In this thread I was getting advice on what to use in a new system.  I got all the parts in, and spent the weekend putting it all together, but when I fired it up to install Windows 8.1, I got to the point that I was telling it what drive to install to and started getting errors.

The system is at home, and I won't be able to start messing with it for a couple hours still, but I was hoping someone may know what's happening here and give me a heads up for what to start working on. Most of what I type here is from memory.

The MB is a Gigabyte X99-UD4
Main drive is a 512GB SSD (mfg by Crucial?)
storage drive is WD Black HDD 1TB

When I plugged everything into the MB, I was pretty confused as to what SATA cable went to which plug on the MB.  If I am correct, it doesn't matter.  The MB has sSATA, eSATA, and some other SATA (need to look that up,) I saw that everything hooked up was appearing in the BIOS, that's why I figured it didn't matter where I plugged things in. (I'm not setting up a RAID.)

I have the SATA set for IDE in the BIOS (if that matters?)

I fired up the Win8.1 64-bit install disk, and when I got to the point of telling it what drive to install on, I could see both drives listed with Unallocated space.  If I told Windows to install to the SSD, it would try to create a partition, but told me it couldn't install, and kicked me out of install.

I tried MANY times to install, all ending up in about the same place.  Occasionally I could get a message that windows could not install unless NTFS was how the drive was formatted (NTFS?  The file system.)  I could NOT get windows to properly partition OR format the drive. I would try deleting the partition created on the last attempt, restarting and creating new partitions, creating partitions on my own and also trying to install on unpartitioned space to let windows create it's own partition.  I tried unplugging everything and moving SATA ports around to see if that was the issue, but nothing helped.  Since I was still able to see all the SATA devices after playing musical connections, I came to the conclusion that cable location wasn't the issue.

Giving up on installing to the SSD, I tried installing to the HDD.  Same bullshit.

I was just going to say "Fuck it" and take it to a cpu shop near me and get them to figure it out.  I was quoted a price of $199
I was told that is because they use their copy on Win8.1, didn't matter that I had my own copy.  Needless to say, I didn't go there.

BestBuy quoted me $130 for an OS install.

I can't find the phone number of the guy that always used to do the cpu shit I couldn't figure out.  

I figure I'll give it another shot tonight before I give up and take this to BB.

Any advice on what I should try to do?

Try installing with only the SSD plugged in and not the other drive

       Look up "your SSD drive drivers install windows 8" on the internet.
















 

Here's what I've tried:

Got home and disconnected the HDD, no good.

The error that came up was:


I then tried disconnecting EVERY SATA cable and starting over.  The manual for the MB has 3 sections on SATA:

Link to motherboard manual

Page 23 shows the layout.  The SATA connectors are at 9, 10 & 11

There are 4 "banks" of connectors.  The top one is screened on the MB as SATA3.  The one just below that is marked "SATA EXPRESS"  and the two below that are sSATA

When I was first doing this, I had the SSD plugged into the lower slot of the first "bank," after reading Broccoli's post, I looked at the manual page 28 and noticed that those particular connectors are NOT listed in the array. I misread the picture, it seems I did have it in slot 0 in the beginning.

Since everything is disconnected, I'll start over.

I plugged the SSD into the sSATA slot 0 and the DVD into slot 2 (also in the sSATA "bank")

I deleted the old partition that the previous install tried to create so I could get back to "Unallocated space"

I got the same error as before.

No matter where I plug in the DVD, it works, that doesn't seem to be the issue.  Also, I made sure to use a cable marked "SATA3" if that makes a difference.

I'm going to try to use the eSATA connection next, but I'm not all that hopeful. I'll try the HDD alone after that.  This better not be a bad drive issue.   I'd rather not give Best Buy any of my money, but I might have to.

I would try plugging the SSD into SATA3 0 and the DVD in SATA3 1. It looks like the M.2, eSATA, and some of the SATA3 (4 and 5) ports are shared and only one can be used at a time.  The first 3 ports in SATA3 should all work no matter what.  It's been a long time since I've built up a computer and back then there was SATA and IDE and not 10 different kinds of each

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2131209/windows-solving-selected-disk-gpt-partition-style.html

is this the same issue?

Just tried that one. -replied to cast - off to read the post-


I did get a new error when I tried creating my own partition though, seems like it may be a driver issue.  Crucial MX-100 512GB SSD

I'll see what I can find, my initial search yielded only people that had win installed already, I just need to look harder.  No matter, all of my flash drives are at the office.

I knew I should have grabbed one on my way out.

edit - Diskpart didn't help, it seems I can't select a disk that is unallocated space?

did you try changing in bios. I know you cannot use sata, but ide seems to be wrong too. There was another choice as I recall. perhaps try that instead.

The IDE did seem to be an issue.

I have the SSD in SATA3 0  The DVD is on sSATA3 2 (I haven't moved it)
I changed the BIOS to run AHCI instead of IDE

This time when I tried install, I was able to create a new partition from the allocated space.  This was new!  But, I got an error on installing.  Since I was able to create a partition witout error, I loaded Diskpart, select disk 0, but when I typed "clean" the error was 'The media is write protected'

A new clue....

Go back into diskpart and try "attributes disk clear readonly", then try again.  Not sure why it would be set from the start though

https://pario.no/2011/05/23/clear-read-only-flag-on-disk-in-windows-7-using-diskpart/

It seems like I keep chasing my tail on these errors.  They are not the issue.

Crucial says there are no updates for the firmware, and I can't find any kind of drivers.  I'll search again tomorrow, also for anything for my MB.  But tomorrow, I'll try calling Crucial support and trying my luck.

I decided to do a quick search for my MB, and I found this page:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5123#dl
link is fubar - selected driver and 8.1 64 bit for the OS

Under the SATA RAID/AHCI header is

Intel SATA Preinstall driver
(For AHCI/RAID Mode)
Note: Windows setup to read from USB thumb drive.

That sounds like what I'm looking for, correct?  Again... damn flash drive is at the office.

SO ANNOYING!

Well, THAT problem was fixed.  It was the MB drivers that I needed to load before partitioning/formatting the drive.  I was pretty confident that that was the issue, so I hooked everything back up, flashed the BIOS with all the latest, and the SATA driver load during install.  I did that, and windows installed fine. Once windows loaded, I installed the MB drivers (audio, LAN etc...) When I restarted, Windows would not load and I got:

disk read error
press ctrl-alt-del to restart.

restart - same message.

Disconnected EVERYTHING, again...  Just a SSD and DVD.

Install ok, this time restart froze on win load. So I started moving SATA connections around and messing with BIOS boot orders.  Shotgunning the whole install.  Sometimes, windows would freeze on opening, never moving past a frozen windows loading screen, sometimes the disk read error.  At one point, windows would load through the "login" page (no password, one user, so it would show the user login page, cycle past to desktop,) as soon as it got to the desktop, the screen went black.  Not blank, black.  Nothing would clear it.  Like it was starting a screensaver, but never started.  Every restart did the same thing.  No matter, reinstall.

I probably installed windows fully 4-5 times last night.  Every time I went to reinstall windows, I would delete the partition that was there to get to an unallocated space and install from there.  I also would reset the BIOS via the CMOS jumper on the MB (shorting it out.)

Last night, I had two clean boots of windows (from windows, shut down, power on, get to desktop, shutdown, repeat,) when I finally went to bed.  This morning, "disk read error" three times in a row.  I have not installed any drivers on subsequent windows installs, all of this is with just a windows install only.  The MB drivers were tried on the first time only.

Tonight, I'll try dumping the SSD and installing on the HDD, but I'm thinking this might be an issue with the MB.  I've been through these type of issues in the past where each manufacturer will try to toss this to the other.  Gigabyte will say it's a Crucial issue, Crucial will claim I need to call Gigabyte.  I need as much ammo as possible here before I call tech.

Any ideas?

Did you check for a firmware update for the SSD?

Nevermind I missed that post.  It defintely sounds like a hardware issue

Regarding the AHCI driver issues, that used to be a problem when SATA was first introduced in the WinXP days.  I would've assumed that wouldn't be an issue any more.

Regarding Win8 acting weird or going to a blank screen, I had some problems like that when I build up my last system a year and a half ago.  IIRC I let it sit for awhile, blank like that at boot up then it miraculously cleared up afterwards.  My guess is it had some internal tweaking to do.

20 minutes to walk the dog and it was still a black screen.  Escape, right-click, KB start button, nothing cleared it or caused the cpu to "do something."  I just mashed the power button to shut down.  The fact that I had to load the drivers is what is leaning me towards the MB being the issue.  I bought that through Amazon, not OEM (came in a retail box.)  The SSD came from either NCIX or OutletPC (I'll have to look.)

At this point I would be putting in my UBCD and running a hard drive test along with a memory test.  

Having to install AHCI drivers in order to install the OS isn't anything out of the ordinary.  All depends on the MB and chipset used.  Be glad you can do it with a USB stick and not a floppy disk like the old days.  I can't say I have ever needed a driver or firmware update for a hard drive itself in order to install windows.  Only motherboard drive controller drivers.

Well.... It's in.

tl;dr version - it was either a bad dvd drive or bad sata cable.

I first tried to install to the HDD.  Same procedure (loaded drivers from flash, delete partitions, etc...)  I instantly got a disk read error on restart, so I figured "must be the MB!"  Call to GigabyteUSA.  The number I dialed was a 626 area code, but I think I got dumped straight to China.  The girl that got on had a cute sounding voice, and although she had a THICK Chinese accent, her English was excellent, but INSANELY fast!  Fortunately, I'm pretty fast myself, so I was able to keep up.  She was shocked to learn I was loading the SATA drivers from flash.  Said that shouldn't be happening with Win 8.1.  Blame fell on "You have a bad copy of windows."  She made a convincing argument, and after 15 minutes on the phone, my brain was filling up too fast with her doing that cackle thing.  I think the women call it "talking."  So, I had a plan, and got off the phone.

No worries, I brought my copy of Win7 home from work, and I was sure to shut down my work computer.  I'll install this one, then upgrade to 8.1.  Good plan, right?

I put in the W7 disk, go to install, and get the same error about can't format/no partition/some MS bullshit. GAAAA  Wait, I didn't clean the disk first.  Clean, reload, start installing.....  I got about 1/3 of the way into the install when it locks up and tells me that windows can't write to the drive... blah blah bullshit.

Now what are the odds that I bought a bad copy of windows (retail packaging, not an iso or oem faildisk.) and ALSO just happened to have a bad copy of win7 sitting on my desk at work.

That's when it hit me that the DVD must be the issue.  HAS to be the issue.  If it wasn't the issue I was going to throw $2000 and a nice paint job right out the second floor window.  This was bringing me to a breaking point.

I drove down to Best Buy and bought a brandy new DVD.  This one doesn't have BlueRay.  Oh-the-noes!  I just don't give a flying fuck any more.

New drive installed, fire up w8.1, go to install.........  NOPE!  Same error!

GAAAAAA

OK, hold on a second, I thought, maybe the cable?  While I was changing the cable I convinced myself that the real issue was that I didn't load the SATA drivers.  I just don't care what she said about not needing them.  It's right bloody there in the rooty-tootin manual!

Fired everything up, this time I loaded the SATA drivers, then installed.

I have now installed all the drivers and hardware-associated programs.  side note - fuck this fucking app shit.  It's a god damn fucking program!  I'll even call it an application if you jolly well fucking want, but FUCK APPS! - but I digress...

Everything is hooked back up.  I even put in the "bad" dvd drive.  If I ever pick up a BlueRay disk, I'll test it out.  I've restarted at least 6-7 times, and let it rest about 30 min while off.  I cross my fingers every time I power it up, and it's going to be a while before I trust it, but it seems to be working well.  I need to figure out the tweaking.  I don't think I need a full taskbar on each monitor, find a good wallpaper, etc...

One odd thing, when I go to shut down, it won't shut down, it just logs me out.  Since I'm on my MS account, it can't get past the password, but before I logged in, it would just log me out, then right back in and to the desktop.  Must be a setting somewhere.

Downloading Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4 right now.

Glad you got it working. You guys and your letting it rest stuff crack me up.