Solved Win8 install bit me in the a*s

I just finally managed to get my desktop back up running after attempting to install Win8 to a secondary partition. Was following the instructions about creating dual boot by going to sources folder inside the Consumer Preview and running setup.exe from there. During the install when it asked where to install it would not give me the un-formatted partition that I had created for the purpose and I was forced to cancel out of the install.

Put the CD into my DVD drive and restarted.......this is where the nightmare began.......NO bios access and no boot options menu....did some research and found that this was an issue that others had run across with the developer preview.....Microsoft's solution was to turn hibernation off and then reboot....after doing this I now had........no bios, no boot, windows would not start and no video (I am running dual cards in sli )....finally tried changing the dvi cables from card 2 to card 1........hallelujah...amen.....video again but with error message "Windows install is damaged, Please run repair"....did that. Finally back to where I began. Really don't like the fact that Microsoft is messing with the bios the way Win8 did....didn't ask permission or give any warnings....just F'd up my current install. That's what can happen when you run beta software even from Microsoft.......live and learn. Trust but verify

Windows 8 is NOT going to be installed on my computers if Microsoft is going to mess with my bios and boot options in the name of speeding up boot time, I expected better than that after the quality of the Win7 RC.....especially if I don't get a say in the settings.....can't believe that changing the bios / boot options is one of the first things that gets changed without notice with a win8 install. Really pissed at Microsoft this time....thought I had a new $1500 paper weight there for a while. Just goes to show that with a little perseverance you can recover from most any stupid thing that you do, but I trusted Microsoft to be a little bit more on the ball than this......wrong, wrong, wrong.......The Win7 RC spoiled me where quality of code base is concerned....

I will not fall for this again........I will NOT install without a lot more research prior to attempting it.

Hope this helps someone else from getting a bad case of heartburn like I now have.

I had some difficulty getting it to install - you are not alone.

Sorry you had this problem. It shouldn't have happened that way. By the way you will always have to format the partition (NTFS, Allocation Unit size: Default or 4096bytes, quick format is fine & allocate a drive letter to it), it's going into first, otherwise the installer will fail.

Ex_Brit said:

Sorry you had this problem. It shouldn't have happened that way. By the way you will always have to format the partition (NTFS, Allocation Unit size: Default or 4096bytes, quick format is fine & allocate a drive letter to it), it's going into first, otherwise the installer will fail.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info....I appreciate the advice. I was under the illusion that this would be performed during the install, my bad.

I didn't format to where I installed Windows 8. I installed it to my C: drive which has one NTFS partition and is 111 GB usable. About 40-50 GB of data was already on it and still is as before. Everything is well.

After the install, I had to use my bios to boot to either 8 or 7 drive, but that is because my D: drive with Windows 7 was both its "system" and "boot" partition...meaning that the boot files AND Windows 7 were both there to start, because I made it that way long ago.

Now C: is both the "system" and "boot" partition for Windows 8. I didn't unplug any drives or anything else while installing 8.

As a side note, I can now choose to edit either drive's bcd to include the other OS.

You didn't have to format because your drive was already formatted.

Use EasyBCD 2.2 Beta for easy control of your OS's and how they boot. Also iReboot allows you to boot between OS's.

Ex_Brit said:

You didn't have to format because your drive was already formatted.

Use EasyBCD 2.2 Beta for easy control of your OS's and how they boot. Also iReboot allows you to boot between OS's.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, I gotcha. What you guys are saying is that it is impossible to install 8 to a new, unformatted drive? I didn't pick up on that part...heh...my bad.

Yup, I have EasyBCD installed already in both OS. Thanks!

lol my Win 7 has been upgrade installed with every release since early beta. It still runs as smooth as can be without any apparent issues I can speak about. MS has come a long way with upgrade reliability.

It should be possible but apparently the installer doesn't yet offer to format or partition or whatever the normal OS ones do. I actually never even looked for that option I must confess so can't vouch for it.

get a new ass?