Error when installing manjaro

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Presuming your machine is capable of UEFI (most built in the past decade are) then this should be the preference. Firstly, set your BIOS configuration for pure UEFI booting and disable so-called “Legacy” boot.

If your SSD is truly blank at this point, then installing either Windows or Linux should install as UEFI.

I suggest installing Windows first and resizing the $ESP during Windows Setup; here’s how:

Resize the ESP during Windows Setup

Windows Setup creates a 100 MiB ESP by default (deemed sufficient for Windows UEFI boot and related files). If you plan on multibooting Manjaro (and/or another OS) along with Windows, the Microsoft default 100 MiB ESP soon becomes unfit for purpose.

Windows Setup does not provide graphical tools for shrinking or expanding the ESP; and creation of a UEFI system outside of the initial Windows Setup process is disallowed.

However, it is possible to side-step Windows Setup and use command-line tools to perform partitioning operations. :eyes:

01. Boot the Windows Installer DVD/USB (or Ventoy USB)

  • Choose the Custom: Install Windows only (Advanced) installation option.

02. Select your target disk and make sure it has no partitions; only unallocated space.

  • Click New and then Apply

  • Three partitions should now be visible:

    System (ESP)
    MSR (Reserved)
    Primary

03. Select each of these partitions, in turn:

  • Click Delete for each partition.

04. Create a custom-sized ESP using diskpart.

  • Press Shift + F10 to open a Command Prompt.
  • Type diskpart.exe;
    and press Enter to open diskpart.
  • Type list disk;
    and press Enter to list available disks.
  • Type select disk n;
    where n is the disk number identified by list disk; and press Enter.
  • Type create partition efi size=300;
    where 300 is the desired size of the ESP (in MiB); and press Enter.
  • Type format quick fs=fat32 label=ESP;
    and press Enter to format the ESP.
  • Type exit and press Enter;
    Do this twice to exit both diskpart and the Command Prompt.

04. Back in Windows Setup (the GUI partitioning tool):

  • The screen hasn’t change since we last saw it.
  • Click Refresh to detect the partition changes.

05. Select the unallocated space

  • Click New to automatically recreate the MSR and Primary partitions.

06. Select the Primary partition

  • Click Next to continue installing Windows

You will need to shrink the main Windows partition (from within Windows, using the Windows partitioner) to make space available for the Manjaro installation.

After installing Windows, install Manjaro using the manual partitioning method – make sure not to format the $ESP.

I should add that installing Windows and Manjaro each on separate disks is a generally safer approach.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards.

This is not accurate.

Rufus does indeed allow creation of either a BIOS/MBR or UEFI/GPT USB installer - it just takes attention to and understanding of available options.

Nontheless, as previously mentioned, using Ventoy is a much more versatile (and popular) approach to creating a bootable USB:

Cheers.

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