Solved Win XP and 8 Dual boot problem w/RAID1? Help!

[raistlin888]

Hello,

I have DUAL BOOTED Win XP Pro 64 and Windows 8 before with no problem, but I need a redundancy for less downtime, which is where RAID1 comes in...

I've managed to install Windows XP Pro 64 Bit using RAID1 on my system. I made the partition DURING the install of XP. Now I want to DUAL BOOT Win 8 Pro 64, but after I put in the serial key it shows me the two partitions, the XP one and the Unallocated one. When I select the Unallocated one, the message towards the bottom tells me Windows cannot install onto this disk (See details) and when I click on (See Details) it tells me the following:

"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. The EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks"

Any Ideas?

 

[theog]

As the new MOBO's now have a uEFI/BIOS firmware.
How to install Windows 64 bit on a uEFI/BIOS firmware:

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Help Forums
or
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...e-firmware-interface-install-windows-8-a.html


For more info on uEFI:
Windows and GPT FAQ
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
UEFI and Windows
Technical Note: UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS - YouTube
Sample: Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions by Using Windows PE and DiskPart

 

[XweAponX]

All Windows Vista, 7, and 8 need that 100 MB partition for storing the grubloader, if that space is not there at the beginning of the drive, you will not be able to install any of those OS's. XP does not use a grub loader, it just boots, so you don't have to reserve the first part of the partition for those files. That's probably what's preventing you from installing to those disks.

You can use a Partitioning Program like Partition Wizard, use it to create a 100 MB partition at the front of the disk. It will create the partition at the end, you can slide the other partitions to the back of the drive until that 100MB partition is in the front. Ive done this. After you do that, you can just slect the drive itself, and create a new MBR for it, then you can try to install. You have to do this outside of Windows, you can do it with Mini Windows XP from Hiren's Boot CD, you can assign drive letter C to that Windows XP partition so it will boot, then you can install Windows 8 on top of that.

 

[XweAponX]

Hm - I thought Windows 8 also needed that space, I just checked my partitions, it uses the whole drive. Ok, my bad, there must be some other reason why it wont install to that partition, maybe it needs to be formatted from within Setup.

 

[raistlin888]

Maybe im not wording my question right...

I can install Windows 8 by itself just fine on my RAID1 array.
I can install Windows XP Pro 64bit also by itself just fine on my RAID1 array
But I can't Dual boot these two together on my RAID1 array?
I CAN get them to dual boot just fine when they were set up in IDE mode in the BIOS.
What is the big difference trying to use RAID1? Its just mirroring the other drive?
There isn't anything different in Install/Setup of either OS's (other than WinXP needing RAID Drivers to be installed during RAID install)
I have seen it on you tube, but I assume it wasn't in RAID1.
I google it and people seem to get it to work just fine, but none of the results are showing them attemting it in RAID1
I've tried to read the links that Theog provided... but as far as I saw it was above my head in technical jargon, and from what I skimmed thru, none referred to anything about RAID1 as NOT an option

If someone does know, I need it in layman's terms please.


Thanks ahead of time!

 

[Saltgrass]

If we go back to the original message, it appears to be saying you are attempting to install Windows 8 using the UEFI configuration. Do you know for sure you are not booting the media with the UEFI option?

If you are booting to the MBR version of the media, the other thing, as was suggested, is to partition the unallocated space. Perhaps telling Windows 8 to install in unallocated space confuses it and it thinks it needs to recreate all the necessary partitions, but can't because there is already an active one.

But you are correct, once the RAID array is set up, it should just look like a normal drive to the installers. How did you get the RAID drivers to load during the XP install? I use a USB floppy for that.

 

[raistlin888]

If we go back to the original message, it appears to be saying you are attempting to install Windows 8 using the UEFI configuration. Do you know for sure you are not booting the media with the UEFI option?

Ok, so I tried going back into the BIOS, It gave me three options for booting. 1) CD UEFI 2) P3 CD 3)Intel RAID (my raid volume). I wasn't thinking about the UEFI CD as being my issue till you brought it up...
So I put the P3 CD as first boot priority and it worked!!!
Thanks so much @Saltgrass!!! THANK YOU!!!

 

[raistlin888]

But you are correct, once the RAID array is set up, it should just look like a normal drive to the installers. How did you get the RAID drivers to load during the XP install? I use a USB floppy for that.

I used nLite to SLIPSTREAM the Intel RAID Controllers into the .iso boot cd. It took me a little bit to find the right drivers, but when I did, it worked seamlessly!

CHEERS!!!

 

[jimbo45]

Maybe im not wording my question right...

I can install Windows 8 by itself just fine on my RAID1 array.
I can install Windows XP Pro 64bit also by itself just fine on my RAID1 array
But I can't Dual boot these two together on my RAID1 array?
I CAN get them to dual boot just fine when they were set up in IDE mode in the BIOS.
What is the big difference trying to use RAID1? Its just mirroring the other drive?
There isn't anything different in Install/Setup of either OS's (other than WinXP needing RAID Drivers to be installed during RAID install)
I have seen it on you tube, but I assume it wasn't in RAID1.
I google it and people seem to get it to work just fine, but none of the results are showing them attemting it in RAID1
I've tried to read the links that Theog provided... but as far as I saw it was above my head in technical jargon, and from what I skimmed thru, none referred to anything about RAID1 as NOT an option

If someone does know, I need it in layman's terms please.


Thanks ahead of time!

Hi there
this is NOT the answer to your question but IMO could be a sensible get around your dilemma.

Have you thought about installing XP-X64 in a VIRTUAL machine. The latest version of VMWARE vmplayer is FREE and has decent graphics in it so things like DVD playing and even SOME (note not all) Games will work in a VM.

Typical legacy hardware devices don't have any issues with a Virtual machine and modern hardware will run a VM almost as fast as the "Native" machine.

An advantage also with VM's is that you can start / stop them at will - you don't need to logoff the Host system and it's also possible for people to logon to a VM without even needing an account on the host system.

(If this is not what you want then OK forget this post but all I'm suggesting is that I see this solution as a decent more convenient alternative). The XP-64 system will run quite nicely on a 3 GB Virtual machine - or even 2GB.).

The RAID on the host will work just fine and you can set the Virtual HDD's to SCSI if you want -- plenty of tutorials on setting up and using Virtual Machines on this Forum (and the W7 one too).

I'm running a Windows W2K3 server as a VM -- this has a load of VERY EXPENSIVE legacy ENGINEERING type laboratory hardware -- so I'm keeping it for a while yet. The manufacturer of the hardware has long since "disappeared" but the hardware works really well.

(I'm also running a W98 legacy system too -- even older). Both these run just fine even on a laptop -- so long as your laptop / system has at least 8GB RAM you'll be fine.

From my point of view this is a FAR better solution than keeping a dual boot system or a dedicated older machine.

BTW I'm using VMware workstation -- the paid product -- but these work from VMware PLAYER too -- the FREE product -- download from VMware site.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[raistlin888]

@jimbo45

thanks for the reply. i have tried using both xp mode and hyper-v both work, but the connection to my the database server is really slow, (fair size image files thru VPN) compared to the full program. also, dont thunk it will utilize my workstation card to ita full potential. but i managed to get it dual booted finally.

thanks.