Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation

Yes this is a very very annoying problem and through my search on google I see that many people are trapped, yet still I did not find any guide or tip or trick that can help. After a while messing around with the partitions I finally managed to find a solution.

Note

1. If you have been searching you may see some posts saying that it has something to do with RAID, but it was not my case.
2. In my case it is Windows Server 2008, but I am sure the same problem can happen with Windows Vista, so the solution may still work.

Scenario: I have Windows 7 and Linux multi-boot on my computer and I want to delete Windows 7 to install Windows Server 2008 instead, but the installer keeps throwing the frustrating error when I choose the partition to install.

Details

• I have tried to reformat the partition both using the installer and using Gparted (on Ubuntu Linux) but without success.
• I have only one hard disk so it is not RAID.
• I do not want to lose my Linux partitions so I cannot repartition the whole disk.
• I understand the possibility that certain OS may require a primary partition for successful install and have been partitioning my disk very carefully. This is not the cause of the error anyway, I have Windows 7 on it already.

Reason

• Windows needs the partition it is installing to be active, which means it must have the boot flag set. This is because during the installation it needs to reboot your computer and it must boot back into the half-installed Windows partition.
• The Windows installer is not so good at partitioning, as it cannot set the boot flag itself. Yes, it throws an error instead!

My solution: Using Ubuntu to check with Gparted, I can see that the boot flag is currently on the Ubuntu partition (I used Grub for multi-boot). It becomes clear that when I first installed Windows 7 the boot flag was on that partition but when I setup Ubuntu for a multi-boot system it was automatically switched to the Ubuntu partition. After I set the flag back to the Windows-to-be partition the installation is back as normal.

General solution: Instead of Gparted that I use, you can get any partitioning tool to fix that. If you have another OS working on that same machine a quick google will give you the free software that can do the trick. If you computer is already screwed up, perhaps you need a boot CD with partitioning tools.

That’s it, have fun formatting!

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Partitioning scheme with extended and logical partitions