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I received two computers, and they are both having identical problems. I am booting from USB and I see the hard drive, but I get this message "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. Searching this there were multiple people that had success with using the disk part utility. I ran the utility twice, on BOTH computers and I was still getting the same errors.

I was getting this error message: enter image description here

I went into disk part and asked for disk attributes and I got that my disk had boot disk set to no.

How do I change this? I reset my bios, and I removed all devices from the boot sequence except for my HardDrive and my USB that contains Windows 7.

Other notes: With no usb in the computer the computer complains about bootmgr missing, but this is useless because I want to do a clean install anyway.

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  • What does clicking "Format" on the screen result in?
    – Kinnectus
    Jul 28, 2014 at 18:49
  • What brand of computer is this? Might there be something special in e.g. BIOS?
    – Hannu
    Jul 28, 2014 at 18:49
  • @BigChris I've tried format/delete/new all with no luck.
    – EGHDK
    Jul 28, 2014 at 18:51
  • Have you tried DOS partitioning tools. Most of them are free and size of the download will be very small - Give that a quick try FDSIK
    – Prasanna
    Jul 28, 2014 at 18:51
  • @Hannu it's a lenovo. Doesn't seem to be anything special about it. I did take a look at different hard drive settings, but also had no luck. At most (when I read about the issue) it was to reset BIOS to default. Which I did.
    – EGHDK
    Jul 28, 2014 at 18:52

8 Answers 8

Reset to default
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This sucks.

I found my solution after about another 5 wasted hours of my life.

I stumbled upon this "fix" on MS's technet blog

I saw a comment:

I had this error on RTM with the combination of Intel 310SSD and Kingston DataTraveler Elite 3.0 USB stick.

Could it be? This particular USB stick being the issue? (I have 3 of these). I tried it on another. Same issue. Took another generic 4GB staples usb from like 5 years ago... worked fine.

Kingston. You suck. I don't know why, but you do.

Side note: Put Ubuntu on the USB. Booted/installed just fine on the Kingston.

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  • 2
    I was trying to use a Kingston DataTraveler G4 and I was running into the same issue as OP. I Saw this answer and decided to ditch the Kingston USB. I found a random USB lying around the house and used that as the bootable USB, and guess what, it worked. I would have never thought of trying this. +1 for EGHDK and the internet.
    – dchaboya
    Sep 4, 2014 at 20:14
  • Sir, you're the lifesaver! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
    – Limon Monte
    Apr 8, 2015 at 21:16
  • We should probably add a "Wasted hours" counter. +1 for the answer and +5h for the counter.
    – awesoon
    Jun 21, 2015 at 12:08
  • 1
    I've been in IT for quite some time, and this is one of the weirdest solutions that worked yet! 32GB 3.0USB Kingston - failed; Datatravel 2.0USB Kingston - failed; Platinet 8GB 2.0USB - WORKED like a charm...
    – Blejzer
    May 9, 2016 at 13:57
  • 1
    Experienced the same issue with an Kingston DataTraveler G3 16GB on a Vaio laptop. This never happened with this USB stick before on a lot computers. A SanDisk worked fine. +2hr wasted time.
    – Jamesits
    Jul 22, 2016 at 16:20
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This is the easiest solution that I found:

  1. Remove all partitions on the drive (no need to launch diskpart, you can just use the partition selection screen)
  2. Unplug the USB drive.
  3. Click Next. You will get:
    Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300001.
  4. Replug the USB drive.
  5. Click Refresh.
  6. Click Next.

Voila!

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  • 1
    I needed to click Next, unplug, then go back to the previous screen, replug, then go forward. worked like a charm!
    – mlapaglia
    Sep 29, 2015 at 22:48
  • 3
    This worked for me, I'm suspecting that windows is treating the USB drive as a boot primary partition as it shouldn't, but well, this fixes it!
    – ProtoAES256
    Nov 4, 2015 at 16:46
  • Had the same issue with a Kingston HyperX Fury 32GB USB3.0. This worked great. Except after clicking Refresh I didn't go for Next. Instead I made a partition and it informed me it will make a system partition as usual.
    – Cornelius
    Dec 26, 2015 at 15:33
  • I've been having trouble with installation all night -- just tried this with the Silicon Power 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive, no luck. Will keep trying the other answers!
    – Dave
    Feb 2, 2016 at 6:37
  • Had same issue installing from USB DVD drive. Apparently solved by making windows drive primary in UEFI/BIOS and CD drive last, but manually booting to it. Then was able to proceed past error.
    – Charlie Gorichanaz
    Jan 9, 2017 at 7:44
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Another way, download e.g. a Ubuntu Desktop install image put it on a USB-drive and boot it.

Then find "gparted" and try to use it for partitioning the drive.

That might give an initial partition table and partition, which may help in getting things going.

Alternative with Ubuntu;

Open a terminal with CTRL+Alt+T (works in at least 13.10 and 14.04). 

$ lsblk
should display a list of all attached disks and their partitions. USB-stuff might not appear if you have unmounted it/them (turns off power). Alternatively use gparted above and find the /dev/sdx -similar-looking name of the disk. then do

$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=1

which will WIPE the first block (increase count for more) of the disk, which should be the partition table.
double checked the commands ;-)

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Just also managed to spend hours fiddling with Windows 7 and a Kingston DT R3.0 G2 32GB USB3 stick. After picking up some cheap PNY stick everything worked like a charm. Remember having issues a while ago while trying to put together a MacOSX 10.9 USB installer using a Kingston stick.

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For me it happened because I had simultaneously a portable drive plugged in at another USB port. After I unplugged it it was fine.

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1

For me, the key parts appeared to be:

  • installing an MBR and bootloader on a manually created boot partition marked as active;
  • rebooting the installer before trying to use that partition.

Here are the steps that finally took me to successful proceeding:

  1. Create the boot (and perhaps also root) partition whatever way you prefer — such as using diskpart built-in command (press Shift+F10 in installer at any time, enter help or consult the documentation for the rest), or Unix tools. Be sure to allocate at least 48 MiB; around 24 MiB are user out of default 100 MiB, but there should be some room left for updates. It may also be a good idea to align both partitions on 1 MiB to 16 MiB boundary depending on SSD erase block size, if applicable.

  2. Format the boot partition as NTFS and be sure to label it “System Reserved”. When using Unix command-line tools, one may need to manually specify 512 byte sector size and 4096 byte cluster size (or 8 sectors per cluster); be also sure to check whether the partition type id in partition table is 7, which stands for NTFS and alike.

  3. Install the master boot record and bootloader — either from a live Windows installation or from the installer itself. X:\> diskpart # Run diskpart. select disk 0 select partition 1 active # Mark partition as active. assign letter=B exit X:\> boot\bootsect /nt60 B: /mbr # Install boot record.

  4. Exit the installer (if running it) and reboot the machine. Simply refreshing the partition list in installer will not suffice.
  5. Start the Windows installer again and select an existing root partition or create one now alongside your boot partition which should be listed as being of type “System” (rather than “Basic” for regular volumes). Upon continuing, the installer should use that boot partition automatically instead of trying to create it.

That should lead to successfull installation. Otherwise, try other solutions.

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I tried all of these answers on my brand new Lenovo Thinkpad T450s, and none of them worked for me. I am using a Silicon Power 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive. I would get the same error as the OP.

The problem for me was the lack of USB 3.0 drivers in my Windows 7 image. Mine came from X17-59186.iso. Fortunately, I came across a very good page on how to do it:

http://codeabitwiser.com/2014/03/how-to-install-windows-7-with-only-usb-3-0-ports/

Once you use DISM to slip the USB 3.0 drivers into the boot.wim and install.wim files, and move them back to the USB 3.0 flash drive, you'll be able to install to the new partition.

I had also previously tried to disable USB 3.0 in the BIOS, but this didn't work.

Yay, no more Windows 10!

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For me it was an extra USB stick plugged in which had an UEFI bootable configuration (REFind to be precise).

After removing it and refreshing, I was able to click next!

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