Windows 7 will not install on SSD drive, help?

E

ebilcake

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 3, 2008
Messages
168
I've tried it with both IDE and AHCI but i'ts not accepting it, keeps telling me it's unable to find a partition or something like that after i've partitioned and formated the drive.

Whats going on? Shouldnt windows 7 fully support ssd drives and even ahci? :confused:
 
Damn, this is becoming an epidemic! You are the third or fourth person to post a thread on this very issue. So far, no one has had a definitive solution, but you could try clearing the drive with a third party utility, and then starting your install again.
 
You know a program I can use to clear the drive? this was ment to be a quick re-install and now 1 hour later i'm going nuts.:mad:

The exact message it's giving me "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing partition"
 
Ok, I think i've got round the problem by using my old windows xp cd and formating the drive with that, now windows 7 reads it as a system drive so hopefully should now install.

How did microsoft screw this one up? lol
 
strange... what did you originally choose to format the drive with? and it was formatted with NTFS not FAT32, right? :D

sounds like something isn't formatting the drives properly for Win7 install to find the partition... as odd as that is.

more luck comes around when it's an unpartitioned drive, it seems.
 
It was after flashing the drive, still ridiculous that I needed to use XP to format the drive afterwards though.
 
OK, boot to the install disc and when you get to the point where you select the disk, delete the partition. It should now say unpartitioned space or something. Then just select the disk and click next.

There is zero reason to partition/format the drive in Vista/7 unless you are setting something special. The installer takes care of it all for you.
 
There is no reason to partition or format a drive before you put in the Win7 disc. If that's what you did, then all I can say is "why"?
 
use Diskpart to erase/clean the drive...then install W7...that's what I do with my G.Skill Falcon 256GB SSD and it works fine
 
"Why?"

I think that sums up this thread, do you think Microsoft are aware of this problem?
 
Last edited:
ebilcake said:
"Why?"

I think that sums up this thread, do you think Microsoft are aware of this problem?
Click to expand...
What he's saying is, you don't have to format and partition the drive before you boot to the CD. That ended with Windows 95. As a matter of fact you don't even have to manually do it in the OS installer (like in XP), just point it at the unpartitioned disk and press next.

Wipe out whatever partition/format you did with whatever tool you used, then go back to the installer and see if you can see it that way.
 
ebilcake said:
"Why?"

I think that sums up this thread, do you think Microsoft are aware of this problem?
Click to expand...
Why is a good question. Why would you actually format a drive and set up a partition BEFORE booting from the Windows 7 disc? For best results, always start with a blank unformatted drive.

I suggested using another tool to clear the drive and it's MBR, so you'd have a blank drive, and then your Windows 7 install should go smoothly. It isn't a problem, and there's nothing Microsoft needs to be aware of. Something corrupted the drive's structure, and it needed to be cleared to continue. I prefer using a bootable flash drive with gdisk on it to handle this job.
 
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