Error (0x80300024)

ok please make sure you have ONLY ONE hard drive attached to the system
when installing windows 7 or windows 8...all other hard drives MUST BE UNPLUGGED...
windows 7 will create 3 partitions and windows 8 will create 4 partitions if there is another
HDD with a windows install on the system it will find its system partition and will not create one on the new
install...this will cause windows to not boot if that hdd with the system partition on it is removed or formatted or it crashes if the system partition of that other hdd is not the same windows version you are trying to install the install will stop and display an incompatibility message....if you are going to duel boot
always boot the higher OS first and with a BCD editor add the other OS's...how ever my asrock mobo will
not duel boot no matter what...so I hit F11 for the boot menu and then I choose which OS to boot...
my Gigabyte mobo duel boots fine

I registered only to say thanks. Many many thanks .. Solved

Logged in to say that I found a solution to this problem.

I could not believe, in this modern computer age, that I had to PHYSICALLY disconnect a hard drive to get windows to install! NOT ON MY WATCH!

In the BIOS of your motherboard, you may be able to change the priority of each drive attached to it. I have 3 drives, 2 SSD's and a mechanical. I changed the priority of the drive I wanted as the boot device (it was number 2, so I changed it to 0) and, et voila! it worked!

Edit: https://i.imgur.com/vYwne0z.jpg

There are more reasons that just install problems to unplug all other HD's (or disable in BIOS). We frequently see the System boot files derailed to another drive if this is not done. To avoid this one needs to either unplug all other drives, install only to the first-in-order HD, or make sure all preceding HD's partitions' are Logical and cannot accept boot files.

kardeck said:

Logged in to say that I found a solution to this problem.

I could not believe, in this modern computer age, that I had to PHYSICALLY disconnect a hard drive to get windows to install! NOT ON MY WATCH!

In the BIOS of your motherboard, you may be able to change the priority of each drive attached to it. I have 3 drives, 2 SSD's and a mechanical. I changed the priority of the drive I wanted as the boot device (it was number 2, so I changed it to 0) and, et voila! it worked!

Edit: https://i.imgur.com/vYwne0z.jpg

when installing windows there must only be ONE HDD attached to the computer and ONLY ONE...
turning off HDD's in the BIOS is a NONO...this may turn off the sata chip not the sata channel on some mobo's...windows automatically sets the boot priority in the bios...When Duel Booting you always BOOT from the Highest OS first...then with a BCD Editor add the other OS's...the windows installer has been Known to terminate the install process if a Lesser OS has been installed...go into the bios and remember
the where your hard drive is..( the sata channel or HDD slot...whatever )...If you do not Give a backside
and do not follow this rule...Headaches ARE Guaranteed ...No If's , And's or backsides

You even don't have to disable all hard disks - you just have to make sure, that the hard disk you want to install windows on has the highest boot priority in bios. That's all.

Incorrect. Even if the target HD is set to boot first, it may not appear as DISK0 on drive selection screen, so any preceding Primary partition may grab the boot files during install. We see this all the time here. The only solution is to unplug all other HD's, disable them in BIOS, or see that any preceding partition on any preceding HD is formatted as Logical so it cannot receive boot files.

That said, if you boot the Win7 installer and the target HD clearly appears as DISK0 on the drive selection screen, you should be safe. But always take a peek at Disk Mgmt after install to assure that the System Active partition is on the same HD, either on the 100mb System Reserved partition issued by installer or C.

Well, incorrect or not, I had exactly the same situation, error 0x80300024 while installing win7 - took a peek into bios and saw the hard drive did not have the highest priority. Changed the priority and it installed like a charm - error free
Just thought I should mention this for folks like me who:
1. don't have the option in bios to disable the hard drive (on a laptop).
2. would have a tremendous PITA to disable manually the hard drive, as the laptop does not possess a maintenance opening and would have to dismantle the whole laptop.

Sometimes setting the HD first to boot will overcome install failures. This is separate from protecting against derailing boot files by having no Primary partition preceding intended target drive.

Windows 7 Installation Failure - Overcome