Win 7 will not install on Partition 0

I have an older computer that is or was being used for Win XP Pro. I put a new hard drive that is partitioned with 25gb on the C drive with two other partitions of different sizes. I set the the hard drive as cable select (later tried as Master only)

Windows 7 in cable select saw all the partitions. When set to Master it only saw Partition 1 and the rest as unallocated which seems weird.

I have the boot order in Bios set as Floppy, CD Rom and then Hard Drive.

I have an external usb DVD reader for the install disc.

When i start the pc, then press to boot from CD, it sees the install disk and the install process starts. I get to the point to select where to install and I get this Notice:

"Windows can NOT be installed on to Disk 0 Partition 1"

I hit the more info button and get this notice:

"The computer hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the BIOS Menu."

It should boot to the hard drive the way I have it setup. At least it does for Win XP.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestion as to how to get around this issue.

Thank you very much

what EXACTLY is on each of the partitions of the disk????

On Partition 1 Windows XP is installed
On Partition 2 are Program installations
On Partition 3 is an image made by Ghost 2003

This hard drive was or originally in another tower and will NOT boot up Windows on this tower.

unhook drives not used for install. cant install win7 on top of xp. format disk 1 entirely, no partitons, and then see if you can continue an install.... if you can the either go with it or cancel it and then setup/format the drive again with whatever partitons and give it a try again. Run dvd and HDD on seperate channels if not already as well.

Thanks for the information, I will give that a try .

To install Win 7, do you actually have to boot the install disk on boot or can it be done from an installed OS?

BTW can partitioning and formatting be done with Win 7 like you can with Win XP. I saw nothing that allowed partitioning or formatting.

Thank you

Hi,

If you boot from the 7 dvd, when you get to the screen where you see the partitions, select Drive Options (advanced).



Clean Install Windows 7

From there, you can click on a partition to highlight and delete or format it.

Hope it helps.

Another suggestion -- can you copy the "Ghost Image" partition on to say a DVD (or DVD's) and then delete and re-allocate that partition.

In any case AFAIK W7 needs a minimum partition size to install on (not sure what it is but I think it's around 25GB) - even if after install it doesn't need that much.

Also it will not install on FAT partitions and if it is using a boot loader it must be a PRIMARY partition (not a Logical Volume in an Extended partition).

You can fiddle around with partitions by using GPARTED -- download the live CD.

Cheers
jimbo