drive you told it to. You didn't leave any empty space on the SSD for Windows to create a boot partition.

Installing to an unallocated space with no partitions on the SSD will allow Windows 10 to create it's own partitions: you'll get a system reserved partition for the boot files, an OS partition, and a recovery partition (450mb). With UEFI and GPT you'll also get a 128mb empty space between the system reserved (EFI) partition and OS partition.

 

It sounds plausible and I will disconnect all the drives except the new SSD tomorrow. I will leave the entire SSD drive unallocated and see what happens. The installer will not install onto a GPT drive.

If it works, I'll will give you a thumbs up! *Wink

Ak

 

Hi,

Why is that ?

Not sure why you'd want to install in legacy mode with such sota hardware but if it refuses to install in EFI mode then maybe some bios settings could prevent it.

Cheers, *Wink

 

It depends how you boot your installation media. If you load it in EFI mode you can only install to GPT (and you'd have to go into diskpart and clean, convert gpt before installing). If it boots through the legacy boot loader it will not allow you to install to a GPT disk.

I use rEFInd as a bootloader and for a Windows Installation USB it gives me 2 options confusingly called "Windows" for BIOS and "Legacy boot loader" for EFI.

If you have a computer with a BIOS (I do not) then presumably there will be some setting there to force EFI booting of the installation media as you say.

 

I have this M.2 SSD installed on a PCI-e card and Windows will not install to a GPT disk. :-( I have to enable Compatibility Support Module in the bios and use legacy mode to be able to boot from that PCI-e SSD. I will lookup rEFind and see if that is of any help to me.

Thanks
Ak

 

Installing to the unallocated space and letting Windows create the partitions works with either MBR or GPT disks.

 

Hi,

This it the one you're looking for:

The rEFInd Boot Manager

OMG. *092

Cheers, *Wink

 

If you really can't boot EFI it will not help as rEFInd is an alternate EFI bootloader. I use it becuase I have an Apple Mac (which uses a sort of EFI) but boot into different OS most of the time.

I've looked at your spes but they don't mean a lot to me to be honest (although this says you should be able to boot UEFI with a Maximus VI). My SSD is PCI-e also so that bit isn't the issue.

True but you'll need to convert the disk to mbr or gpt as well if it is formatted in the wrong style - not just delete all the partitions.

 

No no no!

 

I just tested it again - you are right and I was wrong. I take it back. If you delete all partitions you don't need the convert. I'm sure you had to at some point but anyway, thanks.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions but I ran into another problem. When I lost that MBR on the SSD I decided to clone my current system GPT drive to this SSD and that worked fine. The problem is my system won't boot from a PCI-e GPT SSD drive, that was why I did a clean install the first time.. Now I have to delete all the partitions so that I can convert this into an MBR drive BUT Windows won't let me delete all those partitions. I have decided to pack it in for now and when I get some time this weekend, I will use Samsung Magician 4.9 to do a secure erase on that drive. They say that will restore the SSD to its factory defaults. I will be happy if it does that.


Ak