[...] You won’t get much further on this list, or with Windows 7 in general, if the RC1 installation fails. Several users have experienced a problem in which the installer gives the error message “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.” Generally this error occurs in situations in which multiple disks are connected to the system. In order to eliminate this issue, disconnect any disks that are formatted as “dynamic disks.” [...]

Thank you! I wasted an hour or 3 trying to figure out why I could not partition my RAID array. Once I disconnected all irrelevant HD’s, I was able to partition the array successfully and move on to the actual Windows installation.

Thank yo so much man…this really really helped..like seriously. Cheers

WOW! Thanks a lot for the Help!!! Got caught up with this problems for a day.. FInally solved it with this solution! Thanks!

Man today you are my hero. I’ve spent the past day just loosing all faith in my troubleshooting skills. Thanks for the simple and to the point fix. Keep it up dudes.

Well, moving my RAID0 to the top of the boot order in BIOS solved the problem for me. I had this problem installing Windows Server 2008 R2 x64, but I think the issue is the same for Win 7.

Thankyou for sharing this simple lifesaver

Fantastic – this post has saved me hours of brainracking troubleshooting – Thanks heaps
ps—only had an hour of it prior to finding this.

System:
New SATA II HD for Windows 7
Existing Logical Drive with all my stuff
2 x DVD drives

Getting the same error, simply unplugged the existing logical drive–W7 starting installing straight away on the new SATA drive.

Cheers

[...] You won’t get much further on this list, or with Windows 7 in general, if the installation fails. Several users have experienced a problem in which the installer gives the error message “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.” Generally this error occurs in situations in which multiple disks are connected to the system. In order to eliminate this issue, disconnect any disks that are formatted as “dynamic disks.” [...]

this is all bullshit….its very easy to overcome the bug. simply:
1.delete all the partitions during the setup screen.
2.select new* icon, it will give u a message saying something like the system will create blah blah…press ok.
3. now you will have one reserved partition and one big single partition.
4. select the newly created partition, press next, enjooooooooooooooooouy!

Hi i was able to get the install Win 7 after disconnecting my dynamic disks, however i have one question will my dynamic disk work again once connected after the installation is completed..?

I am afraid to connect the dynamic disk as it has lot of important data..

Are there any chances of getting the partition corrupted if connected?

Thanks for your help

Disconnecting my external usb drive worked for me.
Before disconnect:
3 internal C drive partitions: oem, win 7 x64 (system), primary (empty)
external drive partitions: 2 primary data partitions

After disconnect usb drive the win 7 x32 install succeeded:
internal C drive partitions: oem, win 7 x64, win 7 x32
external drive reconnected after install, no problems

perhaps the installer didn’t like seeing 3 primary partitions, not sure. I didn’t see any dynamic volumes before the disconnect.

You are a certified genius! Read all sorts of guidance all over the show but what a simple solution and v annoying that M$ once again have made something that doesn’t work properly. THank you so much – I can now spend time with my kids and they will probably turn out much better for it!!
dev, London, UK

I’m curious as to why Windows 7 cares about what is going on on other drives. I’ve got a dual boot system, and I had to take the internal drive out of my laptop, and replace it with the one that I had installed in the dvd player bay to get it to install. Thanks for the hint. I would have never anticipated this great new system to have such a brain dead installer.

I’ve tried numerous times to install vista but i keep getting that same error message, aswell as with windows 7. I had only one hard drive connected, no removable drives and i still get the error. What does any1 recommend i do?

hey i was jsu reading all the commentts about the fix, i have a question if thats ok???

what do you do if you never had any multiple hard drives to begin with?

Problem: I am trying to install win 7 on a custom machine and get the same error ont he partition screen.

System:

Asus k8v – x se motherboard
amd sempron cpu
1GB RAM
IDE 80GB hard drive
Nvidia 128mb Graphics card AGP

lol i know its an oldie machine… (its my first baby of many lol)

any help would be much appriciated
thx in advance…

Solved for me too… just leaving only the main disk in the boot order in the setup did the trick… THANKS A LOT!

Thank you for the fix. It was really retarded of Microsoft to leave such an obvious Win 2008 bug.

Had a USB flash stick inserted in my box that prevented Windows 7 64-bit from installing (same error as above). Removed that, was able to install using RAID 10 partition.

Okay, here’s what I did that worked for me.. I have 2 drives in my laptop, the preinstalled drive with vista, and the new drive I just installed for Windows 7… My new drive was showing in the 7 setup list of drives as a Partitioned drive, I deleted the Partitioned NEW DRIVE, then it listed right away as UNALLOCATED space, I clicked next and VIOLA Windows 7 is installing on my laptop right now as I type

Did the trick for me as well… can’t believe that M$ didn’t catch this within the RC and all the testers. Thinking about a MacBook Pro, tired of all the crap from M$… spending so much time for NOTHING, and we all know time is $.

What a lame bug, installing Fedora was easier. At least it can deal with installing to a secondary disk. Pretty rubbish when the machine you are installing on is not infront of you.

Is it possible that this same thing will prevent you from install to a 1 TB SATA drive with a bunch of memory card readers attached? The install goes through, but when the system reboots it simply bypasses the boot sector of the hard drive

Here is how i solved my problem. i had 4 x 500GB in RAID 10 then tried to install W7 Ultimate. It didn’t allow the installation thereby producing “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.” error. i checked on the web for a single straight answer but couldn’t find one.
I finally when back to Bios > Boot menu then make my RAID disk the priority boot, then tell the bios to boot first from CD-Rom. that solved my problem.

That worked great. Unplugged PATA HDD and it installed w/no prob. Unbelievable, M$ hires the best and brightest comp minds in the world and pays them way too much for a dumb move like this. Got to wonder if they do this just to mess with Linux users!?

Another happy reader of this post:)

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I WASTED SO MUCH TIME ON OTHER SOLUTIONS BECAUSE OF MY RAID 0.

It worked for us as well on an HP Proliant DL320 G5p running a RAID 1. Disconnected the SATA2 drive and the install kicked off without a hitch.

I know this has been said 1000 times already but….THANK YOU….I wasted 2 hours thinking it was a Mobo driver issue. This worked like a champ.

Yup, thanks so much for this, I actually had an SD card sat in my reader which caused doze to go meh on me. Installing properly now

Okay I have two drives in Raid 0 and two additional storage drives. All I had to do was go into bios and disable the extra two drives, then retry and it worked instantly, then after its installed i just went back into bios and re-enabled the extra two storage drives.

Basically if your getting this problem and you have more than one drive, go into bios disable all other drives and then try again….

I DON’T BELIEVE IT!!!
I had to disconnect my other SATA drives _and_ had to make my RAID the priority boot drive. Once this was done everything installed.
thank you!

How to slove this problem?I’ve the same problem!

Sonofabitch. It worked. It’s 2010, you’d think they’d have this whole “installation” thing pretty much wrapped up. My problem was that in addition to another harddisk and a usb drive, I also had a 3.5″ card reader connected to a usb port that was showing up as 5 or 6 drives. Yanked everything but the install disk (disks, as it’s a RAID1) and the optical drive and things went on without a hitch.

Dang, and I was gonna take this back to work for the PC guys to look at.

Thanks for all the hassle saved! You’re the best!

Thanks mate!!! Awesome help i’ve spent days trying to install the windows… Really awesome mate! Thanks again!

THANKS… YOU THE TRUTH!…

This had me stuck on a 2008 R2 install but once I took ou the Dynamic disks as you suggested everything started working! Thank You.

taking out the sd card worked for me
thank you all so much for help

Wow man ! at last i could install win 7. No playing around with the partitions just disconnect the unecessary drives.Worked like magic.