TFGHT is compressed! Can't install Windows.

[ibex333]

I bought two ssd drives to use in raid 0. I was able to sucessfully set up a raid array, setup went fast and easy. Then I installed windows to that partition. After the first restart, setup asked me to setup the computer name pass and local time, then asked to restart again. After that restart, I got the dreaded "TFGHT is compressed, press alt-ctrl-del to restart" message. I thought maybe it's the new ssd disks... So I tried installing windows on the spinning disk. Again, the damn TFGHT message! But I installed windows to that same spinning disk just before I got the ssds and everything was fine!

What is going on? Can anyone explain?

Thanx.

 

[taltamir]

I haven't seen this error before. And a quick google search brought no answers...

I am not sure this will help, when installing windows the only HDD/SSD plugged in should be the one you are installing windows to. The rest should be plugged after installation is finished (and then set the bios to boot from the correct drive). It is a longshot but might be a solution.

 

[Mark R]

Does this help?

Vista boot error (I know the error message is different, but it is, in effect, the same error).

This can sometimes happen if you install windows to an already existing partition, instead of partitioning the drive using windows setup.

 

[ibex333]

Does this help?

Vista boot error (I know the error message is different, but it is, in effect, the same error).

This can sometimes happen if you install windows to an already existing partition, instead of partitioning the drive using windows setup.

Tried that. The drive was NOT compressed, so no changes were made. This is most likely not the problem. Something else is.


I found a post somewhere online where the guy had the same issue and no one was able to help him. Eventually he discovered that the mobo installs some kind of drivers for hard drives and because they installed in a "wrong way" somehow, he was able to solve the problem by unplugging his drives and plugging them back in again. (have the board recognize them again) I will try this and report my results.

 

[Mark R]

Hmm.

Windows can sometimes get very confused if there are 2 (or more) drives present, and there was previously a windows installation on a drive that you aren't installing onto.

So, you have an old spinning drive that used to be your boot drive. You've abandoned the windows installation on that drive, and installed onto an SSD RAID - sometimes, windows can detect the old drive as being a windows boot drive and will switch booting to the other. This will cause the windows boot process to crash with some error or other.

Unfortunately, windows doesn't have a facility to make a hard drive 'not bootable' after a windows installation has previously made it 'bootable'. One option is to boot a linux live CD and use fdisk, to see if the old drive is bootable, and if it is, set it to 'not bootable'.

Alternatively, just see if you can install with only the system volume present (i.e. if installing to the SSDs, take the spinner out) until the installation has fully completed and windows is working correctly.

 

[ibex333]

That's exactly what I did. Thank you! I unplugged all my spinning disks. Had 3 of them.

I only left my SSDs plugged in, created a RAID0 array, and installed windows. Voila, everything works. I have yet to see if the system will boot with my spinnning disks plugged back in, but for now it works...

A few concerns... Since I have two 64Gb SSDs in RAID0, shouldn't the usable space only be around 64Gb? Then why is it that I have 119Gb space on the volume?! Also windows created a system reserved partition 100 Mb. This was not the case with the spinning disk, and partition looks empty.. Unless files are hidden?



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[Phil L]

A few concerns... Since I have two 64Gb SSDs in RAID0, shouldn't the usable space only be around 64Gb? Then why is it that I have 119Gb space on the volume?!

I think you are confusing Raid 0 (striping) with Raid 1 (mirroring). Did you want faster performance (Raid 0, ~119Gb) OR data redundancy (Raid 1, ~64Gb)?

Also windows created a system reserved partition 100 Mb. This was not the case with the spinning disk, and partition looks empty.. Unless files are hidden?

Win7 does this on HDDs too, but it doesn't always have a drive letter to allow you to access it by default, but you can always see it under Computer Management - Disk Management, as "System Reserved". MS says it contains boot info and should not be removed. It is supposedly possible to install Win7 without it according to this article, but I haven't tried, as 100 MB is very little space in a modern HDD/SSD.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/hack-...reserved-partition-when-installing-windows-7/

 

[Mark R]

That's exactly what I did. Thank you! I unplugged all my spinning disks. Had 3 of them.

I only left my SSDs plugged in, created a RAID0 array, and installed windows. Voila, everything works. I have yet to see if the system will boot with my spinnning disks plugged back in, but for now it works...

Glad you got it working. Just watch out, once an old system drive goes back in Windows may start failing to boot. (This happened to my system for a while. It would only boot on alternative power-cycles. When you shut down, the next reboot would end in a BSOD. The next would then work fine.)

In this case, you'll need to delete the boot data off the old spinner disks. There are 2 ways to do this:
1. Delete all the partitions on the drive, repartition and reformat.
2. Use a linux system with fdisk to delete the boot data from the partitions.

 

[taltamir]

Glad you got it working. Just watch out, once an old system drive goes back in Windows may start failing to boot. (This happened to my system for a while. It would only boot on alternative power-cycles. When you shut down, the next reboot would end in a BSOD. The next would then work fine.)

In this case, you'll need to delete the boot data off the old spinner disks. There are 2 ways to do this:
1. Delete all the partitions on the drive, repartition and reformat.
2. Use a linux system with fdisk to delete the boot data from the partitions.

You can also go into the bios setup and set it to look for boot information on your drive of choice first.

 

[Mark R]

You can also go into the bios setup and set it to look for boot information on your drive of choice first.

This doesn't solve the problem. The BIOS merely begins the boot process from a specified drive.

The problem is that when the Windows boot loader loads the drivers for the hard drives, if the drivers load in an unexpected order, windows may lose track of which drive it is supposed to be booting from.

If there is only one windows installation, there is no problem - it will find the boot partition and continue the boot. If there are 2 windows installations, even if one is abandoned, it can get confused, and switch over to the wrong installation part way though the booting process - this almost certainly will fail, leading to a BSOD or other peculiar error.

The solution is to make sure that there is only one windows 'boot' partition on the entire system. Unfortunately, microsoft provide no way of removing the 'boot' mark from an abandoned installation.

 

[taltamir]

This doesn't solve the problem. The BIOS merely begins the boot process from a specified drive.

The problem is that when the Windows boot loader loads the drivers for the hard drives, if the drivers load in an unexpected order, windows may lose track of which drive it is supposed to be booting from.

AFAIK that is not exactly how this problem occurs. Windows places an early bootloader on a random drive ("the first drive" which isn't, windows installer gets it wrong), this points at the NTLDR which is located on the drive on which windows is installed. Using one or the other or having it out of order will cause it to fail to boot.

You need both drives connected and in the right order for windows to successfully boot. This is completely eliminated if:
1. You unplug all drives except the one unto which you are installing windows. This ensures both parts are on that single drive.
2. You set the bios to boot from that specific drive first.

If you do that then the order doesn't matter, the bios will go to the drive you selected, find the initial loader, and find it points to NTLDR as being on the same drive, and load successfully.

If you had windows installs or failed portions of boot loaders on other drives then it will fail to boot windows if the bios tries to boot from them but pose no problem otherwise.

all that being said I would clean the other drives of bootloader leftovers because i like to keep things organized and clean.

 

[ibex333]

Yes, I wanted striping for performance, but I though under Striping, data is distributed across both disks and half goes on one and half on the other making only half of the total available space usable. Not true?

 

[Phil L]

Yes, I wanted striping for performance, but I though under Striping, data is distributed across both disks and half goes on one and half on the other making only half of the total available space usable. Not true?

Think of striping as having multiple read/write heads (HDD) or more channels (SSD), which in either case meant higher bandwidth. Since the data is distributed but not duplicated, there is no wasted space, provided the disks are the same size of course. You only waste space if you have drives of different sizes, in which case total capacity = Number_of_disk * Space_of_smallest_disk.

 

[ibex333]

Awesome. Thanks for explaining.