No discs found when trying to install Windows 8 with UEFI

Question

I have a Vizio Notebook (CN15-A5). It came pre-installed with Windows 8 x64 and is taking advantage of UEFI out of the box. The BIOS (APTOS AMI) is in Secure Boot mode with the OS selected as "Windows 8".

I removed the stock HDD that came with the machine and put my own SSD into it. I created a Windows 8 Pro x64 installation disc on a 4GB USB flash drive formated as FAT32 since its apparently required for UEFI.

When I boot from the USB Win8 installation disc, I get suck when I reach the "Custom: Install Windows only" section. Normally you would see a list of available discs and their partitions, however my entire list is blank.

If I head back to the BIOS and disable Secure Boot and set the OS to "Other OS" and attempt again, I am able to see the list of available discs in the system and can install a copy of Windows 8. Unfortunately, doing it in this method results in an installation with a traditional 350 MB partition + OS partition instead of 4 partitions which is normal for a UEFI setup.

Has anyone run into this problem? I've tried loading defaults in the BIOS and attempting to install via every combination with no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

After several hours of trying to solve this, I finally found a solution:

In Windows 8 launch an Admin Command Prompt:

diskpart.exe
list disk
select disk # (change # to value of your USB drive)
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format quick fs=fat32
assign
exit

In Windows 8, I mounted the x64 ISO as a drive (a built in feature, just right-click). I opened the drive and copied the entire contents to the freshly formatted flash drive through the regular File Explorer.

I grabbed a 2nd flash drive and formatted it FAT32 as well. I downloaded the x64 .zip file containing Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) drivers from Intel Download Center. I extracted the contents of the .zip file to the second empty flash drive.

First I set the BIOS to "Windows 8" as the OS and enabled Secure Boot mode. I plugged in only the flash drive containing Windows 8. (Don't plug the 2nd flash drive containing the RST drivers just yet.)

When booting I hit F7 to launch the one-time boot menu and selected the my flash drive which should have a "UEFI" prefix before the name. After getting to the Windows 8 custom installation section and seeing no available hard drives, plugin the 2nd flash drive into another USB port and select "Load Drivers." Browse to the folder containing the RST drivers to proceed.

The Windows 8 installer will take a minute to load the RST drivers and you'll immediately see your internal drives afterwards. Delete every partition on the target drive if you intend to do a full clean install and hit next on the drive which will likely say "unallocated space." The Windows 8 installer will create all the necessary partitions for a proper UEFI configuration for you and complete the setup.

Answer 2

I had this exact problem.

Eventually I discovered that it had to do with the format of the source disk. The install disk is probably NTFS.

I had to format my source disk (I was using a 4GB USB drive) to FAT32, set is as an active then xcopy the contents of the disk over to it. Then I was able to boot and install on a UEFI computer.

at an Admin command prompt:

diskpart
list disks
select disk X (where x is the number of the target USB drive)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format quick fs=fat32
assign
exit

xcopy d:\* e:\ /s /e

(where d: is the DVD or mounted ISO that has the original Windows installation files, and e: is the newly formatted USB drive)

This worked for me.