Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Invalid partition table on a new Windows 7 install (UEFI vs legacy boot)

I rarely ever edit anything having to do with UEFI, but I found a situation where I was getting "invalid partition table" on a new Windows 7 installation from DVD.

The problem was that I was booting to the DVD from UEFI and then botting Windows from legacy BIOS (or so I think).  When pressing F12 on my Dell Latitude E7240, I got these options:

























I was booting to the DVD ROM using "UEFI: HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GU60N"

However, presumably when the machine rebooted, it was trying to boot from the legacy hard drive.  If I booted to the UEFI hard drive when botting from the UEFI DVD drive, it would work.  But if booting to the Internal HDD from the legacy boot, I get "invalid partition table."

That's my theory as to why I was getting "invalid partition table"

Based on a sample size of one, this holds true.

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