Windows 7 Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300024

cameronpieterse

New Member
Im trying to install windows 7 64bit on my 160gb SATA HDD but gets an error saying....WINDOWS IS UNABLE TO INSTALL TO THE SELECTED LOCATION. ERROR: 0X80300024
i can install windows xp just fine.
any help will be appreciated,thanx...
 
Don't know for sure, but could you describe you drive and how is it partitioned? You aren't trying to install in the 100 mb partition, are you? Is XP still installed and you are going to Dual Boot?
 
thanks for the reply,much appreciated.
i installed windows xp just for a test,it installed correctly. with windows7 though when you come to the option where you need to select the drive to install to it shows that my hdd has unallocated space.the format icon is greyd out but when i go next it gives me the error.
i removed the hdd to an external case,did n full format,i have no partitions nothing,but still windows 7 installation does the same
 
There have been some cases where the hard drive was not recognized if it had not been partitioned first. If you have more that one drive, I would suggest you disconnect the other drive or at least make sure the Win 7 drive is first in the bios.

On the bottom right of the partitions window there is a disk options button. You can use that to put a partition on the drive if it works in your case. This will allow for a special partition win 7 likes to use. If you are going to dual boot with XP I would suggest not allowing that. The only way to avoid the partition is to partition ahead of time or use Diskpart.

If you partition the drive ahead of time, it should be seen, but maybe that is what you have already done.

If you want to try, while on the partitions page, hit Shift+F10. This will open up a command window where you can use Diskpart to partition the drive.

Hit return after all commands and wait for confirmation:

Diskpart
List Disk
You will see a list of installed drives. Pick the one you want and substitute its disk number for 0

select drive 0
clean
This will clean off any other partitions.
create partition primary size=75000 quick
This will create a 75 G partition
exit
exit

Now, on the partitions window, there is a refresh button you need to use to update the window. Now try to install on that partition. Win 7 will format prior to install.
 
hey,thanx for the help.
i tried to do what you said but when i get to the create partition primary its gives an error, something with the cache.

i also saw that my hdd bfore going next for installing says unallocated disk spaace.

thanx in advance
 
There seems to be other situations where Win 7 will not recognize a drive. Some have been solved by adding a partition first. In some older systems, a bios update has been necessary for larger drives.

If the drive can be seen in the bios, Win 7 should be able to see it unless possibly you have it set as RAID and need a driver first. You might try downloading a bootable copy of Partition Wizard to look at the drive and add a partition that way.

This drive is an internal SATA and you have it connected to SATA 0?

I don't really know why XP would install and not Win 7. They do have different boot systems and use a larger MBR (I think), but otherwise if enough room is there, it should work. How old is the drive?
 
"This drive is an internal SATA and you have it connected to SATA 0" i have it connected to SATA1
Yes the drive is seen in bios i dont think its in raid not 100percent sure but ill make sure 2night.
Will try to partition the drive with boot partition and see what happens.
The hdd is new,was from a new HP pc that was bought a month or two ago.
My one friend told me he just had the same problem as me, his solution was swapping the memory around.i did that hundreds of times but still nothing.
 
There is a tool called Gparted that can do your partitioning chores.
It is a Live CD that operates outside of any OS.
It uses a GUI interface so no command line stuff is needed.
You D/L the .iso from Gparted's site and burn to CD and then boot to the CD.
If you go that route there will be three places while Gparted loads that needs user input,
choose the default in each case.

GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD

The site has info on using Gparted (screenshots).

What I would do is completely clear the drive using Gparted and then create partitions as needed.
If you want to dual boot create a NTFS partition at the start of drive.

Then install XP first then Win 7.
Win 7 will create boot files on the XP install and generate a boot menu.
 
Since you brought up the HP situation, I suppose we can't rule out that might be related to the current situation. I do not know what manufacturers do when they install stuff, but maybe there is a hidden partition or something similar that would keep if from loading Win 7.

You might try on of the suggested third party partitioning software to look at the drive and see if any partitions show up you do not expect.
 
Since you brought up the HP situation, I suppose we can't rule out that might be related to the current situation. I do not know what manufacturers do when they install stuff, but maybe there is a hidden partition or something similar that would keep if from loading Win 7.

You might try on of the suggested third party partitioning software to look at the drive and see if any partitions show up you do not expect.
Many makers place restore data on a hidden partition in lieu of actual physical recovery media (lazy cheap bastages).
My Acer notebook had a 4 GB restore partition that wasn't visible from Windows or even Partition Magic.

I had to use Darik's Boot and Nuke to low level format the entire disk to remove the hidden partition and recover the 4 GB drive space.

DBAN is a bootable CD that writes zeros to the entire drive including the MBR I think.
It returns a drive to as new condition.

This might be an option that with Gparted (to activate and create an NTFS drive) might make your drive accept Win 7.
DBAN restores the drive to a pre activated state, it's that thorough.
DBAN can take some time to work it's magic dependent on the drive capacity and the options chosen.

Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

I've got some time so I will run DBAN on a spare 120 GB drive to see what the results are and to see if Gparted can activate the newly formatted drive.
 
morning gentz...

i tried the dban ulity but stil nothing.
autonuke is the command to autamatically wipe the hdd or should i be using another command?
og this is driving me crazy for a whole week already... :-(
 
Did you ever get GParted to work so you could post a picture of your drive setup. Someone the other day was trying to install on a dynamic disk but no one knew it was setup as dynamic .

You have wiped the drive, you have used it in another computer, you have installed XP on it... What else can you do and what could be wrong? Why will Win 7 not install..possibly bad Win 7 or drivers for your system, or something on the drive... I really don't know what else even to check.
 
hey Saltgrass i tried gpart yesterday,it picks up 149gb unpartitioned drive, i tried to partition the drive with gparted but only got an error,restarted gparted and it showed that the new partition that i created was unformatted so i tried to format it but got an error again...
Got a new copy of Win7 64bit so its not the dvd..
maybe the hdd is faulty havent tried on another hdd coz i dont have one or maybe even my motherboard issues coz the P55 motherboard that im using has lots of people complaining...

thanx............
 
The only time I have seen where the drive or partition would not format is when the thing was hidden. I believe GParted can hide or unhide partitions, so you might try that. It might also be able to wipe the drive,

If none of that works, I would go for KillDisk, or something similar and let it really wipe the drive.

I was reading about Bit Locker yesterday and notice it would lock the drive if it did not have the key to decrypt. I don't suppose you would know if that had been used on the drive, do you?
 
problem finally solved...
put my hdd in an enclosure, formatted it and created gpt partition on a windows 7 machine.
that seemed to work,i previously tried to formatt on a xp machine but windows 7 machine worked.

thanx for all the help guys i really appreciate it,hope my answer will help someone in the future...
 
Hi, I have the same problem. What exactly did you do? Formatted the whole hard drive? Or did what? Thanks in advance.
 
hey

all i did was format my hdd on a windows 7 machine,some how that made the difference..maybe it deleted a partition or file system got change,did something xp didnt do when i formated my hdd on it.
just a week afterwards it gave me disk error when booting up,think it might be due to a faulty hdd that this happens. using my hdd as an external,bought a new hdd for my windows 7 machine and its been working perfectly since...
 
Guys, I'm just having a river crying my rage out of this error...first, have a 150GB HD full of important data, lets say college tesis and stuff which one day said HD took me by surprise, a HD that didn't give any error prior that day, then it won't load window 7 since some kind of sound like clack, guessing with that, the disk is dying on me with that data, so figured it could be usable as a slave, bought a new 250GB maxtor IDE today so I could try something out...oh my fcking day, in serious, better be dead than in this situation, now this error is starting to overtake me, what can I do.

While trying to install window 7 ult 64 on it, in the first run, window didn't pass further than loading screen where the window's flag appears, then figured it was the IDE cable that was a bit out of place, after assuring myself everything was in order (don't know if abruptly shutting down the pc can do any damage to the new HD) so after everything set, window would boot up to where gives the option "where do you want to install window" then it was giving me some kind of unable to install window message, proceed to format the disk in the Drive option, refreshed and made a partition and hit next so installing window 7, but then FREAKING forgot to make any extra partition, being so nervous at the moment, so decided to take out the W7 disc so the window wouldn't install, then re inserted and re started, but then this error appear, now it won't let me format, nor Extend, nor Delete but only gives me option for make a new partition which doesn't do ANYTHING, ..don't holy know one bit what to do about this and almost crying, fear and pressure are just, ok enough, need some air.

Any ideas, please, THANKS A LOT in advance.

Edit, someone advised me to create and use a 3rd party software bootable disc for create a partition, but then I only have a mini laptop which doesn't have any burner at all, but a flash drive, any idea of how to make the same thing with a flash drive? was doing my research with Gparted, but don't know how to use that thing, then partition wizard bootable...but the paid version is the one that gives option to create a boot-able flash drive...help.
 
Gparted can be installed and booted from a thumbdrive.
D\L the .iso from

Browse GParted Files on SourceForge.net

D\L the Gparted-live-0.5.2-9.iso

Place it somewhere convenient, like the desktop of your netbook.

Then D\L Unetbootin from

UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

Unetbootin is a tool to create a USB thumb version of gparted from the .iso you downloaded earlier.

Place it on your desktop also.

It is a standalone program.
To use first insert your thumb drive into a USB port and make sure it is formatted Fat 32.
If it is and there is data on it thats ok because creating a USB Gparted wont touch your data.
It must be Fat 32.

Next start unetbootin by clicking the unetbootin.exe.
In the window that opens ignore the first field (distribution) and drop down to the (diskimage) field and click the radio button to select it.
Use the browse button on the far right of this field to browse to your Gparted .iso.
Make sure your USB thumb drive is showing at the field at the bottom (type\drive)
Click OK and wait for unetbootin to do it's thing (a minute or two).
You will now have a live USB of Gparted.
Boot to it to perform partitioning chores.
There is direction on the Gparted web site on hpow to use including screenshots.

Unetbootin can be used to create a USB thumb drive installer for Win 7.

Once you finally get Win 7 installed on your new drive and if interested I can detail how that is accomplished.
It's handy to have a Thumb drive installer for Win 7 because it installs Win 7 in about half the time of the DVD, in case you need to reinstall windows
and you can run the repair stuff from a thumb drive quicker in the event that is needed as well.
 
Back
Top