Solved My System Specs And Win 8.1.1

[The Nude Dude]

Hello I have attempted several times now to install Win 8.1.1 on a secondary partition on my main drive and it gets to "setup is starting" and sits there. I have use of the mouse, but the little circle that would normally spin isn't spinning, but it will move if i move the mouse. I have given up to 15 minutes for windows to get past the "setup is starting" screen and take me to the next stage. Any thoughts and or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Hi-lited drive is my main drive.

Summary
Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz
RAM 4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 400MHz (6-6-6-18)
Motherboard ASUSTeK Computer INC. Maximus Formula (LGA775)
Network 2 Marvell 88E8056 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controllers
Graphics HP W2371d (1920x1080@60Hz) 640MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (NVIDIA)
Audio Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express Card
Mouse Microsoft 3500
Keyboard Logitech V220
Storage
298GB Seagate ST3320620AS ATA Device (SATA)
465GB Seagate ST3500830AS ATA Device (SATA)
279GB Western Digital WDC WD3000GLFS-01F8U0 ATA Device (SATA)
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 ATA Device (SATA)
465GB Seagate ST3500830AS ATA Device (SATA)
1397GB Seagate ST315005 41AS USB Device (USB 3.0)
Optical Drives TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223Q ATA Device
Eaton USB 3.0 2 Port PCI Express Rxtensible Host Controller

 

[Dorlan2001]

Probably the ISO file you downloaded was corrupted or the DVD is damaged and it cannot read properly, because it seems you can run Windows 8.1 Update just fine and the installation should be smooth. My thought is that maybe you cannot get past that screen because of those issues!

Hope this helps!

 

[The Nude Dude]

i'd have to say no cause it installs in vmware and virtualbox without any issues. later i'm going to try turning off the usb 3.0 drive and see if windows trying to read that io card or the drive during setup is may be causing 8.1.1 to hang. thanks for the idea though, if i hadn't run 8.1.1 in vm i would of been inclined to agree with you.

 

[topgundcp]

Looking at the screen shot of your disk management, I do not see the Windows 7 100MB reserved partition. From the Folder Options, can you turn on "Show Hidden Files" & Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" and look in each of your HD's to see if you have a boot folder, bootmgr, BOOTNXT as shown in the screen shot below

 

[The Nude Dude]

Looking at the screen shot of your disk management, I do not see the Windows 7 100MB reserved partition. From the Folder Options, can you turn on "Show Hidden Files" & Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" and look in each of your HD's to see if you have a boot folder, bootmgr, BOOTNXT as shown in the screen shot below

View attachment 44065

that's because i'm running 64 bit not 32 bit, plus at least vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 are set to locate the boot.ini no matter where on the main drive it's on.

 

[topgundcp]

that's because i'm running 64 bit not 32 bit, plus at least vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 are set to locate the boot.ini no matter where on the main drive it's on

FYI: It does not matter whether you use 32 or 64 bit. There's no boot.ini since Windows Vista, they are now using BCD (Boot Configuration Data) so I don't know what you are talking about.

 

[The Nude Dude]

i have never had 7 create the system reserved partition. plus 8.1 should be searching the entire drive for the boot info from 7 to add it to 8.1's boot loader.

 

[The Nude Dude]

i have never had 7 create the system reserved partition. plus 8.1 should be searching the entire drive for the boot info from 7 to add it to 8.1's boot loader.

QUOTE:
"If you have ever installed Windows by yourself, you may have run into the situation where Windows setup tells you it’s going to create a System Reserved partition for system files. The size of this partition is 100 MB. The exact prompt is

"To ensure that all Windows features work correctly, Windows might create additional partitions for system files."

​

You only get this dialog and this additional system reserved partition in certain scenarios. Normally, if you click OK at the prompt, your partitions will look like this:

"

 

[The Nude Dude]

QUOTE:

"How to Remove System Reserved Partition?

Like I mentioned before, you can’t remove it on an existing installation of Windows. However, you can choose not to create it when you are installing Windows on a new system. There are a couple of ways to do this.
1. Use Existing Partitions - Windows will only create the system reserved partition if you create a new partition on a disk that has no partitions created. It will also create it if you delete all the current partitions on the disk and then create a new one. If you want to avoid the extra partition, just use whatever partitions are already on the system. To do a clean install, you can just format an existing partition instead of deleting all partitions.

2. Partition Before Installing – The second way to do it is to use a third-party tool or a different Windows installation disk (like Windows XP or Windows Vista) and partition the disk before you start the Windows 7 setup. If you only have the Windows 7 DVD with you, there is a way to do it, but it require a little more work."

i use partition wizard during boot to run 3 wipes on the drive and then partition it then install windows. this is why i don't have a system reserved partition.

 

[topgundcp]

Let me QUOTE back to you:

1. You have marked all your disks as Active which is incorrect. The only disk should be marked as Active is disk 3 where you have your Windows installed, Please read this:
   Mark a partition as active - Microsoft Windows Help
2. It is true that you can install Windows without the reserved partition provided:
   a - You created & Formatted the disk/partition prior to run the installation
   b - The disk that you install Windows must be set to be the 1st boot priority in the BIOS, and preferably
   connected to the first sata port on the MB then the BCD will be stored in C: drive with
   Windows (boot, bootmgr,BOOTSECT.NT, BOOTSECT.BAK)
3. However, if you do step 2 without step 2b, then Windows will silently use the first disk that you set to 1st priority in the BIOS as the reserved partition, put the BCD there and mark the disk Active. And that's the reason why I asked you to look for where the BCD is being stored. Windows 8 installation is able to detect that you have another Windows installed but might not be smart enough to know where to look for the BCD if it's not on the same disk/partition.

Hope this helps !!!

 

[The Nude Dude]

no the bcd is on c win 7 i know cause i disconnect all other drives every time in install windows unless i'm installing another instance of windows next to the current one. as for marking the first partition of the other drives microsoft is wrong. you always mark the first partition of a drive as active.

 

[topgundcp]

no the bcd is on c win 7 i know cause i disconnect all other drives every time in install windows unless i'm installing another instance of windows next to the current one. as for marking the first partition of the other drives microsoft is wrong. you always mark the first partition of a drive as active.

Microsoft is wrong ?

1. Mark Partition As Active(Wrong Drive) - Hard Drives - Storage
2. Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[The Nude Dude]

regardless of what the second one says i know what does and does not work. i have been setting the first partition of a drive to active since at least xp, and i have never had a problem booting to the correct drive and or partition. looks like there are two schools of thought on this and i don't think either one is necessarily wrong. as far as the first one you posted it has nothing to do with this, that guy either set the wrong drive as boot device in the bios or he didn't realize drive x was set as the boot drive by the bios. that has nothing to do with having the drive set to active.

 

[The Nude Dude]

o.k. boyz and girlz got to the core of the problem. i had a secondary hdd dieing. s.m.a.r.t. nor windows was telling me for the longest time. 8.1.1 is now in, all updates, all drivers, all personal settings, and all 3rd party software are in. it stable, and solid.