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I have an iMac 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with 1TB Fusion drive since early January this year. I have added 2 extra 4Gb of memory bringing it to 4x4.

I installed Windows 8 without any issue back then but it crashed recently and it was impossible to start it up so I decided to remove the partition and re-install it.

However, after 15 days and 15 hours spent on the phone with senior advisers, I am still stuck. Any help would be much appreciated.

Here are the steps I followed:

  1. create an iso image in Documents using Windows 8 dvd.
  2. create a partition using bootcamp (350Gb) plugging in a 1TB external hard drive
  3. Once in Windows set-up, I choose 'Drive 1 Partition 4 BOOTCAMP'. As expected, it can't go further as 'Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS'
  4. Instead of clicking 'Format' (which won't work), I press shift+F10 and end up in a terminal.
  5. Type DISKPART>list disk>select disk 1>list partition>select partition 4> format fs=NTFS label'Windows8' (I tried using the option 'quick' as well)
  6. Back to windows setup, I hit 'refresh'. The first time I tried it was saying 'We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files'. The second and subsequent times I tried I got 'Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of GPT partition style'
  7. Back to OS X and Disk Utility, I can see 2 partitions in Internal Drive>Partition: MacintoshHD and Windows8 which is a 350Gb partition of format 'Windows NT File System (NTFS)'

Questions:

  1. Any idea what is going on?
  2. If GPT style partition is not the right partition style, what should be and how do I convert it into it?
  3. Is it an issue related to Fusion? There are many discussions out there around this issue but haven't found anything that worked for me. It seems Windows expect an MBR style partition but Fusion provides an hybrid MBR/EFI partition, No idea what it means so I am just repeating what I read.
  4. It also seems that having my external usb drive plugged in doesn't help. However, how can I unplug it while I am using it to install windows?

Thanks a lot for your help.

user423217
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