Vista 64 Ultimate will not install - Cannot find compatible System Volume????

H

Headbust

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2003
Messages
1,585
I have had vista on the same PC for over 6 months now. I go to reinstall it and im getting the error message of that it cannot find a compatible system volume. I have disconnected all drives and tried them seperatley. Even tried an older drive that has nothing on it and no partitions. Same issue..

any help?
 
Anytime I reinstall an OS, or switch to a different OS, I used a tool to completely clear the drive and it's MBR. I prefer gdisk, but there are several other good utilities.
 
Headbust said:
the drive is partitioned and i cannot wipe it clean.
Click to expand...

Does this mean you have more than one partition on the drive and the non-OS partition(s) have data on them you don't want to remove?

You can delete just the system partition currently in place during the Vista installation - then recreate it and format it, then install to it.
 
I'd boot from a BartPE disc and copy the data off, so it can be wiped clean. Depending on how you have it partitioned, and what kind of partitions, you may not be able to install Vista as is. That's why I said above that you should always start with a blank disk.
 
...the OP stated he tried with a drive with no partitions or tables as well. There's something else going on here, and it's probably simple.
 
What i think happened is when i went to reformat i saw an extra 30gigs that were not assigned anywhere so i deleted my primary OS partition and merged the two to create one. I think this created a "dynamic" partition and thats why it wont install on it. BUT put in another harddrive and it said the same thing!!

My last resort which I will probably do tonight if i have time is use one of my customers HD's i have had sitting on my desk for about a month now, Install vista on that, then transfer all my files over to it. Wipe the original drive out and delete all parititions and then try to reinstall on it again. If that does not work I have no clue, thats if i get that far and it will let me install on the new HD even.

If that does not work i guess i will take the CMOS out for a while and unplug everything and reseat them i guess.
 
I had this same problem. I had windows XP installed on one partition, and I had to set the active partition to the clean partition under disk management. Rebooted and all was well on installing Vista on the extra partition.
 
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