Dumb Win7/Server 2008 bug - BIOS settings

I was trying to get a new frankenstein server up and running - boot would be a 320GB SATA drive off an ICH9R chipset, pretty standard stuff. The OS I wanted to install was Server 2008 R2 x64. I kept getting 'setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition' errors at the disk stage of things, even when using the advanced tools to delete/create new partitions. I even tried another SATA disk.

The solution?

Some googling turned up this: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/8c2c1ac9-dc18-40af-a2b1-88dfaf9c2e70

The part of that thread that worked was BIOS settings. I am not joking. I had set the BIOS settings to only boot from the CD-ROM, nothing else. Changing the BIOS settings to have the 320GB disk as primary boot with the CD-ROM as secondary gave no issues at the disk portion of the installation.

Retarded, and made extra frustrating by the long waits caused (presumably) by the LSI SAS RAID card doing scans. Argh. I hope this helps one of you get by this problem faster than I did!

Comments

  1. Jason WrayMay 9, 2012 at 11:02 AM

    Just thought you would like to know that this was my issue and yes you helped me out, as I dealt with this issue for about 30 minutes before finding your blog. So thankful I stumbled upon this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chris TrotterMay 9, 2012 at 12:35 PM

      Glad that helped. Totally forgot about this issue since I posted.

      Delete

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