Windows Setup was unable to create a new partition.

During a clean installation of Windows 10 on a laptop from an installation USB flash drive, I encountered a strange error. When choosing a partition on which to install Windows, an error appeared:

We were unable to create a new or find an existing partition. For more information, see the installer log files.

We couldn't create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. For more information, see the Setup log files.

In this case, you can create, delete partitions in the Windows installation window, but you cannot install the operating system on any of the partitions.

To understand the cause of the error, launch the command prompt directly from the Windows setup screen by pressing Shift+F10.

Print the contents of the Windows setup error file (setuperr.log):

type X:\Windows\panther\setuperr.log

In my case, there was an error in the log:

Error [0x06069d] IBS GetMachineInfo:Couldn't find info for boot disk [0]

There may also be an error:

IBSLIB LogReasons: [BLOCKING reason for disk 0: CanBeSystemVolume] The selected disk is not the computer's boot disk.

The problem is that the Windows installer cannot create a new partition due to an incorrect partition structure, or there are several physical disks available on the computer (flash drives, SATA / IDE HDD, SSD, USB drives).

What should I do to install Windows on a problem drive? Try the simplest things first:

1. If there are several HDD/SSD drives installed on the computer, temporarily disable all of them, except for the one on which you want to install Windows;
2. Change the boot order in the BIOS/UEFI settings so that your hard drive is first in the Fixed Boot Order list. To boot a computer from an installation USB flash drive, you need to open the Boot Menu during boot using the F8-F12, Esc, F1 or F2 keys (depending on the computer / laptop manufacturer and BIOS version). If the computer boots from the installation flash drive and starts the Windows setup wizard, try to continue installing Windows in the normal mode;
3. If there is no important data on the disk, clean it by deleting all partitions in the Windows Setup window and try installing Windows to Unallocated space.

If the above method did not help, you need to copy the Windows installation files from the USB flash drive directly to the computer's hard drive and install Windows directly from the hard drive (the USB flash drive must be disconnected so that you have only one bootable device left).

To do this, boot your computer from a USB flash drive, on the Windows installation screen, create a partition on which you want to install the OS. Then press Shift+F10 on the Windows setup screen to open a command prompt. Run the following commands:

diskpart

List disk - the command will display a list of disks connected to the computer. You should have two disks Disk 0 and Disk 1 (one of them is a USB flash drive, and the second is a computer hard drive). Determine your hard drive by size and select it (by its number, in our example it is Disk 0:

select disk 0

List the partitions on the disk:

list partition

Find the partition number on which you want to install Windows. For example, this is Partition 1 . Choose it:

select partition 1

Make the section active:

active

Format the partition to the NTFS file system and assign the drive letter M to it:

format fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=M

The following command will help you determine the drive letter assigned to your USB flash drive (for example, your drive is C:):

list volume

Close diskpart:

exit

Now you can copy the Windows installation files from the USB flash drive (C:) to your hard drive (M:):

xcopy C: M: /e /h /k

After the copy is complete, you need to update the boot sector on the hard drive and make your hard drive bootable:

bootsect.exe /nt60 M:

Turn off the computer, remove the flash drive. The next boot should start a normal Windows installation (the distribution's installation files are stored on your hard drive).

After finishing installing Windows, you need to run msconfig and remove the extra Windows Setup boot entry from the Windows Boot Manager menu on the Boot tab . Restart your computer and remove the Windows installation files from your hard drive:

• Directories: boot, efi, sources, support
• Files: autorun.inf, setup.exe

The error We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one can also appear in Windows Server when installing the OS on a SAN LUN that is accessible from multiple paths. Because multipath (MPIO) Windows Server module is not available in WinPE, you need to reconfigure your SUN network so that the disk (LUN) is only accessible via one path.

If, after performing the above steps, the error disappeared, but another appeared:

Windows cannot be installed to this drive. The selected disk contains an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed on a GPT-disk

This means that your computer is using modern UEFI instead of BIOS, and you cannot install Windows on a disk with an MBR partition table. To continue the installation, you need to enable the BIOS compatibility mode (called CSM or Legacy) in the UEFI settings, or convert the partition table on the disk from MBR and GPT and continue the installation:

To install Windows in UEFI mode, you need to create an installation USB flash drive in a special way.

To convert MBR to GPT without data loss, you can use the mbr2gpt utility (available in the WinPE environment). First, validate the disk (in this example, disk 0 is the disk on which you want to change the partition table, its number can be found using diskpart as described above):

mbr2gpt /validate /disk:0 /allowFullOS

Then convert the partition table:

mbr2gpt /convert /disk:0 /allowFullOS