Until The Partitions Read "Windows 7 Cannot Be Installed To This Disk?
Feb 16, 2013
Wasn't sure whether I should put this in WIndows 8 discussion or WIndows 7, butconsidering it's going from eight to seven, it would be more relevant to go into seven, especially since I think I've cleared eight almost entirely from the machine, but I'll explain that later. Also excuse my English right now, I've been awake for.... well longer than twenty four hours, so my mind is a bit scrambled and I'd just like the peace of mind of having this up here before I head off to sleep.
Well anyways, it feels a bit impolite to show up with nothing but a problem to present, so I'll make it a point to at least present myself. I've found this site many a times when dealing with viruses and other such problems through Google search results. I had noted what a great site this was, from the generally friendly people to the fact that anytime I would find a thread here pertaining to my problem, it would either be solved here or I would be pushed pretty drastically in the right direction. This was always my "go to" place if I ever really had a problem I needed worked out that I couldn't figure out myself. As you've already guessed, that's why I'm here in the first place.
So to sum it up shortly my friend had asked me to revert his new Windows 8 laptop back to the Windows 7 interface, me knowing more than him enough for him to trust me with it.However, I'm no IT, I'm just someone who happens to have picked up knowlege over the years from dealing with my own problems and such. It didn't seem to be an IT job, so I felt it was within my league. First thing I do is fish out the WIndows 7 installation disk. After fiddling with Windows 8 for a while trying to figure out how to boot from disk (is it just me or did Windows 8 overcomplicate that way too much?), I managed to get to the boot order settings. However, the CD drive was entirely gone from there. I assumed it was something involving the new laptop and not having the proper drivers installed or something, so I followed through a guide and got it all onto a flash drive so I could boot from that instead of dealing with the phantom CD drive this laptop seemed to have.
One step done, I felt I was heading in the right direction. However, things began taking a turn for the worst when for whatever reason it wouldn't load from the flash drive. It was recognized at least, and there was a noticable pause at start up where the light on the flash drive began blinking frantically as if it's trying to do something, but then it just skipped over to the regular Windows 8 log on screen. I tried just about all the basic troublshooting steps under the sun here, different USB slots, formatting the drive and cleanly setting it up to be a boot disk a few more times, changing the boot order again, etc. I started poking around online for solutions, and, well my fatigued brain is having a bit of a hard time remembering if I did anything other than this, but if I did I know I wasn't just poking at random switches and such in the BIOS, even I realize the danger of that and all, and if there was something other than this I know that it was only one other thing, which I suspect is what actually made it work. Now for the big delivery, MISTAKE #1 : There was a setting somewhere in there that I changed, I'm guessing I misread what was said online, but I changed it from UEFI, to CSM.
Saved changes and restarted. Booted fine from the flash drive and I was pretty happy, until the partitions read "Windows cannot be installed to this disk, The selected disk is of the GPT partition style" Now here's where I started to panic. So much so I engagued into big mistake #2. I deleted the partition containing Windows 8 and tried to make a new one for 7. That would work right? It would build the next partition to fit what Windows 7 needs to install right? Not the case, still remained with the GPT error on the newly made partition. So here I am, with a Windows 7 that refuses to install, and when I load it normally I get this wonderful screen[CODE]
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Jan 11, 2011
TLDR: I get the "A disk read error occurred" error but the system disk is readable and checks OK in the recovery USB. So, I have two hard drives--a terabyte drive with some data on it and a smaller drive with the Windows 7 installation on it--and a USB drive. I made the USB drive into a recovery USB using the instructions here Installing Windows 7 System Recovery into USB Flash Drive | Raymond.CC Blog with the addendum found in the comments. I made a system image of the smaller drive via the control panel and then put the image in the terabyte drive. I then replaced my smaller hard drive with a new drive of a comparable size.In order to restore the drive, I booted into the recovery USB, formatted the new hard drive with ntfs, made it active, and ran wbadmin start recovery -version:xxx -items:C: -itemtype:Volume -backupTarget:C: -recoveryTarget: where C was the terabyte drive and D is the new drive. I may have the drives mixed up here, but I assure you I had them correct when I actually ran the command
After a reset, I got some generic error so I went back into the bios, and set the new drive to be at the top of all boot lists, and then rebooted. It was at this time I got the above error. I feared that my drive was actually DOA, so I booted back into the recovery. I did a D:;dir and saw that all of my old files did indeed exist, so I figure it was a boot issue. I ran the boot repair utility in the recovery menu and it said there were no errors and I should restart. I didn't restart, and instead ran a chkdsk D: /f and found no errors. I did a bootsect /nt60 /all /mbr and restarted and still nothing changed. I even tried a "bcdedit /timeout 10" and I do not see the boot loader before getting this error. Not sure if that is expected or not but I'll throw that in here.
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Nov 19, 2011
my laptop can't read cd or vcd disk but dvd disk can read and write
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Nov 11, 2011
I have a PC with 2 hard drives- the first hard drive has a single partition and windows 7 64-bit is installed on this hard disk.Now I wish to install CentOS 6 on the first partition of the second hard disk.I have created the dvd for installing Cent OS also.How do I configure the boot loader in Windows? If I install Linux on second hard disk, will this overwrite the Windows Boot Loader? How do I create a dual boot system so that the windows boot loader correctly shows linux as an option, so that I am able to load either Windows 7 (existing) or Linux(on second hard disk- not yet installed)
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May 21, 2009
Dont ask me how, but I ended up installing Windows7 twice on two seperate partitions. I now have two "Windows 7" options when my boot screen comes up. I obviously only ment to install it once so I want to get rid of the second Windows 7 option on the boot screen (and the bootscreen itself aswell actually).
How do I remove the Windows7 installation thats on partition "D"?
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Mar 14, 2012
i have a toshiba satellite C650 that has recently come up with a disk read error. I want to access the command prompt to try some potential solutions that I have read about on the internet. I have made a Windows 7 recovery disk using my other acer laptop which also has Windows 7 installed. When I use the recovery disk and it has loaded the files etc it just brings up a black screen and the cursor. I tried booting my acer laptop from the recovery disk and it worked fine. why I am getting the 'disk read error - hit ctrl, alt and delete to restart' message?
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Feb 16, 2011
I Upgraded My Windows7 Starter To Ultimate Recently And Everything Was Going Fine, But I Wasn't Happy With The Disk Space Because I Had Ubuntu As Second OS And I Wanted More Space For Win7. ( Ubuntu Was In The same Partition As Win7 C: ). I Searched For Ways Of Increasing The Size Of The Partition But I Didn't Understood Them So I Deleted Ubuntu. The Space Wasn't Recovered (Unallocated Space) So I Still Searched For Ways Of Making The Partition Size Bigger And i Found a Way That Said If You Right Clicked The Gray Square Of Disk Utility And Click a Phrase That i Don't Remember You Can Show the "Resize" Option Of the Partition.i Did That and i Received a Notification Dialog That Said That Said That If i Do That All The Partitions (OS's, Files, And Drivers) Would Be Deleted And I Like A DUMB Clicked "Ok" At Next Restart There Was No Boot Manager, The Boot Just Loaded Again And Again. So I Installed Ubuntu Using a Bootable USB (Current OS) And There Was No "Install Alongside Other OS" Option. I Tried To Run Windows 7 Setup Again Using a Bootable USB, But I Get Stuck at The Part That You Must Select The Drivers Needed So Windows Could Read The Partitions. I Have The CD With The Drivers But i Have a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 Netbook With No CD Drive So i Downloaded All The Drivers That the Factory Installs From Dell.com And Saved It on A USB But the Windows 7 Setup Doesn't Recognize The Drivers, It Only Recognize The USB But Not It Contents(Drivers).I Want To Keep Using Windows 7 And All Programs i Need Windows But It Seems Like Ubuntu Is My Only Option.
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Sep 7, 2012
I am currently running windows Vista 32 with an Hd and decided to upgrade to a SSD with windows 7 professional 64GB using a clean install.
I have watched a few videos which suggest you just plug in your new Ssd, unplug the HD and boot windows from cd/DVD and install onto SSD. I tried this several times and every time it did not recognize the boot disk. If I plug my original HD in and reboot using the disk- it is able to recognize it and initiates the installation procedure. I am hoping to replace this HD so not sure how to get this to work.
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Jan 22, 2011
My new computer came with one c: partition. I want to shrink it and use the avaialble space to set up a second partition which I want to format as vfat.
I've done this before with a machine running vista. I found something under partitioning a disk, which had me link to computer management. I think I see what to do, but I can't find computer management anywhere else. Is it one of several hidden programs available through the control panel? Is there some other way to bring it up?
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Nov 17, 2009
I will be upgrading form windows xp to windows 7 soon. I know there is no direct upgrade option from xp and that I will have to perform a clean install. I have created a couple of True Crypt disk partitions to store private data. Will those partitions be erased after the install or will they remain? Also, can I create another new disk partition to store the data I want to transfer over to windows 7 or will that be erased durring the install as well? I want to know if I need to go and get an external HD.
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Oct 13, 2011
i am getting this error on start up but when i use the start up disk 'the orignal win 7 disk it says the same thing disk read error
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Dec 3, 2012
I'm trying to reformat my computer with the original windows 7 disk but i'm having issues. when i insert the disk and i go to "My Computer" it doesn't show up as a windows 7 disk and has no folders or files when i 'explore' it. i checked the device manager and it shows the dvd rom is working fine, i updated the driver anyways and it said it was already up to date. after i tried rebooting the computer and it doesn't give me the option to 'press any key to start disk' that it normally does. i went into bios and set it to where the dvd rom was first priority followed by the hard drive (nothing), then made it the only priority with all others disabled. it then said "insert disk and press enter", i pulled the disk out then put it back in but it won't boot. i made sure the disk drive was working by inserting another disk in it and it worked fine and booted up and everything. then i tried putting the windows 7 disk into another computer i have and it also booted up normally and worked fine.
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Jun 25, 2011
I've just ran into what appears to be a bug with Disk Management under Windows 7. THe problem seems to go back all the way to OS reporting themselves as NT 5.2 or greater. XP x64 has the problem, Win2K3 server does and Windows 7 does. I don't have any version of Vista to check, so I don't know for sure but I'd bet its there as well. THe 32-bit version of XP which reports itself as NT 5.1 doesn't have the problem.
At any rate, the problem is Disk Management seems to count all Linux partitions as primary, even those which are logical volumes inside extended partitions on MBR drives. As such, if this erroneous count exceeds 4, it will refuse to create any more primary partitions, even though there are less than 4 actual partitions in the MBR table.
who dual boot with Linux could confirm this behavior. I've reported it on some of the MS forums, but no one seems to be interested.
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Aug 24, 2012
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May 23, 2011
My computer was working completely fine and I went to restart it and it wouldn't go anywhere after the boot scree just a read disk error. I restored my bios settings to default and still no luck. I then put in a windows 7 disk and went to repairs and did a start up repair got a harddrive error 0x0. When I go to look in my computer when I click browse, I can see my other hard drive, but my main one is still there but and no info. When I click on it, it asks if I want to format it. There are lot of important files I cannot lose.
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Apr 22, 2012
I turned on my Sony vaio laptop and it got stuck on the Starting Windows splash screen. I tried to boot in safe mode but it loaded a bunch of files and then just stopped and never went to safe mode. I tried the system repair but after nearly 14 hours that didn't work either. System restore, scannow and chk dsk didn't work as well. Now I'm trying to reinstall Windows but it says disk read error and it won't load any further.
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Jan 5, 2012
that the system doesn't recognize the Sata HDD on which Windows 7 is installed. I first thought the the HDD was done, because the system recovery couldn't be started and every action was followed with "disk read error". The next step I took was booting with Ubuntu live and there was the surprise, Ubuntu recognized the HDD and all the folders were there, so it seems the problem is not with the HDD but with the OS. What next step should I take
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Feb 3, 2012
i changed bios settings also..repeatedly the same problem occurred what is the solution to my pc?
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Mar 5, 2012
DVD drive can read MS Office and XP installation disk but not Windows 7 DVD.
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Jun 20, 2012
I don't know much about computers. I don't understand anything about BIOS and OS, without going into the comlicated things?
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Mar 13, 2011
so i got this cool Hp laptop... nice the bad part ... I had a single 500 gb Hard disk. only two partitions ... experimented to partition it ... 1. I upgraded my basic drive to dynamic drive ( got four partitions now) 2. My OS (win 7 home premium x64) is on one of the partiotion on the dynamic disk. QUESTIONS How do i convert back to basic... i only have my OS key no install cd? Can i take a back up or sys image that i can use later on after converting my hard disk to basic?
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Oct 17, 2011
I've divided my disk into partitions and accidentally removed bootloader of windows and now I get "boot mgr is missing", so I cant load my windows. I have a disk and put boot order in BIOS but it still does not give me an opportunity to install windows, so I have only openSUSE right now, and 2 partitions of windows with C: and D: disks. How to restore this bootloader or at least make install windows 7?
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Sep 4, 2010
Partitions labels in Windows Explorer are different than Disk Management ! When I Rename any Partition labels nothing Change !
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Dec 3, 2009
I have just installed Windows 7 on a new hard drive.
If i click on My Computer i see a C drive (Windows 7) with just the one partition as i expected.
But if i right click on My Computer and go to manage then go to disk managment is see that the hard drive with Windows 7 on has two partitions one called System Reserved and is 100Mb and then the C Drive with Windows 7 on.
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Apr 14, 2011
I am trying to install Windows 7 on a new computer and i keep getting this error message. "windows cannot be installed to this disk. this computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."I am also trying to run RAID 5 on this system, i have x4 1.5T HD.
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Nov 11, 2012
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Nov 16, 2012
A little background on my system's configuration. My system was/is configured is a two disk RAID0 with a system partition and two other partition for Windows and programs. I'm wanting to migrate the partitions/data to a single disk system. I created a system image using both the Windows backup software and Novabackup. The problem I'm having is restoring either of those images to a single disk. Is it possible to restore an image from a RAID configuration to a single disk? If so, what am I missing? No matter which image I try to restore from, I either get a fail from Windows or can't be done in so many words from Novabackup. I just want the RAID image on a single disk.
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Sep 2, 2012
There was originally just one HDD and I wanted all my "Media" to be in one partition and then Programme Files etc. in another (being C). This was just so that I could copy the entire 'Drive' I had created making moving videos and photos around easier.So I used the built in disk partition manager and created some unallocated space, then called that space Drive (A) - But now that (A) drive is full and I want to add an additional 40Gb to it from the original C, but I the "Extend Volume" option is greyed out on the (A) drive even with the 40Gb as Unallocated.
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Dec 6, 2012
I'm here with 8 hd's all blocked, formats need them but I'm not getting or creating a partition because they are blocked, HDD Unlock saw the program but is expensive and is paid
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May 28, 2012
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Apr 28, 2012
Is there a way to easily downgrade to Windows 7 32 bit without having the 32-bit disc? Maybe a program to do all the bitchwork while I basically sit back?
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