How can i remove a hybrid mbr from my system drive so that Efi booted windows will install.

You need Windows on a CD/DVD not a USB stick.

What you should have done was to use Bootcamp

to create the Windows disk environment. It takes

care of all the issues you are running into. The only

caveat is that the drivers available for Bootcamp

installation for Windows is only for Win7. You

may find many drivers for the Apple hardware unusable

under Windows8.

Why in the world would you want Windows8 anyway?

Alexander, if you are only installing Windows you can try using DISKPART (shift + F10) when the Windows installer is booted and manually try to wipe the disk and then recreate the required partitions.

However, since you aren't doing that, try using the OS X diskutil to make your OS X partition use the entire disk. I know that isn't really the case, but from the GUI's perspective it looks like that. After doing doing resize your OS X partion to free up space for your Windows partition. I know this sounds hookie, but I've seen it work.

Join the fun here: google "Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI "

<Edited By Host>

Alexander, I would like to apologize for the TERRIBLE answers you have been given so far. I too had this question, and so here is what my thoughts are, as maybe they might provide insight in leading you towards the answer.

I am a *nix user in general, and thus own a mac and a thinkpad. In fact I just got my thinkpad not too long ago. As such, I transfered my faster hard drive to my faster computer, which made logcal sense to me. Ergo, I moved my Mac drive to my lenovo. On this drive I have a hybrid mbr which is no longer needed. So my thoughts are this:

From what I gather, the UEFI standard indicates that there is to be a protective MBR on all GPT systems. This is so that when you use programs that are not GPT aware, they will see a presumably "full" drive and not think that they have the right to destroy your existing data in what it thinks is free space. For instance, fdisk or other MBR only partitioning systems. Thus, if your system has only a MBR with a single EE partition, it would be my guess that it was in fact not put there by installing Windows, but rather for the protection of your system.

If you are in my situation, where you do indeed have a hybrid MBR with written out partitions, it would be my guess that the only way to rid yourself of it is to do it manually. The way I would recommend, is using gdisk (gpt fdisk). It is command line only, but the syntax is pretty easy:

$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

Assuming you are using your mac partition and your primary hdd is disk0. That will put you into an interactive session of gdisk. Enter "?" for command options. What you need is the "recovery and transformation" section which is the "r" I think. From there I would say you probably want to create a new hybrid mbr (you will be using this to delete it). When it asks you for the partitions you would like to include, just hit enter. It should then ask you if you would like to create a protective entry for the remainder of the empty space. This is what you want so tell it to do that. After you are done, "w" will write and exit. You may want to first use the "p" to print and ensure that you have what you want. You can proabably check your work by using fdisk as so:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/disk0

I hope this helps you, and if you find that there is a better way, I hope you might enlighten this thread.

Cheers!

PS The command examples, the $ is to indicate it is a bash/shell command as a non-root user, do not include it in the command.

I just discovered that in the "extra functionality" section of gdisk, there is an option, "n" that creates a protective MBR. Use that instead. Also, instead of using fdisk to check the MBR, you may use "o" to print the protective MBR data. So just gdisk will do. You can download gdisk from sourceforge.

hey there,

i am having the same problems. i also found my way to "gdisk" but i am having trouble with it, so i found your post.

When i print out the protective MBR Data, i get this:

Disk size is 1953525168 sectors (931.5 GiB)

MBR disk identifier: 0x00000000

MBR partitions:

Number Boot Start Sector End Sector Status Code

1 1 1953525167 primary 0xEE

So how do i get rid of it? Unfortunately i didn't figure it out so far.

I need to remove the MBR or protective MBR in order to install Windows via EFI Boot.

Please help! Ive been trying for ages!!