Fixed Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria

eoinf

anyone know what this error means and how to fix it?

is it something to do with the disk partitions?

the disk has no partitions and is formatted .

it is formatted in Fat32

does it need to be formatted in NTFS?

can anyone help?

cheers

EF

this seemed to work
1. Insert the DVD into the DVD drive.
2. On the disk selection screen, press SHIFT+F10. A Command Prompt window opens.
3. Type diskpart, and then press ENTER to open the diskpart tool.
4. Type list disk, and then press ENTER. A list of available hard disks is displayed.
5. Type sel disk number, and then press ENTER. number is the number of the hard disk that you want to clean. The hard disk is now selected.
6. Type det disk, and then press ENTER. A list of partitions on the hard disk is displayed. Use this information to verify that the correct disk is selected.
7. Make sure that the disk does not contain required data, type clean all, and then press ENTER to clean the disk. All the partitions and all the data on the disk is permanently removed.
8. Type exit, and then press ENTER to close the diskpart tool.
9. Close the Command Prompt window.
10. Click the Refresh button to update the disk selection screen. This step lists the disk.
11. Run Windows Vista Setup to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

Just to sum it up, your problem was indeed that the drive had only a FAT32 volume. Vista requires NTFS for its boot volume as it uses ACLs to secure the system files and folders which FAT32 cannot do. You can get it running on FAT32 but it takes some work.