Windows 7 - Help with install & build

So microsoft and others via a bing search recommend reformatting the drive again...

Good god, Im glad I have nothing to do today...

yes the wonderful world of installing windows......................

not any worse than what i went through just to get windows on my ssd.

do yourself a favor avoid bing. stick with google.

Im not missing something am I?

I read a lot about 'preformatting' a drive... I did buy a bare drive with my build and used Partition Wizard to setup the partitions and then format each of them...

Am I missing a step? After the install failed, I fired up partition wizard from the boot cd and the "used space" was larger than the "capacity" space (which doesnt make any logical sense.

I searched on this and found that if you install to a logical partition this will happen, but I installed to the primary.

I just want to make sure I am not forgetting to do something simple.... I am DOD cleaning the hard drive now in hopes to start completely fresh again in an hour or two, and dont want to keep making the same mistake over and over again.

Thanks for the help...

use pw and wipe the entire drive, create primary partition, format it ntfs, set it to active. once you get to the drive selection on the 7 boot media select the drive click delete, click new, and format it from there, then proceed with the install.

Windows 7 wont format the drive.. I get "Failed to format the selected partition. Error 0x80070057

i am out of options / ideas. this is a new drive? do you still have the old one? if so try that.

Yeah, brand new seagate drive. No other drives.. I am thinking about purchasing another drive (they are so cheap now a days) to see if I can get windows 7 to format & partition that drive.

So this brings up another question, with the partition wizard I am partitioning the entire drive and not leaving space for the 100 meg that windows needs.. Should I try partitioning in a way to leave 100 meg or so of unallocated space that windows could then use?

And in case anyone is curious, still got the locale error...

TJ1376,

I just re-read all 5 pages of this thread. I did not see what your overall hardware specs are ? MB, Memory, Monitor ? More than 1 HD connected ?

Do you have any NON-Necessary devices connected, USB stuff, printers, extra monitor, TV video card ??

We are missing something probably simple here, just not sure what ?

Have you read this help post ?

Questions to use for help with Installation Issues

Below is the setup:

Motherboard: Biostar TA790GXE 128m
CPU: AMD Athlon II x2 255 Regor 3.1ghz am3
HDD: Seagate 7200.12 sata 500gb drive
DVD: Sony optiarc 24x DVDR sata model ad-7240s-ob
Mem: OCZ 4gb (2x2g) 240 pinn DDR2 SDRAM 1066(PC2 8500)

DVD & HDD are hooked up using SATA cables.
20" Hanns-g monitor hooked up via HDMI

Win 7 x64 professional install disc

---------------------------------------

First problem was that I could not use the win 7 setup to format the drive (it was a bare drive, error was "Failed to format the selected partition. Error 0x80070057"). I got around that by building a boot cd with Partition Wizard on it. Setup the partitions and formatted the drive with no errors.

Next problem is that when the install of Win 7 goes to the "Install Complete" phase, I get a "Windows could not set the offline locale information. Error code 0x90FF0000". Windows then says the install could not be completed and all information is lost. Using PW, I can see that there is data on the drive, lots of it. So I tried to let the HDD boot. I get a read/write error post bios. Threw the Win 7 DVD back in, reboot, and try to let the Win 7 setup restore the os... It never finds the os.

I think problem 1 is causing problem 2, but I have no idea how to troubleshoot and/or fix problem 1. Why wont Windows format my drive? I have been trying to search for fixes on the net, but am not finding anything super relevant. Everyone says, install vista, then upgrade to win 7. That is not applicable in my case. I have a bare machine that I pieced together and purchased a straight install for win 7.

Any help would be most appreciated!