Q: Windows 8.1 install fails on new 2013 Retina MacBook

Also, I've just realized something:

The reason that the Windows 8.1/Windows Server 2012 R2 installer has problems with updating the Boot configuration is that the EFI partition seems to be read-only from inside windows.

It's possible it's only readonly to users, and not to the IS, but if I assign it a drive-letter via DISKPART or DiskManager, I get an access denied message when trying to browse it.

But if I mount/assign it a letter from the WinPE environment (i.e. the repair console) then I can read/write to it with no problems.

Also, I just managed to hose my OSX partition - I had some unallocated space on the drive, so from within Windows I located a new partition. Everything looked fine from Windows (i.e. the OSX HFS partition looked and was still an HFS partition with all the corretc files), but my rEFIt boot menu wouldn't appear - when I loaded OSX Recovery and looked in Disk Utility it said that the OSX partition was formatted as FAT.

Weird - apparently windows does this sometimes, if you modify portions it can alter HFS partitions - the solution is to do all partition maintenance from within OSX.

Oh well, reinstalling OSX now... :-)

OK, so re. the Windows Update problem, I suspect this is because Windows still thinks I'm in OOBE mode... goign to dig into this and see if I can fix it.. should just be a registry value change... but will have to wait till after I rebuild OSX... :-)

I'm having the same problem as wohingenau. Manually running "msoobe" makes the laptop functional somewhat, but SYSPREP is left in a half-broken state which prevent all forms of Windows Software Update. I tried multiple forms of the sysprep command ("sysprep /oobe" for example), and in all cases it failed at some point. I even tried the workaround here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/bb62362c-7fbc-4d53-bb08 -aa35d39b49ca/sysprep-fails-on-msdtcprxdll?forum=w7itproinstall , and in the end SYSPREP completed but simply rebooted the machine back to the original issue of "windows setup cannot configure windows for this hardware".

I'm not in a rush to install Windows 8.1, but if by the end of the year Apple doesn't have a fix to natively support EFI Windows in Boot Camp I'll have to move to BIOS / GPT by installing Windows 7 first then upgrading.

It's really sad that Apple never tested Boot Camp on those laptops, not even once with Windows 8.0. The fact that the Boot Camp bundled with 10.9 is not versioned the same way ("BCA" and not Boot Camp version 6) gives me the impression the Haswell release was rushed.

Yup, that's quite right benad84 - after the failed call to Sysprep to get past the "cannot configure windows" problem, Windows is left in Sysprep Audit state, which is supposed to be used for adding drivers etc. before getting an image ready for deployment.

Given the fact that Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2 only runs in Audit mode, and gives the "cannot configure windows" error when not in audit mode, I suspect the issue lies with a core driver here. And I keep coming back to EFI - in theory Windows only support UEFI v2.0 (actually v2.3 I think), but Apple only implements v1.1.

It's probably worth all of us raising a support ticket with Apple over this one - they're aware of the problem, but it will take more people to raise the issue to speed them along.

But ultimately, we shouldn't have to install Win7 first just to install Win 8.1!!

I'm going to keep trying to see if I can get out of Audit mode without running sysprep /oobe...

I'm having the same problems as the OP. 15" rMBP with nVidia, just bought it yesterday.

Following the standard install process for Windows 8.1 with Bootcamp, I get the same error message at the end of "finishing up" in the 8.1 install.

I've tried a bunch of the suggestions here and nothing has worked. I tried installing 7 but it hangs at 65% in the install process.

I'm reinstalling Mavericks from recovery right now to see if it helps.

Windows 7 always stays at 65% for a majority of the install time -just wait it out, you should be fine.

I was able to install 8.1 Pro (the full version, not the upgrade) on my 15" RMBP with 750m. The solution is extremely simple.

Use Boot Camp Assistant to set up a USB thumb drive with your 8.1 ISO file, along with the Windows Support files. Also let it partition your hard drive after you pick your size. When it asks you to restart, hold down Option to boot back to OS X, not your thumb drive. Open up Disk Manager and remove the BOOTCAMP partition, the create a new partition using the free space, name it BOOTCAMP and use ExFAT. After you click Apply and it recreates the partition, restart and hold Option to boot to the thumb drive.

Once the 8.1 install starts and you get to the hard drive part, click Format on the BOOTCAMP partition and you should be good to go. After it runs through the install it'll ask you to reboot 2 or 3 times, each time it reboots be sure to hold down Option to boot off the Windows partition (NOT the thumb drive.) Eventually it'll prompt you through the Boot Camp installer for the Windows drivers and voila, you're done. 

Short and sweet version: Do everything as normal with Boot Camp Assistant, but delete the partition it creates and then re-create it with ExFAT, then restart and boot off the thumb drive with Windows installation on it and the rest should go as expected.

I've tried this suggestion and it didn't work for me. I'm not sure why this works for some people and not others.

Can you explain where the process fails for you using that method?  I'll try to help you if I can.

I'm not sure where the failure is. I just get the exact same error I got before.

After deleteing/recreating the partition and booting in the USB drive, do you choose "WINDOWS" or "EFI BOOT"?

EFI Boot. I don't want to do the "WINDOWS" BIOS install.

(Whoops, you were responding to Shodan. I'd hope his solution does the EFI boot part.)

After you re-create the partition with Disk Manager, reboot and hold Option to boot from the thumb drive with your Windows install.

This method only uses the EFI boot options.

Colin, can you explain to me step by step exactly what you did?  I doubt it's completely random from system to system so there's probably a minute detail where we differed on this process. By the way, I'm not a dude

When I was booting with the option key, there were two USB boot drives: The "default" one, which is DOS, and one clearly marked "EFI". If the "reformat with ExFAT" trick only displays a single boot option for the USB drive, then likely it is the DOS boot.

You can tell the difference easily between the DOS and EFI boot with the Windows logo. In DOS, the resolution is quite low, so the logo should almost fill the screen. In EFI, the logo will use the native 2880x1200 resolution of the Retina display, so the edges are perfectly sharp and not blurry as the DOS one.

Hm, I'm trying your method, but when I click format on the exFAT partition, it still says that windows cannot be installed on this partition, as if the format didn't work.

EDIT (to clarify, this is from within the Windows 8.1 installer, after I deleted and recreated the bootcamp partition using disk utility).

The full error is that the exFAT parition has an MBR record while Windows 8.1 can only be installed to a GPT disk. It sounds to me like you booted via BIOS to get your install.