SOLVED MBR Partition Table

[Dan99]

I could not load a disk with OS software and received this error message. "Disk has MBR Partition Table. On EFI Systems, Windows Can Only Be Installed On GPT Disks".

How do I convert the "Partition Table" to GPT?

 

[Trouble]

a disk with OS software

Do you mean a hard drive with an Operating System on it, or....
Do you mean a bootable DVD or USB ThumbDrive with installation media on it?

If the former you would need to switch your BIOS to support / enable legacy boot and turn off secure boot if that is an option on your machine.

It is easy enough to covert but the contents of the disk will be lost as you're changing the very nature of the File Allocation Table by switching from one to the other.

DISKPART which is native to Windows will allow you to do this by simply issuing the "convert" command on the appropriate disk / volume.

 

[Gideon]

http://www.partitionwizard.com

The above MiniTool may help?

 

[Dan99]

Trouble, yes it is a hard drive which I am trying to install Windows on using a media disk. Can I restore with my Acronis backup media disk after the conversion should I choose?

Gideon, thanks.

 

[Trouble]

Can I restore with my Acronis backup media disk after the conversion should I choose?

Assuming you have been able to mount the .tib file (acronis disk image) and examined its' contents and confirmed that it contains everything that you would expect to be there then ......
Yes, you should be able to boot from the Acronis Rescue Media CD that you created and perform a recovery by browsing to the location of your .tib file that contains the disk image you wish to recover.

As an aside....
When I create a new full disk image of my hard drives (which I do weekly), I maintain a text file on each drive which I update with today's date prior to performing the disk image..
That is one of the first things I check. I mount the .tib file, and I browse the contents checking and confirming that the text file contains the current date is expect to find and then I'll usually open a .doc, a .jpg, as well as play a song from my music directory, all from the mounted image, just to confirm that it is a strong and viable source from which to recover.

Now back to your initial problem with the hard disk being mbr instead of gpt.
When you boot from the installation media, at the choose a language and keyboard layout screen, hold the shift key and strike F10
That will produce a command prompt. In the command prompt window type diskpart
hit enter
The following commands will clean the disk and remove all formatting and contents so it is absolutely critical that you are sure you are performing the commands on the correct disk ID

list disk
hit enter
select disk 0 (where disk 0 is positively the disk you want to install on and contains no critical data on it or any partitions on it)
hit enter
clean (that will wipe it so be absolutely sure)
hit enter
exit
hit enter
exit
hit enter
install your Operating System

 

[Dan99]

First, I do not see the .tib file or rather I do not see a file with that suffix.

Second. Are you saying I do not have to convert the partition to GPT as the clean install takes care of that?

 

[Trouble]

First, I do not see the .tib file or rather I do not see a file with that suffix.

IF you are hiding file extensions then you may not see the .tib extension you can change that in folder options in the view menu.
Where did you send your disk image. Presumably there will be a file there with a name that you gave it or that was auto generated if you did not of a reasonably large size approximately half the size of the used space on the disk that you imaged.
AND
Yes
If you clean the drive using DiskPart and you have your BIOS Configured for UEFI only and your source media is configured to install to UEFI / GPT, then it will automatically configure it as such.

 

[chrunos]

The agreement between the firmware and the hard disk partition scheme is essential for locating the boot loader for the Operating System and hence, is the first step in the installation process of windows on a computer system. By default, recent hardware boot using UEFI mode. Thus, when one tries to use an old hard disk with an updated UEFI-based system, the message “Windows Cannot be Installed On this device” pops up. This is because old hard drives maintain partitions using MBR scheme which is not supported in UEFI-based systems. Therefore, for windows installation it is important to convert either MBR partition scheme to GPT partition scheme or configure the system to boot with the legacy BIOS-compatibility mode.

To solve this problem, you need to convert MBR to GPT disk or enable Legacy boot mode in BIOS. By the way, you can use a freeware AOMEI Partition Assistant to convert disk between MBR and GPT without data loss.

 

[Dan99]

This is an old thread but I have just ran into the same problem again. I was installing a Windows 7 OS (same hard drive) and received the message regarding the MBR partition table once again. However, it turns out to be a bogus message. I persisted and attempted to load it again (three times) and suddenly all is good. It loaded normally.

This is not the first time I have received messages indicating that I could not load for one reason or another and then to have it load normally. Persistence can result in an apparently failed system responding again.

The partition problem in the original post was also resolved in the same way. No partition changes were required. There was no problem.

 

[Trouble]

Thanks for the follow-up.
Glad to hear that you managed to resolve your problem.
Much appreciated.