Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 1

Hello good people,
I need some urgent help with Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, 64Bit installation process on my brand new ASUS A73TA laptop that came with Free Dos. I managed to boot the Windows 7 disc and everything goes fine until this very point :

Where do you want to install Windows:
Name Total size Free Space Type
1.) Disk 0 Partition 1: FD_BETA9SR2 456.8GB 456.6GB System
2.) Disk 0 Partition 2: 9.0GB 9.0GB Primary

Error: Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 1. (Show details)
Details: Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GTP disks. Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS.

Now what should I do ? Should I install on partition 2 of just 9.0GB, would that be enough in the long run and would I be able to use the other partition for my work in Windows 7 ? I want to do the right thing here and not make a mistake, such as formatting the wrong or choosing the wrong partition ! Also I have no clue where my Free Dos is stored and don't wanna make a mess by doing the wrong thing.

Should I go with install on Partition 2 ?
Also among the options I have Refresh/Delete/Format/New/Load Driver/Extend.
Would it be safe to format Partition 1 and make it NTFS ?

Many thanks for Your thoughts and responses !!!

Delete both those partitions, then try.

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

Please post a screenshot of your expanded disk management layout so that we can give you best advice.

Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums

You certainly won't be able to install Windows 7 on the 9 GB partition for these reasons:

1) It's too small, the minimum recommended size for Windows 7 is 20 GB, 40 GB is better, but you'd do better with 100 GB to allow for shadow storage and applications you want to install.

2) I've no doubt it's a recovery partition, so if you delete it without creating a set of recovery discs first you'll have no way of reverting to your computer's factory state.

The Free Dos application you mention will be on Disk O Partition and I would imagine the reason why you can't install Windows to this partition is because it is the active partition that contains the master boot record.

Zomby88 is correct.

Your laptop has come with freeDOS and without windows.

So feel free and delete both partitons without bothering yourself to create recovery disks. You will never need the freeDOS again.

After deleting both partitions, create a 80-100GB partition for windows (C: ) and continue installation. You can make a second partition of remaining space from within windows (disk management program) later. This second partition can be used for your data.

Hello, thanks, I've managed to install it.
I've deleted both partitions and was left with just one fresh unallocated partition. From there on Setup accepted this new partition and my installation was successfully finished.

The only issue, if any, is that I now have 1 partition for everything, Windows included. The whole disk is ~500gb, 7200rpm, I am planning to use the new laptop for audio & video production, I'm not sure creating 1 more separate partition just for non-OS data would make any difference, performance wise ?

Cha-Ching, that`s exactly what it`s supposed to do, Good Job !!!!

You can make another partition with Partition Wizard 7.0 if you like.

In my opinion, you will not benefit from a separate partition, speedwise.

You could make the partition and put a system image on it.

But, just get your laptop in working order first.

If you have a single partition, only performance issue is during a backup which takes more time for larger hard disks.

It is always better to separate the userdata from OS partition. This way if there is OS problem in future and you wish to reinstall windows, your userdata on second partition will not be disturbed.

UserInTrouble said:

Hello, thanks, I've managed to install it.
I've deleted both partitions and was left with just one fresh unallocated partition. From there on Setup accepted this new partition and my installation was successfully finished.

The only issue, if any, is that I now have 1 partition for everything, Windows included. The whole disk is ~500gb, 7200rpm, I am planning to use the new laptop for audio & video production, I'm not sure creating 1 more separate partition just for non-OS data would make any difference, performance wise ?

Performance wise- the audio video work would create a lot of temporary files, that would get deleted from time. So the disk is likely to get heavily fragmented over time which would impact performance.

In fact AFAIK, apps like Photoshop use a scratch disk where scrap files and temp data are stored when you run out of memory. The bigger your project, the larger these files. It is advised to set an external disk as the scratch disk, should give you a nice performance boost.

Many thanks guys, I appreciate Your thoughts & support.
Once I have the drivers installed, I'll finally decide regarding the 2nd partition. Having separate Windows partition may indeed help with the reinstall if something goes wrong, but other than that I too doubt there would be any speed benefits.. further more I'm not sure if Windows and other programs's communication with data on the other partition would even be slower than if they all were on one partition ?

Its very true regarding the audio & video files, and the better quality the bigger they get, plus temp. files and very soon it all gets cluttered and performance decreases. External drive is a good idea, I have it, but beeing 2.0usb is not good enough for direct access, even 3.0usb I believe is not, I need fast speed for least audio latency & multitracks, that why I got 7200rpm disk on a laptop(majority of laptop disks are still 5400rpm, even with the higher end laptops). My intention is to use laptop's disk for only the latest working projects and everything else to put on external usb 2.0 or 3.0, that way I'll have the high access speed for my current work but won't overload the laptop's disk and overall performance.