Hard drive errors holding up Windows install - How do I fix them?

I have rebuilt my previous Core 2 Quad system but I have hit problems with Windows 7 installation.

The partitions were too small so I deleted 2 tiny Win XP partitions and wanted to combine them and resize data partition to give me enough room to install Windows 7 x64. However the partitioning software would not resize the data partition after deleting the two 10GB partitions. It looks like there are errors on the partition that I want to resize which are preventing me from resizing.

What I require is help on correcting the errors without needing windows.

BTW I have tried PuppyLinux but after spending a weekend and only managing to get an internet connection working I am very disappointed in Linux. I attempted to create a USB flash drive with a newer version of Puppy Linux but 3 days later I am no closer to accomplishing that as it will not allow me to install a newer version to a flash drive only the older version. I had hoped on correcting the errors using Linux but couldn't get anywhere with it, it all being infuriatingly difficult to accomplish the most basic tasks. I think a person needs masochistic tendencies to use Linux IMO. I could not even get Keypass installed on Puppy to access my passwords for email or for this forum. I couldn't get uNetbootin installed due to unfulfilled dependencies which were not found by puppy install manager in order to allow the creation of a USB flash drive.

Therefore I require ideas on correcting the errors so that I can repartition the drive. I will not trust windows to do that after Windows 7 destroyed my hard drive partition with 1TB of data. So I need some form of boot disk to correct the errors, preferably with no get down and dirty involving editing scripts to get basic functionality Linux based disk.

What else is on the hard drive? Can you delete all partitions then let the Windows 7 install create the ones it wants?
If not you may have to backup anything you don't want to lose from th4e drive, then run a program like DBAN (Darrick's Boot & Nuke) to wipe it completely and reassign bad sectors, then re-partition, install Win 7 then restore saved data.

A long process but it should accomplish what you want to do.

I don't think that sectors are 100% bad as in failed. I did do some hard drive tests to check it and it looks like there are some failing sectors but I think it might be more like soft errors from system crashes etc.

I cannot really back everything up and I do not have the time to do it ATM. i

PW is excellent !!!

From the feature set of PW it does not look like it has an error correction facility unless it is an extra in the registered/paid version. I have had some bad experiences with PW Minitool in the recent past, it ruined close to 1TB of files with a little help from windows. A failed partition corrupted files and then windows destroyed the partition table as it did not like the files and file system. I still have to try and recover as many of the files as I can, I have a new Startech USB 3.0 dual hard drive dock which I intend using to copy any files to that I can recover.....more time that I cannot afford.

I have found something which sounds promising called HDAT2 which is a tiny CD image and it is supposed to be a freeware version of HDD Regenerator which sells for about $100, far too much IMO for what it does.

There is a fair bit, about 160GB of data on the drive which I still want, so deleting everything is not really an option that I want to contemplate.

I know some options for fixing file system errors in Linux which I can use buy ATM I am not certain whether the problems are either file system related or whether they are bad block related. I think that I will see how it goes with HDAT2 first of all as it is an old drive about 12-13 years and a lot of files have not be altered for around 10 years. I will see how that goes before trying to fix any file system errors. A smart check and seagate tools did show some blocks of poor quality but I am not certain that they were failed blocks or not.

So I have some unknowns ATM, Seagate tools not giving very precise information.

Thanks everyone for your recommendations so far, if anyone else has any ideas then I would be pleased to read them.

If you can, back up the data you don't want to lose. Mr. Murphy just loves situations like this to strike.
You can get a 1TB external USB hard drive for around $50 now days (I have a Toshiba Canvio).

Ztruker said:

If you can, back up the data you don't want to lose. Mr. Murphy just loves situations like this to strike.
You can get a 1TB external USB hard drive for around $50 now days (I have a Toshiba Canvio).

Thanks for the recommendation, I copied everything that I could to my Startech USB docking station, well the majority of the files as a few would not copy.

I ran HDAT2 which ran but I decided to do the backup before actually using it. After backing up HDAT2 refused to run so I tried Hard drive testing utility by Serg S I which scanned a large portion of the drive and found one bad block. I cancelled the scan before the end because it seemed a bit of a waste of time as the bad blocks needed to be corrected. After I cancelled the scan it offered to correct the bad block, doh!

I think there were 3 options fast, medium and slow so I chose slow which only took a few seconds. It corrected the error, the hard drive must of realllocated the sector when the program wrote to the sector.

The hard drive is quite old, purchased in about 2002/3 and apart from just after purchase, it has barely been used since as it has been in a PC that is very rarely powered up. All the sectors are probably weakened from not being accessed or written to in so long so I decided to delete the drive and clear every sector with a "low level format"/disk wipe with zeros. I did this twice in total with two different programs and partly with a maxtor program but that did not see the whole disk size, only about 30+GB so I cancelled that fairly quickly.

I got Mini Tool Partition boot CD and repartitioned with that 3 primary partitions, a swap, Win 7 and another smaller partition for another OS, maybe Linux, plus an extended logical partiition with the rest of the space.

I thought, finally close to finishing this off. However it turns out not to be the case because Win 7 will not install. It's telling me that "setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition" when it actually shows the partitions that I created and has the Win 7 marked as "system". Therefore the drivers must be okay, BTW my bios is set to use AHCI for the SATA, I had set it to IDE none native mode to do the partitioning etc for maximum compatibility. I did load the Intel AHCI driver for my motherboard from a USB flash drive when I began the install.

I did search google for this and one suggestion was the lack of MBR which sounded failry likely seeing as I had deleted/zeroed everything but after entering Minitool PW again and checking it shows the drive as having a basic MBR. I did redo the MBR in PW to make sure but it has not made any difference because I am still getting the same error.

Does anyone know where the problem might lie? Why I cannot install windows 7 x64?

How old is the drive ?

Maybe it`s time for a new one.