Tag: setup

How to Resolve the “Setup was unable to create a new system partition” Issue During Windows 7 Setup

Just the other day, I stumbled upon a couple of challenges when trying to install Windows 7 on a RAID array of two SSDs on my computer.

1st Issue: The missing RAID drivers

Since they didn’t exist when Windows 7 SP1 was put together, I had to load them manually inside of Windows 7 Setup.

This was simple enough, though:

  • I got on my laptop and downloaded the Intel RAID drivers from the ASUS support page for my Sabertooth X79 motherboard, then extracted the files to a USB drive.
  • I unplugged the USB disk from my laptop and loaded the driver from within Windows 7 Setup by connecting the USB drive to my main computer while in the “Where do you want to install Windows?” screen. I clicked “Load Driver” and browsed to the “Driver\Disk\64bit” folder. The next screen let me choose which driver to install (only gave me one choice).
  • The driver loaded in a couple of minutes and the disk showed up, just like a good student to school.

2nd Issue: “Setup was unable to create a new system partition”

This issue was a little trickier. To my disappointment, Windows 7 wouldn’t let me install on the RAID disk array I had chosen, giving the following error message:

“Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information”. Continue reading

SSD Not Available During Windows 7 Setup

Intel X25-V SSD - Still Not Getting The Daily TRIM

Intel X25 SSD: Sometimes not showing up to the party

There’s a lot of people who have had issues with their SSD not showing up in the list of available hard drives when installing Windows 7, and today I got to be one of them. I wanted to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on an Intel X25-V SSD (40GB), but the disk just wouldn’t show up.

This particular disk was used as a swap disk in a different system, so I figured it might have some problems related to formatting. Changing from IDE mode to ACHI mode did not do anything. (For Intel SSDs, IDE mode is required for the Intel software to work).

After looking around for a solution on the interwebs, I found two possible solutions, listed by “ease of use”. The second one worked for me, as I happened to have a bootable USB with GParted on hand, but the first one should work too.

Continue reading