Windows 7: Hard drive issues

Hello.

So I used to have vista, xp, and mac on my pc. After a while xp screwed up and left me with only vista and mac. My school handed out a bunch of software including windows 7. I saved the installer and key on my desktop and pretty much just left it there for two months. Eventually my vista crashed and could have only used mac. After a very short while my mac crashed to. Thankfully I saved my key on a piece of paper but unfortunately I lost the installer.

This morning I found a iso, burnt it on another computer and poped it in. Everything was fine until I was asked where I want windows to be installed. Due to the fact that I tried to fix vista from dos, my hard drive configuration got messed up. Regardless of that I didnt care becasue everything was backed up on a external so I tried to format all of my harddrives and then instal windows. "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition." What am I supposed to do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Let me ask you this. When did the message appear exactly. Was it when it asked where to install the partition, or when you tried to format it?

There is software that you can burn to a disk the simply erases everything on a hard drive. Kill Disk is one example. This will return it to its original configuration; unformatted and no OS. However, I am worried that your HDD might have reached the end of its usable life. If this is the case you can no longer use the hard drive and it will need replacing. I recommend getting a new HDD from Newegg, because they usually have the best deals on hardware. Now-a-days you can get a brand new hard drive for as little $35 plus shipping. Good luck.

Please read my thread Common Installation Problems and Their Solutions

Problem: Error message “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.”

What to try:
Make sure that the partition is primary, active, and formatted with NTFS.

Instructions for marking a partition as active using Diskpart:
Open an elevated command prompt:
Method 1: From Windows
Click on Start and type “command prompt”
Right-click on the application and select “Run as administrator”
Choose “Yes” when asked to confirm

Method 2: From a Windows install/repair disc
Boot into the install/repair disc and wait for it to load
Choose “Repair my computer”
Select “Command Prompt”

Type diskpart and press enter.
Enter list disk and note the number of the disk you want to install on.
Enter select disk n n is the number of the disk.
Enter list partition and note the number of the partition you want to install on.
Enter select partition n n is the number of the partition.
Enter active
You can now close the command prompt and re-attempt installation.

Hey Jon. So I did that. it didnt work. I saw that post before you answered me and I tried twice with two different hard drives. Exact same thing happens. Thank you for the fast reply. Do you have any other idea?

Take a read of this tutorial:
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation