Hardware Drivers :: Windows 8.1 - Software To Make Whole 3TB HD Usable Without UEFI?
Nov 3, 2013
I'm using Windows 8.1 now, but about a year ago, while I was still on Win7, I bought a 3TB Seagate internal hard drive. My motherboard doesn't have UEFI, so I used the DiskWizard utiiltiy from Seagate's website to make the drive look like two drives, one 2TB, the other about 800GB. Now I have my boot partition and several data partitions on the drive, and access to all 3TB of space. Works great on both Win7 and Windows 8.
I just saw an ad for a good deal on a Toshiba 3TB internal drive, but I can't find any indication that Toshiba has software that does the same thing for its drives as DiskWizard does for Seagate drives.
Is there such a utility, either from Toshiba or a third party?
I built a computer recently (so it's not a 'store-bought system'), installed 16 GB of RAM, but System Information shows only 2.96 GB as usable. I'm using Win 8, 32-bit, with an Intel i3-2120 (3.30 GHz) CPU on an MSI motherboard. Not a gamer, so I have only a low-end GE Force 210 video card.
From what I gather, Windows 8 (32-bit) only allows a certain amount of RAM to be used. Is this correct? If so, did I make a mistake by installing 16 GB, when I could have installed a lesser amount? For example, if Windows 8/32-bit only recognizes (or at least, uses...) something like 3.5 GB---should I have simply stuck in 4 GB?
FYI, I'm happy with my computer, my wife and I can surf just fine (we have cable Internet, with an advertised speed of 15), and I don't really have any complaints. Just trying to educate myself about installed versus usable RAM.
I have Windows 8.1 32-bit installed and have fitted my PC (Dell Inspiron 531) with 4GB RAM.
The system only reports 3.25gb as usable - where has the remainder gone?
Is it the Graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT)?
I understand that Windows 8.1 32-bit can utilise a full 4GB of RAM?
Also in the Task Manager, it reports that I have used "2 of 2 slots", however I have 4 RAM slots inside the machine where the RAM is fitted (4 x 1GB fitted).
I built my computer a couple weeks ago and am running windows 8.1. I currently have a 128gb SSD and a 1tb internal hard drive (WD Caviar Blue) I obviously used the ssd to boot windows and currently windows is detecting my 1tb hard drive but it is not usable. I have tried diskpart commands to clean and format and I keep getting the error message "DiskPart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error". The hard drive was brand new and cables are fine. This is what everything looks like..
Why Windows 8 did take 4.5 GB for hardware only ,,, is that too much ? My windows 8 is Single Language edition ... The original one that comes with the laptop . I tried to install Pro edition trail version it says 16 GB ( 15.5 GB Usable)
System Manufacturer/Model Number MSI GX60 1AC OS Windows 8 CPU AMD A10-4600M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics, 2300 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) Memory 16 GB Installed Graphics Card(s) AMD Radeon HD 7660G & ATI Radeon HD 7970M
I regularly work with EFI partitions (Fat32 formatted as per requirements) on my usb drives (for loading Ubuntu, Windows 8 installs, and Win7 installs), and I cannot seem to access any of these drives in Windows 8.
No matter how many times I format the things to Fat32 I can not even access them at all. I get the error message "You don't currently have permission to access this folder, Click Continue to permanently get access to this folder" <Clicks Continue> "You have been denied access to this folder. To gain access to this folder you will need to use the security tab" <Right-Click, Properties, search for non-existent security tab>.
I understand that the security tab does not exist on Fat32 partitions. But how do we access these drives? The only other way I have found is through elevated command prompt run as administrator. (Which is dumb when you think about it because any virus coded for DOS can essentially access your EFI partition essential to your computer's booting into Windows, but you cannot access it to fix it?) Some days I just wonder what people were thinking when they write software. ~Sigh~
I commonly extract ISO images straight onto Fat32 USB when they contain the /efi/boot structure, but I cannot do this without explorer access (Elevated explorer doesn't work either). MS Dos only sometimes works because of the naming rules associated with it and the xcopy command, etc.
To re-create my disaster, format any USB drive as Fat32 using Windows 8 (or plug one in which is already formatted as such) and try to access it. Then try right clicking the drive and look for said 'security' tab.
TO SUM UP: I cannot read/write/access Fat32 partitions. It is a re-creatable issue.
I recently installed windows 8 on my MacBookPro with UEFI support, but I can't enable audio. I know that apple use BIOS emulation for windows and the assign different Hardware ID's for devices.
I tried changing inf file and it detected the required audio card driver, but it shows that device cannot start. It's Cirrus Audio CS4206B (AB83) sound card, but without emulation it shows it as intel audio card. It would be easier to get back to bootcamp, but I really want to make this work.
how to change my BIOS into UEFI. I tried to flash a UEFI BIOS file attached on Acer website but it wont start flashing. The latest version of UEFI installer is not responding when I want to flash it, the older version said I need to have the same type of BIOS installed. how to install UEFI on my system?
My desktop computer (Win 7 Pro 32 bit) has two local printers, both with the share attribute, and is the server on a wireless LAN containing my wife's ASUS tablet (Win 8.1RT). Until recently she could print using the shared printers, but now cannot. The printer sare detected, but on trying to print, an error message says that theserver print spooler service is not running. But it definitely is - I have checked with Admin Tools, checked that it starts automatically, tried stopping and restarting it. The ASUS can still see and open shared files and folders. The printer drivers are up to date on both machines and work perfectly on the server. I am beginning to think that a Win 8 update has changed something?
Although I don't really miss the Classical start Menu any more It's quite useful to have a quick popup of some programs you use from time to time that don't always warrant being either pinned to the desktop or the taskbar also with SUB MENUS where appropriate -- All the tools like WIN-X editor that I've seen don't allow sub menuing or need fixed location toolbars or folders so here's an EASY way to do it - although it's manual so perhaps knowlegable people with some programming skills who know some scripting could easily automate the process.
An Easy way to do this actually exists in WINDOWS itself by the use of a bit of trickery and Custom toolbars -- you don't NEED any Registry hacks etc. Also you can save your created toolbar so you don't need to re-create it or go through the whole process again if you re-install Windows again either.
Taskbar - Pin or Unpin a Folder - Windows 7 Forums Toolbars - How to Use in Windows 7 and Vista - Windows 7 Forums
1) Create a Folder anywhere on your system say on Vol D: and call it My Progs.
2) Create a Custom toolbar (right mouse click on bottom taskbar==>toolbars==>new toolbar
3) Select the folder location to the one you've made D:My Progs.
Now the trick is to POPULATE this folder correctly.
For Items that don't have any sub menus - for example on my system I'll take Winamp.You need to find the FILE LOCATION - easy way to do this is to search in the applications and then RIGHT MOUSE CLICK on the .exe file and then SEND TO DESKTOP (create Short cut).
Now on the DESKTOP RIGHT MOUSE CLICK on the icon and choose COPY.
Go to your folder D:My Progs, chose Paste Short cut. Then delete the desktop icon if you don't want it on your desktop.
Now if you want SUB levels - create a Folder in the My Progs folder and then simply copy the procedure above.
You can do this for as many levels as you want.
For the TOP level items say Office Create a Folder Microsoft Office. As an example I've also added one Classic Games.
If the link is ALREADY a short cut then just past direct into the My Prog folder - you don't need to create a short cut first.
Finally re-arrange it so it appears on the screen at the most convenient place for you.
"Seemples" -- Bye Bye Startisback or any of those 3rd party apps -- I think my method is far more flexible and you can have ANY number of toolbars too.
I've shown two screen shots here with a small test toolbar - Office and Classic Games have lower levels and the other one is the example My Dir containing ONLY short cuts and folders.
I always have a hard time finding drivers for it. I have a few missing, which I will try to figure out later, but my main issue right now is my video driver. I can't seem to find any drivers that work on Windows 8 x64. If I cant get it to work I'll have to go back to Windows 7 I have tried the video driver listed on the HP site and it installs fine, the picture quality/resolution is perfect but as soon as I log in and move the mouse the Metro screen goes completely blank. There is absolutely nothing on the screen. I have to hit windows key + D to get to the desktop. Once I uninstall the driver it goes back to the generic microsoft driver, the picture sucks but I can use metro no problem.
I have tried the older driver version listed on that webpage and I have tried many others. None seem to work for me. how to get it to work?? It says I have an NVIDIA MCP67M Graphics/Video Driver
When I got this computer, I restored my files from my Windows 7 OS to Windows 8 using my Carbonite back up. However, none of my Wordpad documents are usable now.
How do I convert my old Wordpad files to the Win 8 OS? Should I be asking the Carbonite people? Or is there a program that will do this for me?
I bought a Toshiba laptop that came with pre-installed Windows 8. I went into the "Bios" and switched from UEFI to CSM, Now my laptop just doesn't work. I am on a public computer posting this because mine will just not boot at all. It won't even show the boot logo, and I cannot get back into the Bios to switch it back to UEFI. I am not sure what information I could add on to here to be more clear other than I screwed up bad. The laptop didn't come with a disk, and I tried to hold 0 while powering up the laptop hoping that it would reset to factory settings, but no luck there either.
I have very little experience with Windows 8 until now. I am having an issue trying to run System Refresh or System Restore from the System Recovery Environment booted from the Windows disc. When I try to run it from the disc I already System Refresh says that the drive is locked. I tried System Restore and it said no OS's were found. I went into the CMD prompt and went to c: and can see the drive just fine.
Steps tried: running fixboot, fixmbr, rebuildbcd commands from CMDrunning dskchk /f (which forced a dismount)
I then read something about a non UEFI bootable disk couldn't access a GPT partition, which I think is the case here. So then I tried oscdimg to make my iso UEFI bootable (twice) and the UEFI Boot Manager still only shows 'Windows Boot Manager' at the boot menu. I even tried downloading an iso that was already UEFI incase I did it wrong and it still doesn't see it.
Just a quick question about UEFI installation. I've got the Windows 8 Pro DVD but I lack USB Flash Drive 4Gb, is it possible to install Windows 8 with UEFI support with the DVD support or as written in the tutorial the USB Flash Drive is mandatory?
I am using Windows 8.1, now I have a problem because i wanted do dual boot it with ubuntu and it didnt work on UEFI mode, but then when I installed ubuntu windows 8 wouldn't start... then I formated it with a downloaded windows 8 torrent... but now I can't start it on UEFI mode
It says something "media not found" or "failed" ... so if I want to start it I have to change to legacy mode......
Is there anyway to get it back to start it with UEFI? It ain't activated yet.. Windows 8.1 pro... is there any activatior or something too???
Or if I downgrade it to Windows 7? would it be any more the UEFI problem?
I have windows 7 already installed.my hard disk have 3 partitions and there are data in them.so,if i want to install windows 8.1 with uefi do I need to format all my partitions or only the windows 7 installed partition?
I would like to know how to install Windows 8 from a hard drive partition, so that is much faster than installing from a USB ... I've seen guides on how to do, how bad MBR, and I want to know how install W8 from a partition GPT / UEFI.
So, I am trying to install Windows 8 with UEFI support.
Which means file system can only be fat32 because UEFI doesnt support NTFS. Now my install.wim file is over 4GB in size, so I am unable to copy it to the usb drive because of fat32 limitations.
How would you go about this ?
I tried creating 2 partitions on my usb. One fat32 - which contains all boot data and second partition is NTFS which has only my install.wim file.
Now I am able to boot, but it doesnt detect my install.wim obviously because it is in another partition. What command should I use to pull it from another directory ? I am able to open CMD on the set up screen.
OR any other way to accomplish this ? How would you go about this ?
Is it possible to install Windows 8.1 as Legacy with MBR? Or only as UEFI with GPT? I'm kind of confused with all this UEFI business, I always used MBR in my Windows installations. Also, Truecrypt does not support UEFI, so if installing Windows 8.1 I should do it as legacy.
Also, how can I control during the install process if I want to set my system installation as UEFI or Legacy?
I got a (at the time new) MSi laptop several months back with just a regular Windows 8 Core x64 on it and a UEFI boot system (or whatever is the name for "BIOSs"). At some point I had problems with the settings - I couldn't open any of my computer's settings - and I researched long and hard to no avail.
So I installed Windows 7 32-bit (the only disk I had). Now, I'm trying to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro. I noticed that after the installation of 8.1 Pro my system was still running in 32-bit, so I made a bootable USB stick with the retail version of Windows 8 Core with no key just to get the system back to x64. It worked just fine. I cannot, however, boot in UEFI mode. I believe the partition got wiped somewhere in the Windows 7 installation.
Whenever I enter UEFI by pressing the DEL button (I cannot see the UEFI firmware settings tile under the Troubleshoot option) I see the boot mode is LEGACY and when I change it to UEFI, save and reset, it doesn't boot, giving me a "No media found" error. I don't care about my settings/files as long as I get UEFI back with Windows 8.1 Pro running. My next attempt would be to try and install 8.1 Pro from USB stick, wipe all the partitions and hope the installer will create new ones. The reason this would work when it didn't before is because I had the OS running in x86 not x64 (which UEFI doesn't support). So maybe now that the system is back to x64 the Windows installation will restore the UEFI back to its original state.
I have Secure Boot turned off. I have Legacy Boot turned on, but do not think that is needed.
This link gives me instructions to boot from CD but they seem not to make sense from No 2... [URL] .....
In that at 5-6-7 it seems to require me to select the CD then boot to Windows from HDD then restart and do the same again, but this time select CD again, or something??
I expected to set the device, then restart the computer and it would boot from the device, not restart Windows as described. I was able to boot from a WinPE 4b CD.
I then decided to try changing boot order in the UEFI BIOS. From then on the HP (F9) described menu showed 'Windows Boot Menu' only under UEFI Devices. I could only boot from CD after putting the order back to 'Windows Boot menu' at the top of the order list; after which, as long as the CD was in the drive the (F9) list showed the CD drive as selectable to boot from.
Windows 8. I am confused with the Legacy and the UEFI boot methods. The reason I am confused I think, is because I read to darn much on the Internet. One bit of confusion is with respect to changing from UEFI to Legacy. It would appear from some comments that if I do that, Windows 8 won't boot anymore. I would have to change back to UEFI for indows 8 to boot.
I also read that changing back to UEFI could be a major problem when trying to access the BIOS. No, I am confused. My ultimate goal is to set my laptop up to dual boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu. Like I have been doing for the last multiple years with XP and Windows 7.
Dell Inspiron 5721 Windows 8 Intel i7 @ 1.9 GHz BIOS Version - Dell Inc. A06 2/22/2013 SMBIOS - 2.7 BIOS Mode - UEFI Secure Boot State - On Memory - 8 GB[/QUOTE]
what settings are required in the UEFI Bios to run recovery USB/ disks or Linux live CDs. It all used to be so simple. The manufacturer seems unaware that it supplies UEFI systems - so I am working blind. Have tried boot CDs and USBs but all have booted straight into Windows to date. I don't wish to change settings I have no understanding of.
I have a Medion /Lenovo desktop with an AMI UEFI Bios (12 July 2012) and Aptio Setup.
The following seem relevant are supplied as enabled in "Bios":
Intel Rapid Startup Technology Quiet Boot Boot Select Mode [UEFI] UEFI Hard Disk BBS Priorities - Boot Option #1 - Windows Boot Manager Secure Boot - Secure Boot Mode [Standard]
What do these all mean and what effect do they have on how Windows 8 runs and how boot drives run?
My wife got a new Dell XPS laptop from her employer. A very impressive bit of kit with Windows 8, 64 bit, masses of RAM and many, many processor cores (dreadful touchpad though ). And 1TB HDD.
She asked me to set up it the same way as her existing Windows 7 laptop, so a fun few hours discovering how the charms bar works (before giving up on that and going for Start8) and installing various bits. I then decided to partition the huge drive so the OS and program files are on one partition which can be imaged and restored with Acronis as required while all the jpgs mp3s docxs etc remain safe on the second partition (every computer in out home is set up this way and I've found it to be the best method).
I shrank the partition as much as possible and ended up with 400 GB before immovable files put a stop to that - needlessly large I thought so I installed EASEUS partition manager which I have used with W7 without problem (can you see my obvious mistake yet?) and set it for a 200 GB partition, started it going and popped back five minutes later expecting to find everything as desired. Instead the laptop no longer believed it had a HDD. The current situation is that the machine is pretty much as wanted except the partition sizes aren't as required and no Acronis image has been made.
So, the questions this experience raises are:
1. Did the drive fail or did EASEUS break it? (If it was just waiting to fail my opinion is that it's good to find out so early on and not when it was full of data that hadn't been backed up).
2. Which partition managers are safe to use with the combination of Windows 8 and UEFI that Dell have produced? I'm somewhat nervous of just experimenting on this point.
3. Is Acronis safe to use with Windows 8 and UEFI.
