Need Suggestions For Diagnosing Windows 8 Install

Follow up:

I noticed that there is an option for loading device drivers, so I attempted the installation again. This time I selected the Install Drivers option and used the ASRock Utiltiy disk for the driver search. The driver search found six possible drivers. I used CTL+A to select them all and clicked Next.

The install ran for a bit, then switched back to the Disk Partition screen and indicated that I could not install Windows on the partition selected. I swapped the ASRock Utility disk out and put the Window 8 Install disk back in the DVD/CD and the error went away.

I again selected the partition that I wish to install Window 8 into and clicked on Next. The install program informed me that it may create some additional partitions. I clicked OK. ((I had tried clicking Cancel, but that just stopped the installation process from proceeding further.))

The installation program ran for a bit more, and then threw the 0xC0000005 error.

I did notice that the install program seems obsessed with Disk 0.

I have four HDD and a SSD. The install program numbers the four HDDs as 0, 1, 2, and 3; the SSD is numbered as 4. HDDs 0 and 1 hold data partitions. HDD 2 is where I wish to install Windows 8. HDD 3 is formatted as MBR and contains a Linux OS. The SDD contains my production Windows 7 system.

I discovered that each time I attempt an installation the installer creates another 300 MB Recovery partition and a 100 MB ESP (EFI System Partition) from the free space on HDD 0.

This is rather surprising because HDD 2 already has a 300 MB Recovery partition, a 100 MB ESP partition, a 128 MB MRS (Microsoft Reserved Partition) and a 120 GB Primary partition formatted as NTFS.

This suggests to me that the installation program is not making full use of HDD 2 and keeps defaulting back to HDD 0.  

Now I'm wondering if I need to find a way to get HDD0 and HDD4 to swap places. Perhaps then the installation will run successfully. 


Edited by Theokritos - 10 Jun 2014 at 3:57pm