M6500 - Can't install (or repair) Windows 8 from USB

Hi all,

I have an M6500 that I absolutely love. I have two OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSDs in it. One in HDD1 and one in HDD2 positions. I have a 750GB WD Scorpio Black in the optical bay slot, using one of the eBay sourced adapters.

The problem is that I can't install Windows 8 from a USB key. I have the RTM ISO from TechNet, and I used the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (official one) to make a bootable key. When I insert the key into one of the USB 2 slots (definitely won't work in one of the USB 3 ports), I can boot to it just fine. However, Windows won't allow me to install on any partition, even with just one of those drives installed. I tried manually creating it in DiskPart after a Clean and no go. I get the error: "Error: "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one." I tried the info here.

After going back and forth on this several times, I hooked up a USB DVD drive and booted to it with the same ISO burned to DVD. Guess what. Works perfectly.

Later during the process, I needed to repair the boot loader so that my Windows 7 SSD showed up as a boot option. Turns out that repair options and other hard drive and partition related functions don't work when you boot to USB even to just use BootRec or BCDedit. They DO work booted to DVD.

Any idea why this may be and is there a fix? Windows 7 never had any problems.

I didn't try to load the Intel drivers for install but since I didn't have to for DVD boot, I'm not sure why I'd have to for USB boot.

BTW - Windows 8 is rather brilliant and runs beautifully on the M6500.

Any ideas would be great.

 

Is the M6500 UEFI capable? I know M6600 and M6700 are but I'm not sure about M6500.

Anyway, if you boot the Windows 8 install media via UEFI, it will only let you install on disks with a GPT partition table. If you boot it using the "legacy" BIOS method, it will only let you install on disks with a MBR partition table. The installer doesn't really explain this. I'm wondering if you ended up booting the USB stick via UEFI without realizing it (easy to do if you used the F12 boot menu), and because of that, it wouldn't let you install on your MBR-partitioned disks.

 

Hi,
You may try the below mentioned steps.
• Boot into BIOS (F2)
• Go into Advance Tab
• Under Miscellaneous devices you should see USB Debug
• Go ahead and set it to Enabled


• You may try to install the Windows using the USB.
• After the Win8 Upgrade go ahead and get into Bios and disable USB Debug to restore USB 3.0 functionality

I hope this helps. Please let us know in case you have any further questions.

Thanks and regards,
Swapnajan M C
#iworkfordell