Windows 10: W-10 dual boot attempt fails. Selected disk of GPT type

Trying to dual boot build 10130 iso on a fresh install of 8.1.
Received a message:
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is not of the GPT partition style"
Laptop is an Asus x550c.
System recovery to Asus factory default.

Asus has a default 4 Partition setup. I added a 5th, Partition 6, by shrinking Partition 4
Looks something like this:

Drive 0 Partition 3 128MB MSR (Reserved)
Drive 0 Partition 4 OS 395GB Primary
Drive 0 Partition 5 451MB Recovery
Drive 0 Partition 6 New Volume 48GB Primary
Drive 0 Partition 7 Restore 20GB Recovery

I'm using the new Build 10130 iso which just came out.
I don't want to use a VM like I have on a Desktop.

Pete

:)

 

I can not install windows 7 with windows 10

Did you read this User Guide:
http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/GPT-disk-partition-manager/convert-gpt-disk-to-mbr-disk.htm

How
to dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7 after you upgraded to Windows 10 or have purchased a new Windows 10 PC

: http://www.pagestart.com

 

Cleaning external hard drive

Try this, remember to double check which disk you need to select before running the clean command. This is for any disk for which you want to fully clean not just GPT partitioned.

Open a Command Prompt W/ administration rights.

○ Type in "DiskPart" in command line.

○ Type in "list disk" in command line to show all disks in this machine.

○ Use "select" to set the focus to the specified partition.

For example "select disk 1".

○ Use "clean" command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors.

○ Use "Exit" to Close Disk Part.

1. Go back to Disk Management, you can see GPT disk is "Not Initialized" now.

2. Within Disk Management, right click on disk info, choose "Initialize Disk", You can see GPT disk is "Unallocated" now.

3. Right click on disk info, choose "New Partition…", follow Partition Wizard and format it.

 

Can you post a screenshot of disk management please. If you've created a fifth partition you've must have converted the disk to dynamic, do not reboot until you've posted that screenshot.

 

I'm not sure how that didn't turn into a Dynamic Disk but at least that's a bonus. How come you have three Recovery Partitions?

Your disk must be MBR, although I'm not sure why that would stop W10 installing.

 

Based on what I saw in 100MB partition, his disk 0 is a GPT disk and that's why he can have more than 4 partitions. The MBR disk type usually marked as Active on the boot drive. However, The arrangement of those partitions do look strange to me though.

@OP, to make sure what type of disk you have. Point the mouse at Disk 0 and right click->Properties->Volumes, it should tell you what partition type you have.

 

I think the 2nd Recovery partition somehow happened during the system recovery.

 

OK. That's what I thought, so you have a GPT partition type and Windows 10 Installation got confused. If I am not mistaken, You got your Laptop with Windows 8 then upgraded to 8.1 and the update created a second Recovery Partition after the C drive. The last Partition is the factory image that come preloaded.

A normal Windows installation would have the Recovery Partition 1st then the 100 MB partition, which contains the Boot Manager then a 128MB MSR partition that you don't see in Disk Management and last is your C drive.

As stated earlier, the arrangement on those partitions are in reverse and may be that's why Windows 10 Installation does not see the sequence it expects to see.

 

You're right about what happened now that I looked at it.
The factory reset was to 8.
I then upgraded it to 8.1.
I'd prefer not cleaning the drive and converting it to MBR if there's away I can get 10 without doing that.

 

When you create a new partition, one more thing you broke and now you can't even do a factory reset. The 20GB Recovery used to be partition 5, now it became partition 6. You'd need to run reagentc from the Admin command prompt to assign it to partition 6.

However, Since the 20GB factory image is obsolete and I am not sure if you ever use it again. It would be better to start fresh with all the partitions correctly aligned so you won't have problem upgrading to Windows 10 in the future. This will involve re-doing everything correctly and I can assure the time it takes to re-do it is less than the time trying to re-align and fix the problem.

Here's the steps I suggest to do:

• Delete the partition you've created (D: drive) and make a backup image of the whole disk 0 to an external drive
  using either: Macrium Reflect Free or AOMEI Backupper
• Download the latest Windows 8.1 core from: Create installation media for Windows 8.1 .
  Without any external device connected to the laptop and make sure the drive is unallocated.
  Re-install Windows 8.1 and let it creates all needed partitions.
• Shrink Drive C: to 100 GB then install Windows 10
• Shrink Drive ??? containing Windows 10 to 100GB
• Use the rest for personal data.

 

Thanks, Top.
I'll give it a go later and post back.

 

You are welcome and good luck !!!

 

My sanity is being tested.
I decided to take the easy way.
I converted the disk from GPT to MBR by using the Diskpart:
List Disk
Select Disk
Clean
Convert MBR

I then reinstalled my 8.1 from a dvd created:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-refresh-media



I then shrank and created a new partition for my Windows 10. See attached.



Now when I try to install W-10, I get:
"Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only installed on GPT disks."

I'm losing it.

 

Quote from this post: UEFI Boot Mode (installing using the GPT partition style) and Legacy BIOS Boot Mode (installing using the MBR partition style). -> link

 

Read though the following tutorials to see if there is anything that jumps out - a eureka!

Sometimes all you need is to step back and look again. In this case, you might consider starting over one more time using the tutorials as your guide. Read, ask, then do ... it might be a simple thing that is covered in the tut.

Clean Install - Windows 8
then
Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums

Notes:
- Use an 8.1 ISO instead of installing 8.0 and upgrading (you might have tried that in a recent step)

- Follow the UEFI instructions in the tuts - the colored boxes are important - read them.
Also some of the information or steps might be in links - follow those and do everything step-by-step.

- If you use a USB flash drive to install either OS, get the newest version of Rufus and make sure you set the options according to the instructions (UEFI for GPT and FAT32)

Good luck.