Partition issue trying to install Windows 7 Starter

Question

Computer: HP Mini 210

I am trying to install Windows 7 Starter.

Currently I have installed Fedora 14 Xfce and have allocated 24GB NTFS on the hard disk for the Windows partition.

My current partitions are as follows:

/dev/sda2              97G  4.9G   91G   6% /
tmpfs                 494M   92K  494M   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             485M   68M  392M  15% /boot
/dev/sda5             169G   26G  135G  16% /home

I have created a boot USD to install Windows 7 Starter.

When the computer boots into the Windows setup and I selected the partition I want to install Windows on, I get the following message:

Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.

This is setup displaying all my partitions:

Disk 0  Partition 1 500MB   0   Primary
Disk 0  Partition 2 97.7GB  0   Primary
Disk 0  Partition 3 4GB 0   Primary
Disk 0  Partition 4 171.3GB 0   Logical
Disk 0  Partition 5 24.6GB  24.5    Logical <-- Trying install on this partition NTFS

I have also tried to delete the partition in setup and create a new one, and also tried to format the partition.

However, I still get the same error message.

What should I do?

Answer 1

I have had a similar issue with Windows not seeing a partition available for it. The problem was that Windows saw the HDD, but when it looked at it, it saw a corrupted partition table and didn't know what to do, so it just sat there attempting to install on nothing. Mabey my fix will work for you

Download a GPartED Live CD. Burn it to a CD. Boot your computer to the CD. Use GPartEd on the partition you are attempting to use for Windows and delete it. Once you have a "deleted partition," Windows may not think that the partition table is screwed up and will install. Comment back and let me know the outcome.

Answer 2

I have had a lot of problems with installing Windows onto premade partitions that were made using Linux (even Gparted). Leave the space as Unallocated, and create a partition with Windows setup. Or create the partition, but leave it as unformatted. I only encounter this issue when using pre-formatted partitions.

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WARNING

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Installing Windows will sometimes screw up your bootloader (Grub/Lilo) and render access to linux impossible.

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