Vista does not want to reinstall for me, and XP won't either!

BopNiblets

Hey guys, trying to reinstall Home Premium on a newly built machine (see sig)

My first problem was with the DVD drive, the same one I used to install Vista on my previous system, it kept giving me "required cd/dvd drive device driver is missing" before the bit asking to enter the product key...
So my solution was to try another DVD drive, after another try with another drive, I eventually borrowed my neighbours one and it got to the product key stage.
Then to the clean install on a partition stage and I selected my previous Vista partition (marked as a Primary partition) formatted it and clicked next to install it, then I get this:
"Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation"!!! :eek:

So I deleted the partition and created a new one right there:
"Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation"

The partition is 12GBs and it was NTFS before, never had a problem with it.

Do I need to install some SATA drivers or something? I can see the other drives and they're all SATA (can't use them because I have stuff on them), or could it be a problem with IDE/ATAPI on my mobo?

BTW Acronis Partition Expert didn't detect them either, it couldn't find any drives.

AND! When I tried to install XP as a replacement, the same thing happened, I creataed a partition using the XP install CD and it said something similar to Vista, that the partition wasn't suitable, 3 seconds after I created it!! :mad:

Please help, I've run out of ideas, I'm downloading a linux distro to see if I can get that working.

AlmightyCushion

Does Vista not need about 20GBs free on the hard disk?

BopNiblets

I don't think so, the partition I installed it on was on a 74GB raptor with an XP partition and a games partition, but maybe I resized it down to 12GBs once Vista was on it.

Edit: No, you're right, 20GB for basic, 40GB for Premium etc... so how the hell did it let me install the first time??
How the hell will I resize another partition without losing stuff...

Still that wouldn't explain why XP won't install either, I don't think that needs more than 12GBs.

Capt'n Midnight

Get a Knoppix CD, click on the penguin to open a root shell, and run gparted other distros may use qtparted

pupppylinux has something similar and it's a lot smaller

while you might find a trial version of partition magic, remember it's been called partition tragic

microsoft way would be to (nt)backup, repartition , install clean copy, restore

BopNiblets

Burning Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon now, that has GParted too if I remember correctly, but I also downloaded the GParted liveCD just in case.

Fingers crossed that I can resize one partition and make room for Vista!
If it doesn't work, I have no backup plan!

stewiegriffin08

i quote
":( Vista does not want to reinstall for me, and XP won't either! "

haha

BopNiblets

^ That's no help, you suck.

Ok, Ubuntu to the rescue, after fiddling around with GParted for a while I'm stuck with this:


The last partition is 12GB Primary and there's some unallocated space just before it but I can't resize it... and when I tried to make a partition of the 22.44GB space with Vista it gave me the same "Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation" error! :mad:

Dammit this is a pain in the hoop. :rolleyes:

Also, I had the other hard drives mounted in Ubuntu the last time I booted from the LiveCD, but this time they won't mount, what's the dealio, I could back them up and wipe the whole 74GB if they'd just mount and I could access the files!

Capt'n Midnight

first read up on gpart the bit about backing up the boot sector
and while you are at it get testdisk and have it save a log of your mbr in case it becomes pearoid

the unallocated space is inside the extended partition
you'll can't resize or move /dev/sdc2 until you have moved /dev/sdc5 that is inside it
the other approach would be to shrink /dev/sdc2 and then move or perhaps copy it to the free space after the extended partition

BRB






stewiegriffin08 - if you are going to heckle at least try a bit of wit. :rolleyes:

extra-ordinary_

What way have you got your drives/partitions configured?

BopNiblets

Ok gents, thanks for the advice, in the end I bit the bullet and formatted everything except the first partition, sdc1, which left plenty of unallocated space that Vista finally accepted!
I also removed my other two storage drives and switched the 74Gig raptor over to the SATAII 0 port
(I had it on SATAII1! *smacks forehead*)

Vista is installed and I've added my original DVD drive and storage drives without a problem.

Now, the only thing left to do is create a games partition so I can install Steam and all the games I formatted into oblivion (war has its casualties! over 15gigs of Steam folder!!... but I saved the stuff on the other partition which was much less recoverable, I'll start with TF2 anyway!)

This is the good news:


Thanks to you guys and Gutsy Gibbon, peace out!

BopNiblets

Any ideas why this is showing?
Used space and total file space are different.


Hmm, I had Vista on 12gigs last time with about the same amount of stuff, I did a search for large files and there wasn't that much.

Capt'n Midnight

hidden files and stuff, system restore and all that

BopNiblets

I had unchecked hide hidden files and hide system files so they should have all been included, I usually disable Sytem Restore, I wonder how much space it will give me (do they show up as files? they did in XP I think I remember...)