Help with Vista Setup "windows is unable to find a system volume that meets criteria"
I've just finished assembling a new PC with 2 Samsung F1 1TB drives; Drive 0 is brand new, Drive 1 has been used as a data drive on my existing PC using XP Pro (I just enabled it, didn't do a new format and it's been working fine).
Both drives are detected correctly by the BIOS (on a P5Q Deluxe) and show up on the Vista Setup drive selection screen. Drive 1 (previously used) shows up as Dynamic (and I'm trying to install Vista Home Premium which doesn't support Dynamic drives according to the Microsoft Technical Support site).
The unused drive (Drive 0) shows up as Unformatted Space which I can turn into a Partition using the 'new' command, but I can't then format it. When I click on 'next' I get the following error: "windows is unable to find a system volume that meets criteria for installation".
Having read up on the error at the Microsoft Technical Support site it appeared I needed to use the Diskpart.exe utility to clean the disk, and then run Windows Vista Setup again.
How long will it take to 'clean' a 1TB disk, and will I need to do the same for the other (data) disk, or can I convert it from Dynamic without losing the files?
I thought Vista was supposed to be easier to setup? If it's going to take ages to get these drives to work I'm tempted to try Windows 7 or just go back to XP Pro
I've just finished assembling a new PC with 2 Samsung F1 1TB drives; Drive 0 is brand new, Drive 1 has been used as a data drive on my existing PC using XP Pro (I just enabled it, didn't do a new format and it's been working fine).
Both drives are detected correctly by the BIOS (on a P5Q Deluxe) and show up on the Vista Setup drive selection screen. Drive 1 (previously used) shows up as Dynamic (and I'm trying to install Vista Home Premium which doesn't support Dynamic drives according to the Microsoft Technical Support site).
The unused drive (Drive 0) shows up as Unformatted Space which I can turn into a Partition using the 'new' command, but I can't then format it. When I click on 'next' I get the following error: "windows is unable to find a system volume that meets criteria for installation".
Having read up on the error at the Microsoft Technical Support site it appeared I needed to use the Diskpart.exe utility to clean the disk, and then run Windows Vista Setup again.
How long will it take to 'clean' a 1TB disk, and will I need to do the same for the other (data) disk, or can I convert it from Dynamic without losing the files?
I thought Vista was supposed to be easier to setup? If it's going to take ages to get these drives to work I'm tempted to try Windows 7 or just go back to XP Pro
Last edited:
