Windows 8 UEFI mode installer crashes

[chrisburel]

I'm having trouble installing Windows 8 Consumer Preview in UEFI mode. I downloaded the iso and made sure the sha1 checksum matched. I then burned the iso to a dvd using ImgBurn at 4x (the slowest speed my drive supports), and verified the image after writing it. But when I reboot my machine and select the UEFI boot device, the installer crashes giving error code 0xc0000185. I saw in another post that this could indicate a problem with a number of things, mainly an issue with the integrity of the installation media, but it seems like given the checks I described above that that wouldn't be the issue.

My hardware is all brand new:
ASUS P8Z77-V Motherboard
Intel i7 3770K Processor
G.SKILL 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1866
Samsung 256GB SATA III SSD (MZ-7PC256B)
2x Seagate 2TB SATA III HDD (ST2000DL003), configured for RAID
Asus SATA Internal Blu-Ray Drive (BC-12B1ST)
Corsair 850-Watt PSU (CMPSU-850HX)
PNY NVIDIA Quadro 600

So, my questions:
How can I determine if this is a problem with my hardware, or a problem with the installation media?
Could this just be that the Win8 Consumer Preview is still beta, and that it is not completely compatible with my hardware? If so, should I expect that the final Windows 8 release will be compatible with this hardware?
Is there a Linux Live CD that supports booting with UEFI, that I could use to test to make sure my system will support booting UEFI?
I do see the "Press any key to boot from the CD or DVD..." message appear when running the Windows 8 UEFI installer. Does this mean the firmware on the motherboard successfully handed over control to the installer?
Just so that I get the terms straight, does the P8Z77-V motherboard support booting an OS via UEFI?
And a side note, I see lots of references in the manual for the motherboard to ASUS's "UEFI BIOS". Isn't UEFI a replacement for BIOS? So isn't a "UEFI BIOS" a contradiction?

I generally keep the machines I build for a long time. So if UEFI is going to be standard in 1-2 years, and I could save myself some trouble by making sure that my hardware works with UEFI, I'd like to make sure that happens.

 

[smorizio]

i have the z77 sabertooth that the big brother to that board. there are a few bios fixed that are out for both boards.
when you do the last update and the pc revboots go in hit f5 and save and exit. on reboot go under the ai tabe and change the ram to xmp. also check that the sata ports are set to achi for the ones your not using raid on. on the last bios page on boot you want to set the bios to both ufi and old. if you set it to ufi only some ssd wont be seen. my 520 ssd and windows 8 would not be see with just the bios in the boot setting set to ufi only. under cd-rom and hard drives check to see which device is 0 and what one is one. set the cd-rom as the first device and your ssd or os drive as the first hard drive. save and exit and then boot back into the bios. in the easy mode you should see the ssd and cd-rom and ufi drives. you want to drag and drop the cd-rom as the first boot device then the ssd. if the installer crashed again use a usb stick and put the intel raid drivers on it and do a custom install (f6). if the installer still harfs power down the pc and unplug the two raid drives. and see if you can get the system to install windows 8 that way. if it crashes again power down and take all the ram out but one dimm.

 

[chrisburel]

Hm, that didn't help. In the uefi bios, I hit F5 to restore the factory defaults, then changed the Ai Overclock Tuner to X.M.P. The default value for everything else matched what you said, SATA was set to AHCI, Enable both UEFI and Legacy was set, and the boot order was fine. I went ahead and unplugged the 2 drives for the RAID array, to keep the variables to a minimum. Still no dice. The installer crashes immediately, before I even get to the first screen.

A friend of mine at my office recommended I try with an external cdrom drive connected via usb. I'll see if I can procure one somewhere...

 

[smorizio]

did you download the 32 bit or the 64 bit..should have thought of that...the 32 bit going to error out with more then 4g of ram installed.

 

[chrisburel]

It's 64bit. The same media will install fine when not in UEFI mode.

 

[smorizio]

all i can say is try using the ms usb tool all you need is a 4g usb stick. the tool will make put the windows 8 iso on the usb stick and make it bootable like the cd. the only other thing is the download may have been bad or the iso is damaged.

 

[chrisburel]

I managed to get it to install using a USB drive. I followed the instructions on http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/samsungpcgeneral/thread/e7ed293e-b565-44ee-a536-166dddf32205. You can't use the "Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool", because it will format your USB drive NTFS, which cannot be booted in UEFI mode.

 

[smorizio]

that weird i used that tool last night for the windows 8 beta that just came out and was able to boot from it. just had to go into the boot deive manager and tell the mb to boot from the usb stick.