How can Vista have a problem this basic at this date?!

[joojoo1234]

When I installed Vista even though all my drives are dynamic except 2 and of those only one has any free space it does not make active the disk and I get the

"Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation"

So I hunt on the internet and half figure out myself over a period of many many hours (staying up to 6am) to go into repair and get a dos prompt and go into this dos based disk manager that microsoft aparently has....

Vista... wow.

It is shocking. But then again maybe it is harder than I know but it seems to me that if they are going to have dynamic disks (which implies multiple disks) they should have a button that says "make this disk active" when you are creating the partition to install an operating system... it probably is going to be the active partition....

The only reason I am pulling my xp pro and installing vista 64bit is to get the free 7. It best not suck or this is my last MS product and will become a S Jobs follower. It is only because the gear is cheaper that has kept me this long. I find it ironic that Windows 7 is good as Mac share is growing and growing and the "operating system" is headed on the internet. Competition may be working.

NEVER MIND - ITS SOMETHING ELSE AS THE DISK IS ACTIVE.... WELL LET ME SEE I CAN BECOME A COMPUTER SCIENTIST SO I CAN INSTALL AN OPERATING SYSTEM ON A HEALTHY ACTIVE PARTITION! I WILL PROBABLY DISCONNECT EVERY DRIVE FOR THIS. OKAY I AM RANTING I HAVE BEEN WORKING AT THIS INSTALL FOR 8 HOURS! WHY WHEN IT GIVES AN ERROR MESSAGE DOES IT NOT LIST POSSIBLE CAUSES AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS RIGHT THERE... WHY DO I HAVE TO HUNT! GOODNIGHT!

_________________

Well just to let anyone know who searches for this

"Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation"

you will not know for sure what your problem is as a few different things can bring this message up..

is the partition active or deactivate - go into fix installation and then get a dos prompt and type diskpart.exe and then list disk then select drive (x) most likely 0 but you should look at your disk list readout.... then select partition (x) probably 1 it then type active it will respond after every step telling you if you have successfully did the command.
if you want to format just type format.... look up diskpart.exe for further instructions

do you have dynamic disks.... unplug them... hunt the drives down by looking at your bios or pulling the drives and looking at the labels by trial and error.... but first before you unplug know the label of your boot drive so you know what to look for. this solved my problem.

another tip... if you don't think you need to then don't format through diskpart as it takes a hundred years.

well 9-10 hour install because of dynamic disks that the vista installer clearly recognizes as being that and sizing them correctly... makes no sense. Why don't they tell you to unplug them? Goodnight

 

[fowang]

When you have more than one active drvie it will cause problems, for other hard drives i would user basic over dynamic, also when installing do you have other drives marked as system drives?

I think i had a similar problem as yourself and i had to delete and format all drives to get them back to basic

 

[joojoo1234]

Well I do know that I had another disk that was labeled primary other than my boot... but I have never booted from that other driver or put an os on it any time... the only thing it was was basic rather than dynamic. I unplugged the dynamics and that solved my problem. It wasn't that big a deal if they would just say this is a likely thing if you have dynamics involved or multiple drives.

Anyone reading this remember... UNPLUG YOUR COMPUTER.... NEVER UNPLUG OR PLUG A SATA DRIVE WHILE ON.... I DID THAT ONE TIME IN IMPATIENCE AND IT WILL STICK I.E. TOAST YOUR DRIVE.