Odd request - Installing Windows 10 to MBR not GPT?

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entropism

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So I got my wife an older Lenovo Thinkcentre m71e, with an i5-2400. Tossed in a new SSD to put the OS on, and a 3TB storage drive. Now that we have the specifics, here's the issue/request:

For some reason I can't actually shut down the computer. It shuts down as far as windows goes, but the power light, system and CPU heatsink fans stay active. To complete shutdown, I have to hold the power button for a few seconds, which actually shuts down the system.

I've been told that this is due to the latest Lenovo bios for the system. Not sure exactly why, but they're saying that windows MUST be installed on an MBR partitioned disk, or this issue occurs. Mine, of course, is GPT. How exactly can I ensure that a reformat and reinstallation of Windows gets the drive up and running in legacy/MBR format?

OR, if anyone is familiar with this system/board, how do I ensure this actually works as it's supposed to as a GPT formatted UEFI drive?

Thanks!
 
You could use a tool like Gparted (included with most any Linux LiveDistro) and remove all the partition data from the drive in one action (resetting it entirely to an msdos partition scheme aka MBR) and then reinstall Windows on it, but there could be an issue because of Windows 10 and its preference for GPT because of the size of the drive itself (3TB). If you were to partition it down in size it might help to some degrees but any drives larger than 2TB will cause the Windows install to attempt to do things using GPT for that reason (the sheer capacity of the drive).

Are you attempting to use the entire capacity of the drive as one single partition or is there any intention to split it, say making a smaller system partition (with the smaller 500MB one for the System Reserve tasks per the Windows installer) and then using the remainder as a bit storage partition. If that's the case you should attempt to set it up with just the system partition only (leaving the rest of the drive completely unallocated) and once Windows is up and functional (assuming it gets to that point) you can then use Disk Management to assign the rest of the available unallocated space as so desired.
 
Sorry, I should clarify. The 3TB is the storage drive. The OS is going on an SSD (256gb to be exact)
 
Not sure if this would make any difference but have you checked to see if Fast Startup is enabled and if so turn it off to see if it makes any difference?
 
You have two options really.
1 - Go into BIOS and see if there is a way to enable "legacy bios mode" or something similar which disables UEFI. Then reinstall Windows.
2 - When you hit the boot menu button to show you what devices to boot, the option prefixed with UEFI: will boot into that mode. So if you are installing off a USB you should see "UEFI: USB Storage Device" (or whatever it's called) and just "USB Storage Device". Choose the latter.

A third option that I can't say will work is that when you are at the screen to select the hard drive to install onto, press Shift+F10 to bring up cmd. Type in Diskpart Then type list disk and then type select disk # (that matches the SSD) then type convert mbr. Then close the window and try to install.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Not sure if this would make any difference but have you checked to see if Fast Startup is enabled and if so turn it off to see if it makes any difference?
Click to expand...

Was on, turned it off. Reinstalled, no go. I've reformatted and reinstalled Windows 10 times today. Not fun, by the way.


bigdogchris said:
You have two options really.
1 - Go into BIOS and see if there is a way to enable "legacy bios mode" or something similar which disables UEFI. Then reinstall Windows.
2 - When you hit the boot menu button to show you what devices to boot, the option prefixed with UEFI: will boot into that mode. So if you are installing off a USB you should see "UEFI: USB Storage Device" (or whatever it's called) and just "USB Storage Device". Choose the latter.

A third option that I can't say will work is that when you are at the screen to select the hard drive to install onto, press Shift+F10 to bring up cmd. Type in Diskpart Then type list disk and then type select disk # (that matches the SSD) then type convert mbr. Then close the window and try to install.
Click to expand...

The Bios is a desolate wasteland that brings back memories of Pentium 2 machines. It's so fucking barebones, it's ridiculous. No options of any sort to swap modes. Relevant pics are below:

https://imgur.com/a/IAlPw


Going to try the DiskPart idea tomorrow if my bright idea doesn't work. I was reading reviews of the wireless card I purchased, and it turns out it gives some PCs sleep/shutdown issues (sounds familiar...) but in most examples it's that the computer restarts instead of shuts down. The fix was to turn off an ERP or something option in the BIOS, but... My BIOS doesn't HAVE that option. Going to pull the card on a normal reinstall tomorrow, and see if that fixes shit. If it does, I'm driving up to Microcenter to return this card and get a new one.
 
Got bored tonight, pulled the wireless card and reinstalled. Same bullshit. At this point, I'm at a loss. Going to try diskpart to force it to an MBR format. What a pain in the damn ass.
 
Disconnect the storage drive completely, work only with the SSD in place and go from there and see what happens but don't try to work with the system having two physical drives installed and attached to the motherboard for the time being.

While Diskpart can do what you want done I personally would say use Gparted to do the removal of any and all partitions on that SSD - actually at this point I'd tell you to do a pure secure wipe on it, the Enhanced SATA Security wipe which takes several seconds and sends a pulse through every cell on the SSD so it's basically reset to factory condition - mind you this is NOT a typical secure wipe meaning writing zeros to all the sectors/cells, that's something entirely different.

If you can get access to a Parted Magic disc (note this is note Partition Magic, the old partitioning tool, something totally different) it has the necessary secure wipe tool to get that Enhanced SATA Security wipe and again it's not a zero-wipe, it works entirely differently and only for SSDs that can be pulse-wiped in a few seconds. Gparted doesn't offer that tool for that purpose, for the record, and the only place that I've found it myself is the Parted Magic distribution - I do that kind of wipe on my one SSD twice a year to keep it "fresh" for the most part (I reduce what I have stored on it by copying relevant data to other locations, then image it at the smallest point, do the proper secure wipe, then restore the image and keep going).
 
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Tib, I always have the storage drive disconnected until after first boot/shutdown. Learned that a looooooong time ago. ;)

So the system has changed, for the worse this time. So now, the system won't even boot to an UEFI device, I have to either interupt the normal boot and choose "boot to Legacy SSD", or boot through the CD drive (which has Windows 10 it in), and when it says "hit any key to boot to CD blah blah" just not touch it and let it boot to the SSD. Of course, shutdown issues are still there as well.

I pulled the network card. No change. Whatever.

I booted to the Win10 CD, went into DiskPart, and wrote:

DiskPart
List Disk
Select Disk 0
Clean
Convert MBR
Exit

Then went on installing windows to the freshly formatted drive. When it booted... GPT. What. The. Absolute. Fuck?

Please tell me I'm a moron and I'm doing something wrong, because I've been working on computers WAY too long to be stumped with something like THIS bullshit.
 
The disc or USB drive have to be booted through legacy BIOS no matter what for you to properly install it for MBR. Switching the SSD to MBR won't make any difference as you found it. It's the booting of the setup disc/drive that matters the mos at this stage.

One way to force MBR is to make a flash drive through Rufus & use NTFS or ExFAT instead of FAT32. UEFI can ONLY boot from FAT32, which is why all OS installations utilize a FAT32 partition to boot from.
 
Good to know. I bought a 32gb USB stick to try this out, so let's see what I can do. When I plug it into RUFUS, do I use the Win10 CD iso? Or the "Download and install to a USB drive" option in the WIn10 media downloader?
 
Either one results in basically the same thing: the Windows 10 Media Tool downloads a digitally encrypted file (the ESD), decrypts it, then creates an ISO file which can then be saved for future use or the contents of the ISO it just created will be transferred to either a USB stick or burned to optical media. So if you already have a Windows 10 ISO handy there's no real point to downloading it all over again and wasting a few gigs of bandwidth, it's up to you.

UEFI tools go on a FAT32 partition as noted but that partition is not the boot partition even on a UEFI system, it's just a placeholder to store the necessary information and files to get the system up and running as UEFI.

Not sure why you're having so many issues, but I'll once again strongly recommend using Gparted to remove all the partition data from that SSD, period. I gave up totally trusting Windows-based partitioning tools some time ago, especially once EFI/UEFI systems started gaining in widespread use numbers. I know how to use Diskpart very well, inside and out, and even in spite of that I simply will not use it to set up an SSD or hard drive for use, I use Gparted to get rid of everything and leave the drive with basically no partition at all on it but identified as an MBR. Open Gparted (with the SSD attached, of course), verify you've selected the SSD so you don't wipe something you'll regret, unmount any partitions if they get mounted automagically, then select Device on the menu and then Create Partition Table - the default will be an msdos partition scheme and that's what you'd want.

After that you're done with Gparted and when you run the Windows installer again it should show the SSD as completely unallocated space.

You'll figure something out at some point. :)
 
Tib, that's my next step if DiskPart with the USB stick doesn't work. I'm livid right now, been doing this for pretty much ALL day. About time to break out a nice bourbon.

Oh, and as far as GParted goes, I have a Linux Mint liveCD ready to go.
 
Tiberian said:
UEFI tools go on a FAT32 partition as noted but that partition is not the boot partition even on a UEFI system, it's just a placeholder to store the necessary information and files to get the system up and running as UEFI.
Click to expand...

UEFI tools? I'm talking about the efi files that UEFI uses to boot into whatever OS is installed (ex: bootx64.efi). I never specified that it is the boot partition.
 
Welp... Installing from an NTFS formatted USB stick (via RUFUS) worked. Installed as MBR, drive boots up fine now. What a pain in the ass.

Thanks everyone!
 
Nice. I love Rufus, great program. I used it to make a UEFI:NTFS bootable Server 2012R2 thumbdrive that worked great. It's experimental in Rufus but worked .
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
The disc or USB drive have to be booted through legacy BIOS no matter what for you to properly install it for MBR. Switching the SSD to MBR won't make any difference as you found it. It's the booting of the setup disc/drive that matters the mos at this stage.

One way to force MBR is to make a flash drive through Rufus & use NTFS or ExFAT instead of FAT32. UEFI can ONLY boot from FAT32, which is why all OS installations utilize a FAT32 partition to boot from.
Click to expand...
So this device must auto select based on the medium capability then if there is no way to distinguish UEFI or non-UEFI mode in bios.
 
bigdogchris said:
So this device must auto select based on the medium capability then if there is no way to distinguish UEFI or non-UEFI mode in bios.
Click to expand...

Seems like how a lot of the OEM systems are forced to do what is required.
 
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