How To Fix "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition" Error When Re-installing Windows

Tutorials & Methods
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The other day my computer started acting weird and eventually crashed. I couldn’t do a restore and my recovery drive ended up wiping Windows out completely. Don’t ask me how that happened. I still don’t know. So I had to reinstall Windows, but when I was asked what partitions to install it to, I got an error "Setup could not create a new system partition error " and this is how I fixed it. I haven’t seen this method posted anywhere else and the fixes I found only caused me more problems. I couldn’t even use Diskpart properly because It didn’t recognize my hard drive! After hours of trying to fix it, a thought suddenly occurred to me and it worked 100% and was really easy to do. Here’s my method to fix this problem.

Fix “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the setup log files for more information.” error when re-installing Windows.

What you need

  • Basic Linux Knowledge (I’m not going to elaborate. You should know your way around Linux and Gparted at least or be willing to google how to)
  • A Linux Live USB
  • A Windows Installation USB

  1. Load up your Linux Live USB (Pretty much any Linux Distro should work. So feel free to use whichever one you’re more comfortable with. I used my Ubuntu 20.10 for doing this.) No need to install were only using the live version.

  2. Open Gparted (I haven’t found a Linux Distro that this wasn’t already installed on. If you don’t have it though then install it.) we need to check the partition out.

  3. Select your main hard drive disc and go to create a new partition table. (EFI/MRB) Then create a new partition and format it to NTFS. Apply and then exit out of Gparted.

  4. Make sure the new partition and the Windows USB are mounted in your file manager.

  5. Open the Windows USB and copy every file and folder in there then paste everything into the new partition you just made. You can drag and drop also whatever is easier.

  6. Restart your computer and when it loads the windows setup will start instantly, and should now run through the installation with no errors!

  7. Once you reinstall Windows, you can go to C:\ or whatever your home drive is and delete the files you copied in there to install windows in the first place. I also got rid of Windows.old.

Have any problems or need me to elaborate on any step? Let me know in the comments. I hope I saved someone from the hours of work I had to go through before I tried this.

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