Error on installing Windows 7 on separate partition

For a quick check, try taking the DVD out of the drive prior to the reboot.

Can you get us a disk managment window picture from within XP?

You only have the one drive, correct? Nothing external?

tdbear said:

I installed the same 250GB hard drive (partitioned and formatted into two identical partitions using Paragon Partition Manager) in a different computer, installed XP on the first partition and Windows 7 Pro on the second w/o any problem.
Ted

Why not install Win7 on the second computer to see if it will run on the problem computer?

I have used this approach several times as a last resort and it worked well. The two computers only need to have the same number of cores.

You would need to install XP on the problem computer and leave partition space for Win7. Then be sure not to start XP on the second computer and it will never know it was there.

When you return HD to problem computer, it should swap out all of the drivers with several restart requests. If it works, there is no performance hit at all.

Hi Ted.
I got the same problem.
I tried to install both x64 & x32 Win 7 with following configuration:
750 Gb SATA-II wih IDE drive mode (not AHCI) on Gigabyte P55 M/B, the primary bootable partions ( C: ) - is XP, D - is another (data) partition, I've created another one be means of PowerQuest Partion Manager (old version of 2002).
I tried formatting by Win 7 installer - the same result.
May be the reason of this error message in fact that the partinion is Extended but not a Primary?
I haven't tried to install to a separate HDD yet...
Also I saw in some posts above what can help is to unplug some RAM (up to 2 Gb, I have 4).

The only thing helps soving this problem.
I set up the option of SATA Controller to AHCI mode in BIOS and on the next restart installation of Windows 7 (x64, Ultimate) contined and finished without any questions.

BTW, XP works on AHCI mode, may be bacause I'd installed native Raid, SCSI, SATA drivers for XP for my M/B before the Win 7 installation.

Thank you for reporting back this information, Alexey.

Yes, your XP probably was able to run in AHCI mode because you had previously loaded the full mobo drivers.

These drivers could also be loaded at the F6 prompt during driver-loading phase of XP Repair Install had they not been loaded earlier.