Re: Can't install Vista (Resolved)

For some reason, the BIOS is still wanting to put that drive first. I have changed it in the BIOS *2* times. I am not sure why this is happening. The external drive was attached/installed long after the original install of Vista since January this year. It has been working fine. Not sure why this keeps changing in the BIOS, or why it was there to start with. There is *no* operating system installed on that drive, it is a data backup only drive. So I don't understand why it is being seen first when it is on. That is at this point the puzzling part.

Jan :)


"Colin Barnhorst" <c.barnhorst@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2A59DF6E-80A4-4A82-A864-A287331A1035@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I can't believe that I just saw the same exact thing yesterday!

The only thing I had done was install Windows Search 4.0. After the reboot I got OS disk not found just like you describe. Both my optical drives and internal hard drives had moved to the last four items in the boot menu (7 thru 10). I assume if a usb entry is ahead of those the boot will halt if a usb hard drive is attached, which one was. I reordered the boot order so the optical and hard drives were back in line after the floppy and moved on.

But I can't for the life of me figure out how the order got changed like that. This is a six month old box and there has never been anything happen on it like this. And the usb drive enclosure has been attached continuously for the whole time.

I agree that usb drives should not be connected during installation or upgrade of Windows and I have had a couple of enclosures that prevented a boot or caused Windows Explorer to stop working, but I have never seen anything change boot order settings like this.

"Jan :)" <abuse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:uLev$ug2IHA.416@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ok.....after several attempts to install, and a number of hours of troubleshooting, I finally found the culprit. It was my Antec external hard drive.

Apparently, I discovered this after I unplugged all but the one drive in the machine that I wanted to install the Vista on and still got the error. This really confused me, even more than usual. I needed information that was backed up on the external hard drive which is normally plugged into the machine, so I unplugged it the machine to use on another. While the other machine was retrieving the data, I tried the install again and Bingo!! It began the install and completed normally. I spent the rest of the day setting things up again, and the next morning installed all the necessary drivers and updates and programs and such.

Yesterday, I moved the external drive back to the home machine so that I could do a backup of the new install, and all went fine until I later installed a new program that requires a reboot> Sur-prise, Sur-prise!!! When it came back up I got the Operating system can not be found. Gah!!!! GRRRRR!! So....I tried to do a repair using the Vista media DVD and it would not repair, and I could not reinstall as I got the original error. At this point I was totally confused. But....then I remembered something I saw when it first booted up with the DVD, that there was one drive that was listed apart from the others as it went through the boot setup. Hmmmm......why was that drive out there like that, which I had not seen before, and which one was it? There should have been only one drive there, outside of the CD/DVD ROM and the floppy that were still plugged in. So I booted up and went to the BIOS. It seems somehow the external drive was listed after the floppy and CD/DVD ROM.

I decided to do a little test, and turned off the external drive, then rebooted. Voila!! It booted into the Vista and everything was still there!! Whooo hooo!! To back up my suspicion on the external drive, I turned it back on and then rebooted. Again, "Operating system not fond" AHA!!

Now I was pretty sure I had the culprit nailed, so I went to the BIOS, changed the lineup of the drives, putting the drive with the Vista in line after the floppy and CD/DVD ROM, as it was the only one with a operating system. Rebooted and all came back up, booted into Vista as it should. Then to further test, turned the external drive back on, and rebooted. Again, it booted into Vista as it should, and I have had several more reboots as I have installed more programs and updates. So.....I may have left out a few things, but, that seems to have been the primary problem with the install. I just recently got the external hard drive, and this is my first time doing an install with it. So now I know to turn it off/unplug it when I am doing an install.

This was at least the cause of my problem, and I wanted to pass on what I discovered in case it might help someone else.

Thank you all for your time and help. It was very much appreciated, and it kept me plugging at it until I was able to nail the guilty party and get it resolved. :-)

Jan :)






"Jan :)" <no abuse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ufQrUI91IHA.5728@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I had Vista Ultimate x64 installed on my machines, and wanted to install the x86. But, when I tried to install the x86 after deleting the x64 version, I now get an error that says that "Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation." I have reformatted the drive and all else that I can think of, but, it it continues to throw the error message. What should I do? I am sure that my system and hardware is sufficient to handle the Vista install, and I am trying to install to the same drive that I had the other installed to:
Processor
2.00 gigahertz AMD 64 Opteron's (2 installed)
Main Circuit Board
Tyan Tiger K8WE
Memory Modules
2 GB RAM

I don't understand what the problem is and I hope someone here can help.

Jan :)




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