Unable to create a system partition?

So I finally decided to give win7 a test (dual boot with winxp on a seperate physical drive). I put the dvd in, boot up, installation opens fine.

I choose custom installation, format a partition, and click next. I get an error that says something along the lines of "Windows is unable to create a system partition, check your setup log files".

Ok, so I delete the partition, create a new one, and try again. Same error.

I even tried just deleting it, and installing to unpartitioned space, but still no dice.

Any help?

ah, I think I found the problem. I was trying to install onto a second partition of a 500gb hd. I loaded back into windows, and opened Partition Magic and tried to create a primary partition manually, and it says "This partition starts beyong the 1024 cylinder boundary and will not be bootable"