Windows 8.1 installation failure

windowswindows 8.1windows-installation

I have an issue with installing Windows 8.1 on my laptop.

The files for windows are on a bootable usb stick and when I try to install Windows from there, it seems to work fine at first in that I can put in my product key and then I am prompted to select a drive.

Now, when I've selected a drive to install Windows on, the setup goes to the installation screen, but then I get an error that I do not understand.

The error I get is saying that the .efi files are formatted as NTFS and that I need to convert them to Fat32. How can I accomplish this?

Edit

To explain a little better:

  • The harddrive is completly empty.

  • The error message is in dutch and this is how i think its correctly translated:

    The EFI files are formatted in NTFS, Format them as FAT32 and try the installation again.

The error could not be excecly correct because my english is not really good to translate that sentence.

I hope you can point me to the right direction to solve my problem.

Thanks in advance

Best Answer

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool will not create an UEFI-bootable thumb drive. This is because the stick is formatted with NTFS, whereas UEFI requires FAT32. This probably what the message is referring to, also it’s not exactly clear why it would refuse to install in BIOS mode.

To create an UEFI-bootable Windows Setup drive, simply format it with FAT32 and copy the entire DVD contents over. And that is all.

For good measure, you could also clear the disk (again). Simply press ShiftF10 after selecting your regional settings, but before starting Setup. From the command prompt, execute the following commands:

diskpart
list disk
select disk X
clean
exit
exit

...where X is the correct disk as listed by the previous command.

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