Solved Trying to install Windows 8 on a partition on 3TB HDD

[NotGeoff]

I've looked through a number of threads and have not come across a fix that works for my situation. I have my main windows install (Win 7 professional) on a 128 SSD. I just put a new 3TB HDD in and want to install windows 8 professional on a small partition (~70GB) on that drive and use the rest of the disk as extra storage space. When I boot windows 7, I can see the large partition on the 3TB drive and can use it no problem. I had a 70GB space of unallocated space on the end of the drive. So I put in my windows 8 install disk, did custom install and selected to install Windows 8 on the unallocated 70GB partition. The installation began and rebooted for the first time. When the computer came back up, it asks if I want to boot windows 7 or windows 8. I choose boot from windows 8 and it tells me "Your pc needs to be repaired. File: windows\system32\winload.exe is missing or contains errors. You'll need to use recovery tools on your installation media." (I'm assuming this is because the install did not finish) Ok fine. I reboot from the disk and try the automatic repair and it says "Automatic repair could not repair your PC".

Here's a few things I tried:
-I updated my BIOS on my motherboard to the most current version and ensured it boots CD/DVD in EFI mode or whatever
-I tried the "bootrec /rebuildbcd" command in the terminal on the install disk
-I tried manually entering a boot record for windows 8 using EasyBCD 2.2 (which got us to the "Your pc needs to be repaired..." screen whereas before it would just boot to windows 7)
-I tried using diskpart to manually set the partition to active
-I tried to restore the MBR via the windows 8 install disk terminal (I did this using this tutorial, fix #3: https://neosmart.net/wiki/0xc0000225/)

Let me give you some info about my system:
-gigabyte GA-970A-D3 motherboard, rev 1.0/1.1, bios version f13b
-the 3TB drive is a Western Digital Black
-the 128GB SSD is an Intel SSDSC2CT120A3 (but I don't think this will matter)
-Windows 7 Professional SP1 is my main windows install
-AMD FX 4170 processor (also not sure this is relevant)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Saltgrass]

Is your Windows 7 install a Legacy (MBR) install?

You are booting to the UEFI version of Windows 8?

Any way to get a picture of the Disk Management window?

Have you tried removing the SSD while installing Windows 8?

 

[AddRAM]

The hard drive is probably configured as GPT, it needs to be converted to MBR to play nice with your ssd.

Didn`t you get a window asking you how you wanted it confoigured when you 1st hooked it up and booted up Windows 7 ?

Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk - Windows 7 Help Forums

And don`t put Windows 8 at the end of the drive ( the far right in disk management ) put it at the beginning.

Do you want to create a dual boot or do you want to keep the operating systems independent ?

Unplug the ssd when you install W8 to keep them independent.

Plug both drives in, keep your ssd 1st in the bios, then just use the 1 time boot menu key to choose the hard drive to boot W8.

You`ll still be able to use it for storage from 7 or 8

 

[NotGeoff]

Is your Windows 7 install a Legacy (MBR) install?

You are booting to the UEFI version of Windows 8?

Any way to get a picture of the Disk Management window?

Have you tried removing the SSD while installing Windows 8?

Question 1: I'm not sure. How do I check?
Question 2: I'm not sure. How do I check?
Question 3: I don't have anything on the 3TB drive so I just unallocated all the space on it, but I will provide a screenshot as it is currently.
Question 4: I did try that. After the first reboot of the install of win 8, it would get to the screen that says "Loading operating system" and sit there and do nothing.

 

[NotGeoff]

The hard drive is probably configured as GPT, it needs to be converted to MBR to play nice with your ssd.

Didn`t you get a window asking you how you wanted it confoigured when you 1st hooked it up and booted up Windows 7 ?

Convert GPT Disk to MBR Disk - Windows 7 Help Forums

And don`t put Windows 8 at the end of the drive ( the far right in disk management ) put it at the beginning.

Do you want to create a dual boot or do you want to keep the operating systems independent ?

Unplug the ssd when you install W8 to keep them independent.

Plug both drives in, keep your ssd 1st in the bios, then just use the 1 time boot menu key to choose the hard drive to boot W8.

You`ll still be able to use it for storage from 7 or 8

So I unallocated all the space on it so the 3TB is not formatted currently while we try to figure this out. I read that for hard drives that are above 2.2TB, the drive has to be in gpt format. Is this not true?

As to your question about dualbooting, the way I had it configured before was that the 2 windows installs were independent and I could choose which windows I wanted to boot on startup. This is what I'm trying to achieve.

 

[KYHI]

you are using MBR and have a 4 partition limit

wiat that 4 disks..

windows setup will format that disk via gpt - and should add it boot manager files into the current bcd

 

[NotGeoff]

I figured it out. I just left the whole drive unformatted and let the windows 8 install take care of the partitioning. Now I can just shrink the partition to get the extra space back Thanks all for your help