Dual boot Windows 8 and Windows 7, why can't Windows 8 installation see the drives?

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I am trying to install a dual boot Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 8 Pro on an XPS 8500 special edition. I created a new primary partition from my C drive, inserted the Windows 8 install disk, and rebooted my computer from the DVD.

I select custom install and the dialog box saying "Where do you want to install windows at?" pops up but none of my drives are listed. I don't understand why none of my drives are showing up on this menu. Not even the original drive. When I select to load a driver and click on the partition I created it tells me "No signed device drivers were found. Make sure the installation media contains the correct drivers, and then click OK."

Running the setup program from within the installed Windows instead of booting from DVD was able to locate my new partition and start install. It completes the first step of "Copying windows files" just fine but then on the next step "Getting files ready for installation" my computer restarts and attempts to load Windows 8 but keeps telling me my PC needs to restart. This keeps going on in an infinite boot loop. Please help, this has been a nightmare!

Jesse

Posted 2012-10-27T22:37:05.503

Reputation: 9

I was not aware you could create a new partition while you were already booted up. What tool did you use for this? – Caleb Jares – 2012-10-28T01:43:48.643

@cable729: There are any number of 3rd party utils, and of course there's the inbuilt diskmgmt.msc as well. Jesse: Does your hard disk require special drivers? Have you ever reinstalled Windows on your machine? – Karan – 2012-10-28T02:33:41.510

Yes I tried using both disk management and easeus partitioner. No luck. I resolved this issue by running the setup from the source folder on the install disk instead of booting from DVD and I was able to start the install on the correct partition but my computer is getting hung up and keeps restarting while install. It is getting stuck in an infinite boot loop. Any suggestions? – Jesse – 2012-10-28T04:15:45.570

How can I find out if I need special drivers? I may because I also have a 32GB ssd cache – Jesse – 2012-10-28T04:24:02.787

If you're installing a second OS to your 32GB ssd, you need to make sure you have 20GB available. I believe that is the amount required for Windows 8 – Caleb Jares – 2012-10-28T05:17:56.990

I am not trying to install to the 32GB ssd it is only a cache used for better performance. I am trying to install the operating system on the newly created partition. – Jesse – 2012-10-28T05:26:59.037

Hello Jesse, how is the system right now? I mean, are you able to boot into Windows 7? – Xandy – 2012-10-28T20:15:44.143

It was stuck in an infinite boot loop. But I got out of it by repeatedly tapping F8 after the "press any key to boot from DVD prompt" and it brought me to the windows option screen, I pressed ESC to get back to the option to select windows set up or windows 7. I selected windows 7 and am able to boot back into windows 7 and it notifies me the installation failed. It was still trying to boot windows 8 resulting in an infinite boot loop so I booted back to windows 7 and deleted the win 8 operating system and removed the partition. – Jesse – 2012-10-28T20:23:43.170

These steps got my computer back to normal but I still have not successfully installed windows 8 as a dual boot – Jesse – 2012-10-28T20:24:36.100

OK, I think I have a VM of Windows 7 somewhere, so I'll setup a dual boot there and come back with a way to do it. In the mean time, try to see which one is the SATA controller you have. In Windows 7 go to the device manager, under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" look for SATA AHCI; because the driver to access the drives during setup depends on that. – Xandy – 2012-10-28T21:08:49.257

I do not have the heading "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" in device manager. I only have a storage controller tab which shows Intel(R) Desktop/Workstation/server Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller – Jesse – 2012-10-28T21:34:31.750

Thanks for taking the time to help me. I figured the issue may be due to the SSD cache since I was able to install on my other computer just fine, but I have no idea how to correct the issue. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. – Jesse – 2012-10-28T21:46:06.920

Ah, I'm still using old tech haha; but yes, that's the important thing. You may try downloading the file f6flpy-x64.zip from http://goo.gl/p3Ahn I think those are the drivers for that controller. Inside that zip you'll find a folder, extract it to a USB stick and load from there the drivers at the partition selection stage of Windows 8 installation booting from the DVD to start the installation. After that you should be able to see the partitions of your disk.

– Xandy – 2012-10-28T22:23:24.197

I'm now installing Windows 8 in the VM I had with Windows 7. First I shrinked the partition Windows 7 was in and created there a new primary partition, then rebooted and booted from Win8 DVD, selected custom (not upgrade) and the partition I created before. Now it's installing, we'll see how it ends up.

Anyway, I recommend using http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ (free for personal usage) to edit the boot manager entries, because you may wish to delete the previous one from the other installation if it is there, or change the default one, etc.

– Xandy – 2012-10-28T22:25:32.897

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Finally SUCCESS. You are the man Andy. I have been at this since FRI morning trying to determine what needs to be done to load these drivers. I really appreciate it man, thanks. – Jesse – 2012-10-28T22:44:16.463

Good to know ;), I'll write a formal answer around this in case other people stumble upon this question. – Xandy – 2012-10-28T22:51:14.690

Answers

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The solution to this problem was tracked through comments to the question itself but in case somebody stumbles upon something similar this would be the way of fixing it.

The problem with the setup program not being able to see drives or partitions may be related to it not having access to a suitable AHCI or RAID driver. Windows 8 supports some configurations but some others require a driver.

  1. Access a Windows 7 (or Vista, or XP) system running in the machine you wish to install, through the device manager find the SATA controler (AHCI or RAID may be in its name too). For example in this particular case it was "Intel(R) Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller".

  2. Download the drivers for your SATA or RAID controller, there'll need to be an INF file and some catalog and system files along. Copy them to a USB stick and reboot the computer booting into Windows 8 installation.

  3. When you reach the stage where you have to select where you'd like to install it plug in the USB stick (preferably in a USB 2.0 port, but I believe Windows 8 has native support for USB 3.0 too) and load the driver from the folder containing it.

  4. After that Windows should be able to access the drives and partitions and the installation should proceed as usual.

When the driver to access the storage system is not present by default in the installation DVD, installing from the Windows already running in the system is not recommended and may fail. The reason is that while that windows does have access to the drive, the new one wont and after rebooting it may lead to infinite reboot cycles.

Xandy

Posted 2012-10-27T22:37:05.503

Reputation: 3 442

The comments about needing to load the AHCI or RAID drivers can also apply pretty mucht to any version of Windows. – Ramhound – 2013-02-07T15:09:59.450

Asked: 2012-10-27T22:37:05.503

Viewed: 2 813 times

Active: 2013-02-07T13:49:17.960