I have a 2TB hard drive with 2 partitions on it, one a C drive (500GB) for WinXP and another for extra space (1.5TB).
I have a Win7 Pro install DVD and I have formatted that C drive via the DVD; it is now a blank "Primary" partition.
I attempted to go through the Win7 setup and install it on that partition, but it's giving me an error:
Setup unable to create new system partition or locate existing system partition. See setup log files for more info
Googling around leads me to believe the entire drive has to be "cleaned" (diskpart) but that would wipe the entire other non-OS partition and I need to keep that data. The exact quote that I found:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/21583-63-windows-setup-unable-create-system-partition#t96434
That's because the drive was partitioned prior to the Win-7 install. What you want to do, to have Win-7 install the 100MB MS hidden system reserved partition before the OS partition, is to start over as a clean installation. Choose Custom (Advanced), then when you come to the 'where do you want to install windows?' Delete all the partitions on this 250GB drive.
Also not have any other HDD connected, and if possibly make the USB drive folder Read Only, so the MS reserved partition doesn't get placed on it. Do you by chance have the DVD installation disk if need be?
Give that a try, and if all goes well, in Disk Management, you will see a 'hidden' MS reserved 100MB system partition, followed by your Win-7 OS, boot, crash dump, pagefile partition.
I don't want to wipe out the entire 1.5TB partition, I simply want to install Win7 on the other 500GB partition. How can I install Win7 on this blank partition without losing data on the other partition?
Or where is the setup log located?