Windows – Why is windows not able to create a system partition

hard drivepartitioningwindows 7windows-installer

I'm reinstalling Windows 7 64 bit, and I encountered an issue I've never seen before. I have a legit copy of Win 64 Professional, and I've installed it probably a half dozen times on this machine in the past without a problem.

Googling the error only brings me to issues with people who are upgrading to win7.

The drive itself seems to not have a problem. I can mount it on other systems and I can create an NTFS partition on it on other machines. I can install Ubuntu on it without any issues. Additionally, if I try using my alternate backup hard drive, the installer gives the same error.

I have run diskpart from the setup page and clean seems to report that all is well. However, I cannot get past the screen below, which says Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. This happens regardless of whether or not the disk space is already allocated.

What is causing this? How do I solve or get past this?

A strange error appears

Edit: One Week Later

I am at my wits end with this… I have tried installing windows on four different hard drives, using two completely different motherboards, I even borrowed a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate as well as my legit Win7Pro disk. I have tried with no existing partitions, and with existing (and fully functional) NTFS partitions. I've tried installing off of USB and DVD. Every time I get to the screen shown above I get the same result.

Best Answer

I got it to work.

What I did:

  • Remove all USB devices except the keyboard
  • Set the boot order in the BIOS so that the HDD is first
  • Disconnect the network
  • Use a DVD (not usb) for installation

I had tried each of these things individually and in different combinations. I'm not sure why it suddenly worked now, but windows setup was suddenly able to create a partition.

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