Question: I’m reinstalling Windows 7 64 bit, and I encountered an issue I’ve never seen before. I have a legit copy of Win 64 Professional, and I’ve installed it probably a half dozen times on this machine in the past without a problem.
Googling the error only brings me to issues with people who are upgrading to win7.
The drive itself seems to not have a problem. I can mount it on other systems and I can create an NTFS partition on it on other machines. I can install Ubuntu on it without any issues. Additionally, if I try using my alternate backup hard drive, the installer gives the same error.
I have run diskpart from the setup page and clean seems to report that all is well. However, I cannot get past the screen below, which says Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. This happens regardless of whether or not the disk space is already allocated.
What is causing this? How do I solve or get past this?
Edit: One Week Later
I am at my wits end with this… I have tried installing windows on four different hard drives, using two completely different motherboards, I even borrowed a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate as well as my legit Win7Pro disk. I have tried with no existing partitions, and with existing (and fully functional) NTFS partitions. I’ve tried installing off of USB and DVD. Every time I get to the screen shown above I get the same result.
Answer: I got it to work.
What I did:
- Remove all USB devices except the keyboard
- Set the boot order in the BIOS so that the HDD is first
- Disconnect the network
- Use a DVD (not usb) for installation
I had tried each of these things individually and in different combinations. I’m not sure why it suddenly worked now, but windows setup was suddenly able to create a partition.