Why is windows not able to create a system partition?

Question

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?

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

Checked your BIOS settings lately?!

Sometimes there is a section in your BIOS regarding something like "Boot Sector Virus protection." And it's usually a good idea to leave this setting enabled for normal use too. But you probably want to disable it when installing a new Windows operating system.

FYI: Other file systems like those used with Linux aren't usually even looked at by a BIOS. In fact, if you even have this BIOS feature then it will almost exclusively look for a NTFS or FAT file system only (and make sure it isn't messed with). That would explain why you can establish nearly any other filesystem and why you can't create a new Windows NTFS file system.

Answer 3

Do you have MBR or GPT? - since you have less then 2.2 TB drive you can safely use old MBR and installer will more likely cooperate with you..

shift+F10 will open command prompt - use diskpart to convert to MBR

Also drivers to storage controller on pendrive is good option (load driver)..

Answer 4

Use a linux live cd that has parted magic, and make sure all partitions are removed. Make sure any hidden partitions are gone. Cleaning should have done it though.

Answer 5

Have you tried manually creating a new partition? If you set it to use all the free space, it should bring up a message saying it needs to create a partition for the system files

Answer 6

Find a way to change the partition table format back to MBR; I ran into issues like this when I had a GPT-formatted partition table. Windows is supposed to have support for GPT disks, but the installer didn't want to have anything to do with it when I was using it.

Answer 7

On some Intel motherboards, you can change SATA Operation from "Intel® Smart Response Technology" to AHCI, and then you can install W7 normally.

I don't know after that if you can change back after W7 installation yet...

Answer 8

In my case, there was an SSD with an old Windows install (incl. System Reserved partition) on it connected whilst I was trying to install Windows on a HDD. Unplugging the SSD resolved this error.