Windows 7: Setup was unable to create a new system partition - Installation Error

Hello,

I have my HP Laptop which came with Windows Vista as the OS. I want to upgrade to Windows 7 so I bought Windows 7 from my local store.

I entered the disc and did boot from CD. It reached to the page where it shows the disk partition. I deleted the partitions and created new one. However, whenever I create the partition, it creates a primary one and gives me saying Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.

The stupidity that I did was deleted the partition which had the Recovery Drive in it. So, now I am stuck and not able to install Vista as well as Windows 7. I am not able to boot Windows as there is no OS in my laptop now.

Really need your help here.



Please tell me what to do.

Do you clean the HD Drive, using step one of this tutorial:
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

After wiping the HD using Theog's link, boot into installer to Custom install using Drive options to create your partitions.

If this fails, use Step 2.2 in same tutorial to create an Active partition to see if installer will see that.

If that fails, reset the CMOS: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS
While in BIOS setup, check SATA controller setting, set to AHCI first then IDE mode if that doesn't work.

I started diskpart as per the tutorial. I entered clean all almost 3 hours back and its still blinking. Mine is 320gb HDD. How do I know if its working or somethings wrong?

Please help me.

Thanking you

It should take one hour per 300gb normally. Clean command would actually have worked fine to clear the boot sector which is the only concern here.

If it's taken 3 hours I would test the HD using maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan.

If you bail out of Clean All then run the quick Clean command anyway.

Ok, clean all command was completed successfully. After that I created a partition of 50gb, format=ntfs and marked it as active and exitted the cmd prompt.

Finished the language setup and now I am to the portion which shows the disks and asks where I want to install Windows. There I can see the 50gb partition and the type is System. So I clicked on next and it still gives me the same error that setup was unable to locate system partion.

Now what to do?

What happened when you clicked Next without creating a partition, which was to be done first?

If that also fails then reset the CMOS which was the third step given.

I tried all the steps. But still I get the same error.

Also, I am not able to reset CMOS as my BIOS does not have any option to reset nor am I able to find the CMOS battery.

Try it again, this time don`t make any partitions, just delete any partitions, 50 BGs is too small anyway.

Hello,

I tried everything last night. I used diskpart, made no partition and tried to install, it still gave the same error. Then, I again used diskpart and made a partition of 100 GB, tried to install, got the same error.

Then I removed the CMOS battery for 45 minutes and then put it back in and started the laptop. It went to BIOS settings and I set the correct time and then did diskpart again without any partition tried to install, got the same error message.

I really tried everything. Also, could this be possible because I am trying to install from USB stick? My DVD writer is not reading any CD's or DVD's, so I made a bootable USB following this link: USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

So, could it be possible because of USB stick or that is not a problem? If not, what should I do now?

Please help me....