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I've got a raw, blank GPT disk for use in a UEFI system. I need to create the partitions on it using diskpart. The only tutorial I've found so far is for diskpart.efi, which I believe is slightly different from the command-line diskpart. MS guide to GPT partitions with diskpart.efi Also the guide says to create a MSR of 32MB, but for a disk>= 16GB I know it needs to be 128MB.

I'm happy doing it with diskpart, just want to be sure I understand the fundamentals. I'm planning on installing, in this order:

  1. ESP partition, size 102 MB (create partition esp size=102)
  2. MSR partition, size 128 MB (create partition msr size=128)
  3. data partition, the remaining space (approx 460GB)

Is this the correct thing to do, or is there anything I'm missing?

1 Answer 1

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I got around this, but strictly speaking haven't solved it. When I start up, in BIOS I can choose either 'legacy boot' or 'UEFI boot'. If I choose 'legacy boot' and install Windows on the blank disk it works fine. So for some reason when I was choosing 'UEFI boot' and setting it up this way, although Windows seemed to work OK, further down the line, after installing drivers etc, it would blue screen on restart.

In summary I've learned to simply: format the disk; delete all the partitions; choose 'legacy boot' at startup; allow Windows to create the partitions it requires on the disk. Basically I'm avoiding the UEFI side of things.

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  • Why do you need to create the partitions manually? If you're just trying to install Windows, when you boot in UEFI mode the install DVD's partitioning step will create the necessary GPT partitions. When you get to that step in the installer, just delete the existing MBR partitions, then select the "unpartitioned space" and click Next.
    – Wyzard
    Mar 28, 2012 at 12:12
  • This is what I attempted when I realised that Windows would do it for me, instead of attempting it manually. Although this seemed to work, further down the line, when installing drivers, I kept getting a blue screen, even when I allowed Windows to take care of it. Doing it 'legacy boot' sorted it.
    – kafka
    Mar 28, 2012 at 13:03
  • That's probably not related to your partitions, but it may be related to the use of UEFI itself. UEFI on PCs is relatively new and implementors haven't ironed out all the bugs yet.
    – Wyzard
    Mar 28, 2012 at 22:05
  • Yeah I'm avoiding UEFI for the forseeable future then.
    – kafka
    Mar 29, 2012 at 10:32
  • It's been working fine for me on several computers, at least in Windows. But my laptop's UEFI didn't work for Linux prior to kernel 3.0, since that version introduced a workaround for a certain UEFI bug that'd cause it to hang when booting.
    – Wyzard
    Mar 29, 2012 at 12:21

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