Hello,

I'll come straight to the point. What I'm trying to do is to install Windows 8.1 Enterprise to a Pre-Provisioned volume but Windows does not let me do that. The steps I've performed are.

With Microsoft ADK I created me a WinPE media which has the components installed to get the manage-bde command working. I used the article hxxp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824926.aspx for that.

I prepared an USB stick with the manage-bde components on it and booted my test laptop with it.

Started diskpart and used commens in order to get a new clean partition:

Select Disk 0

clean

Create Partition Primary

Format fs=ntfs quick

Assign letter=c

exit

After that I pre-provisioned the volume with the command:

manage-bde -on -used c:

When I check with manage-bde -status it states that:

Conversion Status: Used Space Only encrypted

Percentage: 100

Protection Status: Protection Off

Lock Status: Unlocked

Identification Field: Unknown

Automatic Unlock: Disabled

Key Protectors: None Found

OK. After that I use the net use command to map a network share with the Windows 8.1 x64 Enterprise installation media itself. I execute setup.exe without any parameters.

I can navigate all the way through the dialog "Where do you want to install Windows?". I can see there now "Drive0Partition 1" with a Total size of 119.2 GB and almost as many free space BUT when I select it and click next there comes only a warning dialog saying:

We couldn't not create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files."

The best description of the problem I've found from the file x:\windows\panther\setupact.log where are lines like:

BLOCKING reason for disk 0 offset bla bla is either "The partition is too small" (????) or "Bitlocker Drive Encyption is enabled on the selected partition".

What I am missing here? Is there a special trick how to get Windows installed on a pre-provisioned drive? I also loaded the correct driver for the disk controller but no help. As soon as I clean the disk and create the partition new without pre-provisioning I can install Windows without any problems.

Sorry for the long text. Hope someone of you has an idea.

Regards

Robert

• Edited by Robinion 22 hours 57 minutes ago