307MB on system drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter David Sanders
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David Sanders

I have Vista pre-RC1 installed on a logical drive. I am trying to upgrade
to RC1. Setup fails with the error that I need 307MB on the system drive.
This is a 100MB FAT16 drive that pretty much only has the XP boot.ini file
and ntldr on it. The pre-RC1 installation did not put any files on this
drive. Why does RC1 need 307MB on it?

Does this mean I can't install RC1 without re-paritioning the hard disk?
 
This is a 100MB FAT16 drive that pretty much only has the XP boot.ini file
and ntldr on it. The pre-RC1 installation did not put any files on this
drive.
Click to expand...
Why does RC1 need 307MB on it?
Click to expand...

Setup stores all the temporary files and the Windows PreInstallation
Environment ( mini-Windows )
on the first primary partition, obviously this needs the said space.

Does this mean I can't install RC1 without re-paritioning the hard disk?
Click to expand...

You need not repartition, but must expand the first disks space

That can be done with Tools like Partition Magic or:
If you have a working Vista-Installation you can go this way :

righclick "Computer" --> "manage" --> Diskmanagement : you will see the
partitions you have and can via rightclick do a resizing. To get first
primary expanded, you will have to make another one smaller as first step.

Give it a try, but do a backup of important data , as usual in such cases .

SBJ
 
First of all, upgrading from Beta 2 to RC1 is supported but upgrading from
pre-RC1 to RC1 is not.

If Setup is telling you need 307MB on this drive and you don't have it, then
you need to install on another drive. FAT16 is not a supported file system
anyway and Setup may not be dealing with it accurately. I cannot imagine
letting a FAT16 or FAT32 drive get into the act at all, but I'm sure you
have your own reasons. I have long ago relegated anything that uses FAT16
or FAT32 to VPC and gone strictly with NTFS.
 
I upgraded from pre-RC1 to RC1. What unsupported problems should i expect?
So far things seem to be working well.
 
Well I did a clean install and it worked fine. Not sure why I have a FAT
partition.
 
Did you use a third party boot manager like Partition Magic at one time? PM
creates such a partition at the beginning of the system drive.
 
I used the program that came with my hard drive. I may have thought it was
required to have an initial fat partition to dual boot. I will probably
re-partion/re-format to do a clean install when the final Vista bits are
available and then I can get rid of the fat partition. Thanks.
 
Sascha Benjamin Jazbec said:
Setup stores all the temporary files and the Windows PreInstallation
Environment ( mini-Windows )
on the first primary partition, obviously this needs the said space.



You need not repartition, but must expand the first disks space

That can be done with Tools like Partition Magic or:
If you have a working Vista-Installation you can go this way :

righclick "Computer" --> "manage" --> Diskmanagement : you will see the
partitions you have and can via rightclick do a resizing. To get first
primary expanded, you will have to make another one smaller as first step.

Give it a try, but do a backup of important data , as usual in such cases
.

SBJ
Click to expand...

It won't let me "expand" a system partition. Not needed now anyway since I
did a clean install.
 
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