"Windows is unable to find a system volume..."

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
SOLUTION

If you have multiple hard drives installed and even one of them is not
supported by drivers either on the Windows Vista disc or on disks you have
provided Setup, then you will receive the error message about not finding a
compatible system volume.

I have a SATA RAID that Windows Vista will not recognize and an IDE drive
that Vista can actually see. I just went into BIOS and disabled my RAID and I
no longer receive the error message and I installed Vista on my IDE drive.

Now I'm having trouble finding Vista-compatible RAID drivers, but that's a
different story.
 
Hi,

Obviously I was having the same trouble as everyone else...
My HDD is 120GB Sata drive, and Vista sees the drive perfectly...
Initial parts:
Part1: Linux SWAP 1G,
Part2: Linux EXT3 15G,
Part3: Vista NTFS 30G (end of drive)...active

Now the part 3 is at the end of the drive for a reason... the drive is crap
and loaded with bad sectors... luckily I know what parts of the drive are
still usuable...

After trying almost EVERYTHING in this thread I decided to do the *right*
thing:

1. started partition magic in dos
2. deleted part 3
3. created new part 3 but now 40962,8MB (still on END of drive)
4. made part 3 active...
5. applied, rebooted with Vista dvd...

Hopla... !@#%^&* problem fixed...
So the CRITERIA is that your part needs to be round 40Gigs (No I'm not gonna
try and see how small it may be on my system... it's installing already...:)

Hope this helps anyone trying this out

Cheers...
 
Vista setup is telling you that it cannot find an active primary
partition, or is unable to create an active primary partition, on the
disk that the BIOS is set to boot from.
 
i was having the same problem with this error after trying all the
suggestions in this group i tried one more thing. the drive has a jumper set
to master i removed it setting it to standalone drive. vista installed no
problems.
 
I can confirm that setting the target partition to 'Active' solved this
problem.

I just tried to install Vista for the first time and got this error. I had
previously formatted the drive with a 30G NTFS partition and a 10G Linux
(Ext3) partition. Mandriva Linux was already installed and working in the
10G partition. Both partitions were 'Primary', but the Linux partition was
'Active'. These conditions resulted in the 'unable to find a system
volume...' error.

I changed the NTFS partition to 'Active' - I used Acronis Disk Director to
do this, but any partition tool should do - and Vista installed fine. A more
meaningful error message might have been helpful!
 
I can confirm that setting the target partition to 'Active' solved this
problem.

I just tried to install Vista for the first time. I had already formatted
the 40G drive with a 30G NTFS partition and a 10G Linux (Ext3) partition.
Mandriva Linux was installed and working in the 10G part. Both partitions
were set as 'Primary', but the Linux partition was 'Active'. This resulted in
the error.

Setting the NTFS partition as 'Active' - I used Acronis Disk Director to do
this, but any partition tool should do - and Vista installed OK.

I guess a more meaningful error message might have been helpful!
 
I can confirm that setting the target partition to 'Active' solved this
problem.

I just tried to install Vista for the first time. I had already formatted
the 40G drive with a 30G NTFS partition and a 10G Linux (Ext3) partition.
Mandriva Linux was installed and working in the 10G part. Both partitions
were set as 'Primary', but the Linux partition was 'Active'. This resulted in
the error.

Setting the NTFS partition as 'Active' - I used Acronis Disk Director to do
this, but any partition tool should do - and Vista installed OK.

I guess a more meaningful error message might have been helpful!
 
I can confirm that setting the target partition to 'Active' solved this
problem.

I just tried to install Vista for the first time. I had already formatted
the 40G drive with a 30G NTFS partition and a 10G Linux (Ext3) partition.
Mandriva Linux was installed and working in the 10G part. Both partitions
were set as 'Primary', but the Linux partition was 'Active'. This resulted in
the error.

Setting the NTFS partition as 'Active' - I used Acronis Disk Director to do
this, but any partition tool should do - and Vista installed OK.

I guess a more meaningful error message might have been helpful!
 
Try the following:
1. Disable all other hard drives exept the you are going to install to
2. Make sure that this drive is the first (after CD or floppy) boot drive

We have the same problems and after checking all other solution posted here
we find out that this work.

Cheers
 
My system was refusing to recognise my SATA drive too. Through similar
"luck" I did manage to get it recognised after removing my IDE drives and
also starting Vista in the Debug mode (don't know why, I'm sure I had ran
that before).

I then had the System Volume issue next - didn't want to go into the nice
new Partition I'd created for it through Partitiion Magic. In the end I
relented, let it format my c: partition and it installed fine (now need to
recreate my XP in the second partition).

It seems to me like there's a multitude of problems - what's working for one
isn't working for another. Pretty disillusioning start for Vista!
 
Finally! I got vista to install. I unplugged all other hard disks, even those
that I didn't give install drivers for, and vista installed. also, you need
to set the partition active.
 
Oh man, this is EXACTLY what I needed to fix my particular problem with the
same error message.

I am using a very new Dell box with only one drive. I had previously
selected the original XP partition that came from Dell, deleted it, then
installed Beta2. Now, when I tried to upgrade to RC1, I selected the Beta2
partition, but RC1 told me it couldn't find the system volume. After using
the command prompt tool and diskpart as described above, I found there was a
small secondary partition, dunno if it was left over from XP or Beta2, but I
deleted all of the volumes and partitions and then returned to the installer,
and RC1 allowed me to create a new partition.

Hooray for stumbling across this fix, as most of the other posts suggested
uplugging multiple other drives to allow Vista to recognize the right active
partition, which didn't apply to me. Hopefully someone else with a similar
problem can discover this post and fix the problem as well. Let's also hope
Microsoft adds some sort of help to the installer, or better yet, actually
notices more partitions in the installer list! All it ever showed me was the
one partition I already knew about, and never saw this second hidden one that
was keeping it from continuing. Odd stuff.
 
Grope For Luna said:
WD 80GB IDE Drive Primary Master

C: 15GB NTFS 16kb clusters (Active primary partition with x64) 9GB free
D: 60GB NTFS 16kb clusters (Primary partition for programs) 30GB free
Click to expand...

I am having a similar problem. I am getting the same system volume error
when I try installing vista to a newly formatted 120GB ide drive. I have 3
other hard drives in the computer and XP is installed on an 80GB Sata drive.
I have installed 4 previous versions of vista and haven't had any errors like
this. What needs to be done so I can install vista onto this ide drive? I am
running a 3500+ and am trying to install the 64 bit version of vista.
 
I had this same problem.

Although I had a clean 120 GB drive that I let Vista format, I received this
error until I disconnected all other drives and made this the primary master
(was previously primary slave).

Have not yet gotten dual booting to work.
 
I had this same problem.

Although I had a clean 120 GB drive that I let Vista format, I received this
error until I disconnected all other drives and made this the primary master
(was previously primary slave).

Have not yet gotten dual booting to work.
 
I had this same problem.

Although I had a clean 120 GB drive that I let Vista format, I received this
error until I disconnected all other drives and made this the primary master
(was previously primary slave).

Have not yet gotten dual booting to work.
 
Back
Top