Windows 7: Custom Upgrade - Advanced options greyed out

Hi all,

I have 2 hard drives in a Raid 0 configuration. On this configuration, I have 2 partitions, C and D. C currently has Vista on it.

booted from win 7 64bit disk. Select Custom. Select advanced options and highlight the C partition. All of the advanced options are greyed out (format, delete, etc).

If I select the D partition, all the advance options are available, but obviously I don't want to install to the D drive.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why the options are greyed out on my C partition? could it have to do with the Raid 0? It came from Dell like this.

Hello foghat,

Try following the instructions in this post for how to mark a partition as active.

Now, what is on the C partition?

The partition must be active. It is where my current operating system (vista) is installed and running from.....Win 7 identifies it as a system partition vs. primary.

In your link it says to make sure it the partition is primary, but doesn't state how to do this. Only how to make active.

What advanced options do you need to change?

I want to format it.

When I look on Computer management -> Disk management in Vista, it show my C partition as: Status Healthy (System, Boot, Page file, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition).

Not sure what is going on here.

I have no experience with installing Windows 7 on a RAID setup, but Google returns a lot of hits so it seems not unusual to have problems. Most indicate the need to install a RAID driver.

See here: install windows 7 raid 0

If you want to format the drive, you can do it from Diskpart. Open Diskpart, and select the correct partition as shown in my link above. Then type format fs=ntfs. Add a quick onto the end of that command if you want to do a quick format, or else leave it off for a full format.

Hope this helps,
~Jonathan

Getting a little confused, can diskpart be run from the win 7 boot screen? Surely I can't (nor would I want to) format my c partition will I am in Vista.

To Ztruker, everything I saw on your link had to do with the actual install not working. If I let it, Windows 7 will start the install without a format. I just want to format first before attempting the install.

Diskpart cannot be run from the install screen, but it can be run from the Installation DVD. See my link above.

gotcha. Thanks. Hopefully it will work.