Windows – No discs found when trying to install Windows 8 with UEFI

biosssduefiwindows 8windows-installation

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.

Best Answer

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.

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