Fear Files - Formatting Windows 7 64bit

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insider
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Fear Files - Formatting Windows 7 64bit

Post by insider »

Well I have a licensed copy of Windows 7 Professional 64bit and last year I was making a final upgrade from Windows Vista 32 bit to Windows 7 64bit (My Desktop doesn't have a DVD Writer, I have an external ASUS DVD Writer).
After clicking on format in the Windows setup, it insisted that the partition should be a GPT instead of a MBR, well it was a 1TB Harddrive I was installing it onto, why it wanted GPT I have no idea, and since it had no data on it, I deleted the partition and it converted the drive to GPT and started installing Windows 7 64bit.

All was fine until May last year when I decided to format again, well it reached the Format page and after clicking on format it said it can't install on a GPT partition and needs to convert to MBR :evil: , this made no absolute sense to me it's the same 1TB drive, same copy of Windows 7 64bit and the same external DVD Writer, but this time I had files in my other partition, not too important as I had made a backup and I had to delete the partition and it happily converted it back to MBR and started the installation.

Last week I installed Windows 7 64bit on my backup PC and it went smooth and had no issues, the drive had an MBR and only thing different was it had an internal DVD Writer, whereas I need to use an external one.

So what option did I accidentally choose on my PC in the boot order that made it ask me to convert to GPT and next time to MBR, right now my primary drive has an MBR and I can't afford to lose data if it want's me to delete the partition to convert it back to GPT, there must be something relative to external DVD writers as internal ones have no problems.

Can anyone shine some light as to what option causes it to ask GPT or MBR on a 1TB drive where neither matters.
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Re: Fear Files - Formatting Windows 7 64bit

Post by Zonder »

GPT is for UEFI. Have you altered settings in the bios?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/lib ... 36946.aspx
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insider
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Re: Fear Files - Formatting Windows 7 64bit

Post by insider »

Zonder wrote:GPT is for UEFI. Have you altered settings in the bios?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/lib ... 36946.aspx
Yes Zonder is does seem to look like it, would an external DVD Writer give two boot options a UEFI and a non UEFI one ? , I think mine probably does :o
I think I used the UEFI one when it asked for GPT and the non- UEFI one when it wanted MBR, Argh :D
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