Windows 8 and the dreaded couldn't create a new partition

Hi all,

        Something must be wrong with me, as I am posting more than normal on my blog!.  This time its about Windows 8.  I have rebuilt my PC over the last few evenings and been running into the error:

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

 

This error hits after you enter the CD key (I must have entered mine about 30 times trying to get around this issue), when you try to assign the partition that you wish to install windows 8 on.  I have 3 hard drives in my PC and I have tried all numerical combinations of disks, plus unplugged all USB ports (I didnt have any devices in my PC during install), removed all SD ports (I didnt have anything in them anyway) and removed anything else that was not screwed on.  Still the same error.

I finally fixed it by following this process (IMPORTANT: These steps assume that you have not got any data on any of your HDDs that you care about!!!):

 

Reboot the PC with the Win 8 CD in and select repair

Head over to the advanced tools option

once in the command prompt run Diskpart

Type LIST DISK

Type SELECT DISK <whatever disk number you have> 

Type CLEAN

Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

Type ACTIVE

Type FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK

Type ASSIGN

perform the above for any other hdds present, but dont make any other drive active of course.

Now reboot and start in the installation over again.  you should be good to go :)

 

I hope this helps you

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Do you have any errors Bharat? is there any particular step that doesn't work?  Have you removed all removable devices possible (SD cards etc)

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  What made the difference for me was that I had to delete all the other other partitions on the other disks in the machine.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  thanks for this.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  okay, for me this changes the disk to not be gpt. any ideas to stop it doing that?

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2013
  Out of all the solutions disabling s.m.a.r.t. worked for me. Have a good day!

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 23, 2013
  hey there ReaperFighter could please help with a solution for disks that need to be in gpt format ?

• Anonymous
  March 01, 2013
  Saved my day. :D

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2013
  Tried all the above, and still no joy :(

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2013
  You saved the day!!!!!!! Worked for me :D

• Anonymous
  April 10, 2013
  Instead of using "clean" you could use the following: Type LIST PARTITION Type SELECT PARTITION <n> where <n> is your partition number of the last drive (Drive 0 Unallocated Space 20 Gb) Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY Type ACTIVE

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2013
  Thanks! I thought I might have to use my hard drive as a paperweight before this solution.

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2013
  Thanks! Before reading this, i was trying formatting using easus partition master. Turned out that I was missing the "Set as active" option on the win8 partition. No need to reformat the other drives though

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2013
  I failed for hours until using Diskpart on my hard disk, thanks!

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2013
  Dell T320 with PERC 710. Had more than 4 partitions and dual SD cards. Removed the SD cards and kept it below 4 partitions and now everything installs. I also ran the setup mentioned above and all is well. Why is there a 4 partition (circa IDE interface) limit on a Windows 8 install? Thanks

• Anonymous
  April 26, 2013
  Thank you

• Anonymous
  May 04, 2013
  not working

• Anonymous
  May 09, 2013
  worked for me

• Anonymous
  July 02, 2013
  I ran through the same stuff - but the most common solution is what worked for me - just disconnect everything!   I was skimping and not disconnecting the SD card reader and I think that's what finally opened it up.  I did have a problem after the first reboot where it did not recognize the boot record - but if you boot from the CD again and follow the repair process that seemed to fix it.

• Anonymous
  July 02, 2013
  its working perfectly... Thanks

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2013
  Worked straight ahead,u can do this straight from the "where do you want to install" window by typing shift+f10

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2013
  Much appreciated.

• Anonymous
  August 12, 2013
  Thanks a lot. Worked for me. Thank you very much.

• Anonymous
  August 17, 2013
  Thank you!!! It's so sad after 20+ years of OS development that MS still can't get things right.

• Anonymous
  August 18, 2013
  Thank you

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 11, 2013
  Heeeeelllllpppppp, ok after trawling the world wide web, and trying all the above in many different combos,i am still faced with that error of no partition, and trust me there is a partition lol, if any one can help i will be Waiting, thanks in advance

• Anonymous
  September 11, 2013
  Please Microsoft not only is windows 8 uncool but make at least easy to use installer !!!

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2013
  grrrrr, the CLEAN command apparenly deletes ALL partitions on a disk!!! Not only the partition you want to use for windows :( So be very careful with that! btw, I can't believe that the Windows setup can't handle something so basic as this. Windows 7 never had any problems with this kind of issues...

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2013
  This works! Awesome...

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 11, 2013
  Hey, I seem to be having the same problem but when I type the format part in it doesn't work? Just built my first pc and can't get windows 8 to install it's pretty frustrating! I'm not very knowledgeable at this stuff so maybe it is something else?

• Anonymous
  October 17, 2013
  Thank you so much. This worked first try with no issues. Just a tip though, the very first step should be "diskpart" in thr command prompt, followed by list disk. But thanks again! Big help.

• Anonymous
  October 17, 2013
  Just gotta say -  almost a year later, still works! You're awesome.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2013
  I don't know you, but I love you in a totally non-homoerotic way. Thank you very much! :)

• Anonymous
  October 29, 2013
  Thanks

• Anonymous
  November 08, 2013
  OMG, it worked! I was installing onto a raid set with Intel Rapid Storage drivers loaded.

• Anonymous
  November 08, 2013
  Nice. Thanks

• Anonymous
  November 09, 2013
  thx man! works great!!!

• Anonymous
  November 11, 2013
  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2013
  Thanks worked a treat with 8.1 and an SSD, I did not get this issue with convention sata

• Anonymous
  November 27, 2013
  when I have entered create partition primary...it will show that create is not recognized as an inter or external command, operable program or batch file... plzzz help me...

• Anonymous
  December 08, 2013
  Acer S7 Diskpart didn't work. There was an SD card in the reader though, after it was taken out everything worked as normal.

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2013
  Thanks! you are a master, worked fine after this.

• Anonymous
  January 15, 2014
  Thank you. You saved a lot of my time with this. It didn't work until I unplugged my USB hub that I had only the keyboard and mouse hooked in to. It is not the type that reads memory cards, just a plain hub.Microsoft should find this thread and pay attention, because SSDs are very common now and they haven't addressed this SSD installation issue (which is obviously happening to a lot of us folks out there).

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2014
  change u'r usb drive media it's really work

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2014
  Thanks, I was starting to get mad but that took care of it!

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2014
  I tried every solution on this board, to no avail. Then, I unplugged all other SATA cables and it work flawlessly directly from the Windows installation wizard. Cheers to all that now have memorized their keys!

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2014
  I changed my ssd Kingston hyper to **dynamic ** (convert dynamic)in cmd and also unplug all other drives ....Huston we have lift off.

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2014
  i love you

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 22, 2014
  After being down for several days, your instructions worked perfectly, now i´m installing again!

• Anonymous
  February 25, 2014
  THANK YOU!!!

• Anonymous
  February 26, 2014
  Original hdd crashed. Bought new one 4TB and wanted to use full for Windows. First problem MBR doesn't support large disks, so used diskpart to make one GPT drive with the whole capacity. Second problem getting UEFI bootable drive. Bios supports it but trying with USB failed over and over. Finally made a CD and got me beyond last hiccup. Latest problem Windows can't install on this and these steps didn't help, can't make GPT drives active, only fixed MBR. Frustrated, I made Windows installer delete the partition and create a new one. Windows recognizes the whole capacity as a big drive but creates three extra small partitions that it apparently needs. Seems to go along fine and now to some customization...

• Anonymous
  March 01, 2014
  Thank you Great...... Success

• Anonymous
  March 02, 2014
  You saved my Day!

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2014
  I solved this differently. Went with custom install and deleted all of the current partitions and formatted. I then had to restart the install. Worked

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2014
  Thank you bro - for those that still need help figuring things out i recommend reading this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825686.aspx

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2014
  Thank you. This instruction work for me

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 08, 2014
  Many thanks! You just saved me a lot of time

• Anonymous
  April 16, 2014
  Hi! Thanks a lot for this post, it really helped me. Good luck, man :)
  

• Anonymous
  April 20, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 25, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 26, 2014
  yes that right you can remove SD card and one thing you could go to BIOS for change booting :
  first boot from CD
  second boot from Hard Drive
  and Other …..
  Please try to do this

• Anonymous
  April 26, 2014
  yes that right you can remove SD card and one thing you could go to BIOS for change booting :
  first boot from CD
  second boot from Hard Drive
  and Other …..
  Please try to do this

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2014
  Tanks alot .... I fixed by paragon partition
  

• Anonymous
  May 12, 2014
  Many Thanks = Worked a Dream!!!!

• Anonymous
  May 18, 2014
  Not Working
  

• Anonymous
  June 06, 2014
  Yes, Reapfighter's instructions worked. I was installing Windows 2012 on an HP ML10 entry level server with RAID switched on. I had mistakenly done an install without that first, which had obviously created a partition beforehand. Using the above instructions cleaned out the mess and allowed me to create a new active partition and format it. The next time I got to do an installation all proceeded smoothly, one the RAID driver was installed via a USB memory stick.
  

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2014
  Perfect. Thanks so much for sharing. Performed just on os drive no needed to remove others or partition others for me

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2014
  Good times.. Great post my friend, worked just fine.

• Anonymous
  June 19, 2014
  THANKS MEN U REALY HELP ME
  

• Anonymous
  June 22, 2014
  Thank you, sir. Worked flawlessly.

• Anonymous
  June 22, 2014
  THANK YOU

• Anonymous
  June 26, 2014
  Had this problem installing on our new Dell server. Dell support instructed us to remove the internal SD card module and the problem went away.

• Anonymous
  July 04, 2014
  The first thing to check would be your bios settings. Because new machines now use UEFI there are certain settings needed to be set.
  1. Secure boot is off
  2. Boot needs to set to the following to enable install. Win8 = EUFI; Win7 = Hybrid; XP = Legacy
  
  I had the "Windows 8 and the dreaded couldn't create a new partition" went to my BIOS set boot to UEFI, second attempt windows created the partions and installed with no issues!!!

• Anonymous
  July 24, 2014
  Thank you all for the common sense. I tried repeatedly and disconnecting my other SSD s what worked ( I had 2).

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2014
  Dude thank you so much.

• Anonymous
  August 08, 2014
  this remove all your hard disk data.
  congratulations

• Anonymous
  August 15, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 17, 2014
  Much thanks....worked!!

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2014
  unplug all hdd en sad you don't use :-0

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2014
  Worked for me cheers

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2014
  You panic and THINK it's a problem with your hard drive, but it is actually a strange issue with the usb drive / DVD drive you are installing FROM, not the disc you are installing TO.
  
  Read my above comment for the much easier fix.

• Anonymous
  November 25, 2014
  You are awesome. I haven't had a gaming PC for months and this worked like a charm!

• Anonymous
  December 05, 2014
  This works perfectly, thank you
  

• Anonymous
  December 08, 2014
  Diskpart did not work for me.
  
  I had 5x2TB drives connected along with the C: drive. I disconnected all 5 drives and left the c: drive only. It worked. I suggest if it isn't working for some people disconnect usb drives and your other hard drives.
  
  Thanks,

• Anonymous
  December 13, 2014
  Thank you man. Saved my day.

• Anonymous
  December 15, 2014
  I also was reduced to unplugging all HDDs except the one I wanted to install to.

• Anonymous
  December 18, 2014
  i love you.

• Anonymous
  January 04, 2015
  Thanks it worked on HP TouchSmart.

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2015
  You saved my day mate!

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2015
  thnk you very very matchhh

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2015
  Wow thank you so much! Works like a charm

• Anonymous
  March 04, 2015
  Thankyou heaps.... This is my second Win8.1 install... the first was a breeze... this was a nightmare.... and only to be told that it won't format my disk... I know I got to putting the key in 13 times before I got to this issue... No. 14 seems to be the one... thanks again

• Anonymous
  March 13, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2015
  Thanks. This post is still saving lives...

• Anonymous
  April 01, 2015
  Had the same problem but nothing was working. If this does not work for you as well, try setting the disk you want to install on as first boot device (even though nothing is on it yet) and the installation medium (in my USB-stick) as secondary.
  Not a clue why, but it works :)
  
  I had this on a W2012R2 installation with a lot of disks on several different controllers.

• Anonymous
  April 12, 2015
  Works like a charm :)

• Anonymous
  April 23, 2015
  Worked for me! Thanks!

• Anonymous
  April 23, 2015
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  April 23, 2015
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• Anonymous
  May 17, 2015
  Wow, man, thank you!!! I know its been years since you posted this fix, but it was a life saver today! Trying to do a fresh install on my son's new SSD, entering the code at least 30 times, etc... "dreaded" couldn't-create-a-new is exactly right.. Thanks Microsoft for making this so user friendly (not) :)

• Anonymous
  May 21, 2015
  After doing every thing yet there was a problem , and I thought Quick is not good, now it will take almost a days time to format and I will watch the numbers increasing by 1 / min

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2015
  this did not work for me

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2015
  These steps did not work but I found that I would get this error when I had an sd card inserted during the install. Once I removed my SD card the install then worked.

• Anonymous
  June 25, 2015
  This had no effect for me. Only thing connected is the USB drive I'm installing Win8 from. Tried killing all the partitions and everything and it didn't help. Never had this problem before.

• Anonymous
  June 27, 2015
  It worked on an ASUS laptop that had never been formatted before. Thanks Reaper.

• Anonymous
  July 09, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 10, 2015
  This worked, thanks

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2015
  Thank you so much! I thought i was never going to get it working

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2015
  I had an SD card installed.. After removing it, the install succeeded perfectly. Go figure!

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2015
  when i typed CLEAN , it says "Diskpart has encountered an error: the request could not be perfomed because of an I/O device error. See the System Event Log for more information

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2015
  sorry, i mean when i typed CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY , it gives me this errror
  

• Anonymous
  August 05, 2015
  didn't work, still same error

• Anonymous
  August 05, 2015
  didn't work, same error, any other options?

• Anonymous
  August 16, 2015
  Worked for me for windows 10. Thx a lot

• Anonymous
  August 16, 2015
  Saved my sanity on a GPT partitioned SSD for Windows 10. You are a champion of the people.

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2015
  Worked great!

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2015
  Nice! Fix my problem!

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2015
  If you type clean all the data in disk and alll partitions have gone. What can can i do to retrive them again because i had important files in my local disk D. Can anyone help me????

• Anonymous
  August 26, 2015
  After I did this it now does not even let me have the option to open the windows disk I am stuck on the screen that an operating system wasn't found

• Anonymous
  September 04, 2015
  The 'clean' command did it for me. I used an ssd which failed cloning before and that messed up the gpt tables. You rescued me

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 08, 2015
  Thank you sooo much!

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2015
  This ****** doesn't work !!!!!! >.<

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 07, 2015
  DIDNT ****** WORK ***

• Anonymous
  November 15, 2015
  i had to disable the sata controller which contained drives with my dynamic volumes for raid before i could install.

• Anonymous
  December 23, 2015
  Thanks! Saved me a ton of time. At least 29 times.

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2016
  Tried this multiple times, but nothing worked. I was trying to install from a USB stick, ended up changing the boot order and put the internal SSD disk on top before the usb device and that worked fine.