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I am trying to install Windows 8 Pro from an ISO, burned to a DVD. Setup boots and allows me to go through the install screens, up to disk selection. I have a Kingston Hyper-X SSD 128GB disk as Disk0 and 2x WD Caviar Black 1TB drives in a Raid 0 (HW) as Disk1. I previously had Win7 installed on the SSD but I removed the partitions so the Disk0 is ~120GB of unallocated space. On selecting Disk0 to install to and selecting next in this disk selection screen, I receive the Win8 Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) for a split second and the computer immediately reboots (no user input prior to rebooting). I do not have time to see the error that is displayed so, I cannot give the specific error. I tried to proceed on this step after installing a raid driver for the raid controller and also without installing the raid driver; both scenarios result in the same behavior (though I'm not sure it is the same error).

Is there a way to pause the BSOD before it reboots? Or is there a way to modify the setup configuration to pause on a BSOD?

Are there any BIOS settings or configurations known to cause this sort of issue? I've done my best to Google answers.

I was able to install and dual boot the Consumer Preview without incident.

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  • Have you tried to simple install Windows 7 then use the Windows 8 disk to do a clean installation to Windows 8?
    – Ramhound
    Apr 23, 2013 at 15:39
  • I have not. I will try that tonight.
    – RominNoodleSamurai
    Apr 23, 2013 at 15:42
  • Welcome to SuperUser! You can (and should!) answer your own question instead of editing it. This will help keep SU clean and useful for other people who may face the same problem. Thanks!
    – gronostaj
    Apr 25, 2013 at 17:24

1 Answer 1

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The problem was likely Windows 8's inability to communicate with the SSD as the BIOS SATA controller mode was set to RAID mode in order to facilitate a prior RAID 0 setup. I moved the SSD to port 7 on my motherboard, kept the RAID drives in their original positions, and set the SATA controller to RAID and the Marvell SATA controller to AHCI mode. Once I did this, I was able to install Windows 8 completely.

However, the story doesn't end there. Once in Windows, I went about tidying up the interface and moving files around on my raid disk. Then a BSOD happened, this time indicating a problem with the driver ahcix64.sys (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL). So I went to the source, saw the creator of the AHCI Raid driver was AMD, and went to their page and downloaded drivers for the Southbridge controller, updated for Windows 8 (http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx)

Also needed to update the BIOS from ver 1.5 to 1.7, but I feel pretty confident that the updated drivers solved the problem as I have had no BSODs since then.

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