Is It Possible to Install Windows 7 on a GUID Partition Table Disk?

Question

Is it possible to install Windows 7 on a GPT disk?
I created a RAID 0 array on my dual Xeon 5580 system and tried installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit RTM. When I got to the "Where do you want to install Windows" part I used shift-F10 to open up a command window, then I used diskpart to create a GPT with the following partitions:
Disk 0 Part 1 -  102 MB EFI System
Disk 0 Part 2 -  128 MB MSR
Disk 0 Part 3 -  500 MB Primary
Disk 0 Part 4 - 7446 GB Primary
But there was a message "Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 3 (show details)" - clicking on "show details" gave me "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
What gives? I thought Windows Vista and beyond supported GPT.
The problem with MBR is that you can't have a file system larger than 2 TB.
Cheers, Eric

Answer 1

I am trying to install Windows Server 2008 R2 Ent edition onto system that has an ASUS M3A78 Pro motherboard with 8GB of memory & an AMD Phenom II x3 2.6GHz Socket AM3 Processor
(X3 710).
I realize that this system doesn't support UEFI but I have an Adaptec 3805 RAID controller in this system that does support the advanced format hard drives, so I would think I should
be OK there.
Attached to the RAID controller are 3 - 1.5TB SATA Hard Drives in a RAID 5 yeilding 2.72TB's of usable space.
I followed the following process to convert the array to GPT.
I booted to the Server 2008 R2 Ent installation DVD.
I select next at the language \ time & currency format \ Keyboard selection screen.
Then I select the 'repair your computer' option at the following screen.
I do not select the 'repair' (default) option, but instead select the radio button above it (I forget what that's labeled) working from memory here - which gives me the option to
launch a command prompt.
I launch diskaprt from that command prompt.
First I selected the disk
list disk (this displays the installed disks)
select disk 0
The I converted the disk to gpt
convert gpt
Then I created 200 MB EFI partition:
create partition
efi size=200
Then I created MSR
partition:
create partition
msr size=128
Then I created primary
partition:
create partition
primary
...and it took remaining
available space to itself.
I assigned drive
letter C to this new first "primary" partition
Assign letter=c
I confirmed the order is:
I confirmed the partition order is:
ESP > MSR > DATA Partition
After all of that I restart into the Windows installation and attempt to install by selecting the newly created primary partition and am presented with an error that states:
“Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 3. (Show details)”
and the details show:
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the gpt partition style."
Any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks