Windows 8 (and 7) UEFI Install

I got my new laptop. A Dell Precision M6700 with 256 GB SSD and two 750 GB spindle drives in raid 0

However, it shipped without the SSD, and of course that is the drive that I want to install windows on. If you try to install Windows 7/8 on this machine using UEFI from a USB drive you will get an error:

“Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300024.”

USB installer tool doesn't work with it, so something needs to be done.

What you need:
  • 4 GB (minimum) USB Drive
  • Windows 8 installation ISO
  • Virtual Clone Drive (ISO mounter) or another way of retrieving files from an ISO image
Let's pretend that my ISO is mounted under drive letter F: and my USB is X:
  1. Open a command prompt as administrator
  2. Format the USB drive using FAT32
    1. format X: /Q /FS:FAT32
  3. Make the USB drive bootable
    1. bootsect /nt60 X:
  4. Copy all the files from the ISO to the USB drive (this will take awhile)
    1. xcopy F:\* I:\* /E
At this point, you should be able to boot the USB drive in UEFI mode and select the USB drive to boot from. In my case, because the system came with RAID 0 installed, so I had to copy the additional drivers on to the USB drive.

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