I’m going a little crazy right now and hoping that someone can help me out.
I just purchased a new Lenovo x200 laptop and an Intel 160GB X-25M SSD. I put the new hard drive in the laptop and booted from the Windows 7 DVD that I burned. Everything is fine until I get to the “Where do you want to install Windows?” screen which lists the drives and partitions available. I have gone through this screen under several scenarios (don’t ask me how I’ve gotten these scenarios), and have not been able to get a successful install on any of them. The scenario I’m in right now is that there are no drives or partitions listed on which I can install Windows 7. There is a “Load Driver” option so I downloaded the firmware update tool for the drive (this is the only download available for the drive on Intel’s site) and attempted to load the driver to no avail. The second scenario I can get to is by doing a full un-provision on the drive. Once I do this, there are three items listed on the “Where do you want to install Windows?” screen: 100MB Unallocated, 100MB Partition 0 (System), and 149GB Partition 1 (Primary). I’ve tried two things under this scenario. First, I’ve tried formatting the Primary partition. When attempting to do so, I get an error saying that the partition cannot be formatted. The second thing I’ve tried is just selecting that drive to do the install on. I do this and get to the next step where it appears Windows 7 is being installed, and then moments later I get an error saying that Windows 7 was unable to create a partition on the drive.
Pleeeeease help. It’s driving me crazy and I’ve run out of ideas.
Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error occured while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error code: 0x80070057.
If I try and click the format link before going to the next step, I get:
Failed to format the selected partition. [Error: 0x80070057].
Then the drive and all partitions completely disappear from the list and I have to do a full un-provision to get it back. I've done this several times now.
Message edited by hazarrd on 06-12-2009 at 01:54:21 AM
Resolved! As suggested from another forum, I booted from a Vista install CD, did a partial install (it was from a recovery CD so I couldn't get it to the point where I could login), and then booted from the Windows 7 CD and clean installed on the larger partition created by Vista. I'm not sure why it has to be done this way, but hopefully this helps someone else out. Now if only I could figure out how to get rid of the dualboot menu screen on startup (there is some weird non-OS option in it). Also, is it a big deal that I did not format the hard drive before doing a clean install? Are there any files that I can/should manually remove from my system from the Vista install?
Would be interested to discuss with an SSD Expert here.
What do you think about a MBR / GPT issue?
When Windows Seven creates and formats a partition, is it he fully compliant with GPT standard?
Now we are in a new era where we should move to EFI and maybe SSDs require newer firmwares or maybe Windows 7 needs a dedicated driver for SSD support (I'm not talking about TRIM command support here)
I seem to be experiencing the same issue on a Compaq b1900 Notebook when installing Windows 7 on a supertalent 32gb SSD. I have also attempted the before mention vista install and i am experiencing the same format error as in 7. I managed to get 7 installed on a 2.5" SATA drive then cloned the drive to the SSD.
Unfortunately when booting off the SSD i get a windows error on the black screen notifing me of a corrupt or missing file. It prompts me to load install disk and choose "repair". After running the repair. the system restarts and WOW windows 7 launched successfully.
After rebooting the laptop after windows updates. I'm back to square one. 7 Can't find a file on the boot partition. The previous repair steps failed as it can't detect the primary partition. Time to clone the 2.5" SATA back to the SSD and do some more troubleshooting.
I seem to be experiencing the same issue on a Compaq b1900 Notebook when installing Windows 7 on a supertalent 32gb SSD. I have also attempted the before mention vista install and i am experiencing the same format error as in 7. I managed to get 7 installed on a 2.5" SATA drive then cloned the drive to the SSD.
Unfortunately when booting off the SSD i get a windows error on the black screen notifing me of a corrupt or missing file. It prompts me to load install disk and choose "repair". After running the repair. the system restarts and WOW windows 7 launched successfully.
After rebooting the laptop after windows updates. I'm back to square one. 7 Can't find a file on the boot partition. The previous repair steps failed as it can't detect the primary partition. Time to clone the 2.5" SATA back to the SSD and do some more troubleshooting.
Forward.
This happens when you ghost vista even... I've used this trick for Vista and Win7 images but I don't know if it can be done AFTER you reimage...
if you want to make a bootable Win7 image you need to run this command before making it:
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice boot
after that you can create a good image that will not need repair after EVERY reboot.