Solved Allocating usable space to install W8.1 on my desktop PC

rronaldson

Member
Member
Messages
14
Location
UK
Having successfully installed Win8.1 on my laptop machine I'm trying to do the same on my desktop machine but am having problems allocating useable space on the hard drive. I want to create a dual boot situation until I've transferred all my programs to the Windows 8.1 partition. I followed the tutorial on this forum to do that for my laptop and I'm just trying to do the same for my desktop PC.

My PC is an Acer Aspire M5910 and came already partitioned with two user partitions so it looked like this

Partition 1 PQSERVICE Primary
Partition 2 System Reserved Primary
Partition 3 Acer Primary (Win 7 operating system)
Partition 4 DATA Primary

Using EaseUS Partition Master I've shrunk and moved the 3rd partition, Acer, so I have 200GB of unallocated space between partition 2 and partition 3. When I run the Windows 8.1 install and specify the unallocated space as the place to install in I get an error message

"Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The selected disk has the maximum number of partitions of this type."

If I go back to EaseUS Partition Master and select the unallocated space and try to create a partition it says "Please convert an existed primary partition to logical partition and try again." I have converted partiton 4, DATA, to logical but I just get the same error messages. I'd appreciate some advice on this. Thank you.

My present partitioning looks like this

Partition 1 PQSERVICE Primary 16.0GB
Partition 2 System Reserved Primary 100.0MB
Unallocated space 202.3GB
Partition 3 Acer Primary 255.1GB
Partition 4 DATA Logical 458.0GB

Rachel
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Packard Bell EasyNote TM01
    CPU
    AMD V 120 @ 2200 MHz
    Motherboard
    Packard Bell EasyNote TM01
    Memory
    8192 MB DDR3-SDRAM
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
    Sound Card
    Acer SB600 HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    AUO 15 inch
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB
    Keyboard
    UK
    Mouse
    Touchpad and wireless mouse
    Internet Speed
    13 mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Avast (Free)
Hi Rachel,

Your HD was configured using MBR style and the maximum number of primary partitions you can create is 4.
What you need to do is moving the 202.3 GB unallocated partition to the end, merge with partition 4 to make partition 4 = 202.3+458 GB. Next, shrink the partition 4 back to 458 GB and that will leave a 202.3 logical, unallocated partition then you can install Windows 8 with it.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
Thanks topgundcp. I'll have a look at that.

Rachel
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Packard Bell EasyNote TM01
    CPU
    AMD V 120 @ 2200 MHz
    Motherboard
    Packard Bell EasyNote TM01
    Memory
    8192 MB DDR3-SDRAM
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
    Sound Card
    Acer SB600 HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    AUO 15 inch
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB
    Keyboard
    UK
    Mouse
    Touchpad and wireless mouse
    Internet Speed
    13 mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Avast (Free)
Hi topgundcp. I tried your suggestion but got the same response when trying to create the new partition. In the end I looked for an existing partition that I wasn't using that I could delete. I finally backed up the PQSERVICE partition and then deleted it. I was then able to create a partition for my Windows 8 installation and now have a working copy of Windows 8.1 .

Thanks for your interest. Your suggestion did point me in the right direction.

Rachel
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Packard Bell EasyNote TM01
    CPU
    AMD V 120 @ 2200 MHz
    Motherboard
    Packard Bell EasyNote TM01
    Memory
    8192 MB DDR3-SDRAM
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
    Sound Card
    Acer SB600 HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    AUO 15 inch
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB
    Keyboard
    UK
    Mouse
    Touchpad and wireless mouse
    Internet Speed
    13 mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Avast (Free)
Back
Top