Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

what is an EFI system/ a GPT disk?

Aug 12, 2014 11:45AM PDT

i am trying to install windows 7 onto my custom PC build and it is not working. details: i put in the windows disk and booted from it, i selected my language and chose the custom/advanced option for the install because it was a brand new custom built PC with no existing OS. Then i selected my hard drive everything was fine it said it would reboot several times and did its thing, it restarted i did everything again and it restarted again but this time when i got to the hard drive selection page it said windows cannot be installed to this disk. and when i clicked on show details this error message popped up. Windows cannot be installed to this disk. the selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems windows can only be installed to GPT disks. Any ideas on how to fix?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Sure
Aug 12, 2014 11:47AM PDT

Sure, just repartition the drive using a GPT partition type. You can google things like UEFI and GPT to get all the background info you need and a whole lot more.

- Collapse -
Answer
download software from drive manufacturer
Aug 13, 2014 10:40AM PDT

to set up the disc. Or if you have 4 GB or less of RAM, just install the 32 bit version instead.