BIOS Revolutions!

[Kelly170]

WELL...

It's been a while, but I've finally made some progress! I have a definitive answer to my own question: It wasn't the BIOS! Well, sort of. Turns out, years ago when I was first tinkering around in my BIOS, I had converted my MBR hard drive to GPT! This turned out to be the cause of my old, MBR-based BIOS not picking up the new GPT-based HDD. This led to me thinking I needed a new BIOS! What a pain that would've been! So I have some new questions:

1. Is it possible to convert the BIOS on my HP 6000 Pro SFF to a GPT based one? If so, how?

2. As I don't want to install another one of my MBR-based hard drives in my computer, is it possible to convert my GPT disk back to MBR? I don't have any data on it, so I don't care about data loss. It only contained a base 64-bit install of Windows 10. Also, is it possible to maintain a 64-bit install of Windows 10 on an MBR drive? If so, how?

Thanks to all of the HP support community in the past for helping me with my former issues!

-Kelly

[Paul_Tikkanen]

It is not possible to convert your PC's BIOS to support a GPT drive as a boot drive.

The first model in that series to support UEFI was the 6200 Pro.

If you want to install W10 64 bit on the GPT-formatted hard drive and you are getting an error that Windows can't be installed to this disk, etc., use the Diskpart utility to clean the disk during the W10 installation process.

When you are at the screen where you are asked 'Where do you want to install Windows, do the following:

• 1. From inside Windows Setup, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt window.
• 2. Type Diskpart and press the Enter key
• 3.Type list disk (look for your disk number, check the size of the disk)
• 4. Type select disk <disk number>. example: select disk0 (select the disk you want to format)
• 5. Type clean.
• 6. Close the command prompt window.

Continue on with the W10 installation.

[Kelly170]

Is it WHATSOEVER possible to have a 64-Bit install of Windows 10 on an MBR disk? By the way, I have another computer that I can use to install whatever I need.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Absolutely.

All of the processors in the 6000 Pro model series support 64-bit operating systems.

I have the HP 8000 Elite which is the upscale model of the 6000 Pro (has the slightly better Intel Q45 chipset, and I am running W11 Pro 64 bit on the PC with the only option of MBR just fine.

My PC's processor is the E8400.

[Kelly170]

Really? Last I recall, Windows 10 Setup wanted me to convert my hard drive to GPT. Could you tell me how to bypass this restriction. Also, I have another "E" processor in my computer. I think it was the 8000 series as well...

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I've already explained how to do it in my last reply.