Installing Windows 10 on tested harddrive

[photolady]

Seatools said this drive passed it's long test but I can't get Windows 10 disk to format drive. I've deleted both partitions and created new ones and formatted both unallocated drives, but twice now, Windows 10 tells me it can't install on this drive and gives me an error message stating just that it can't install Windows 10 on this drive.

I'm trying to do a clean install and choosing "I don't have a key" option.

[Midknyte]

I've deleted both partitions and created new ones and formatted both unallocated drives

Are you doing that from the Win10 setup or not?
Note that Win10 needs some free space to create the Recovery, EFI, and Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partitions, in addition to the Windows partition (4 total).
If you used a third party partitioning tool and didn't leave any free space, that could be the problem.

I would just delete all the partitions and allow Win10 to create the default partitions. You can limit the size of the Windows partition. If you need other partitions, create them after Win10 is installed.

[photolady]

I should have said I used the Windows 10 disk to do all that and it created the allotted partition it needs to install the initial first partition.

Btw. should it take hours to do the first initial setup? Because this one is doing that, I took a nap waiting on it to start the install.

I didn't have this problem on a new drive I installed Windows 10 on for my niece. It went easy as pie.

I created a new .iso disk and am going to test that later tonight. After supper.

[Midknyte]

So I guess you got it going then?

Btw. should it take hours to do the first initial setup?

It depends on the hardware. If it's really old hardware, it will take longer. It would take longer installing from DVD vs Flash drive too.

[photolady]

It's not old hardware, it's a brand new motherboard and 4gbs ram, plus stand alone vid card, I bought last year.

[Midknyte]

Hmm, hard to say without more details. But a DVD install would take longer than a Flash drive install, just going by media speed.

All the new builds I've done have used SSDs and flash installs. I'm not sure how much slower it would be with a HD and DVD install. Maybe someone else can chime in about that.

[Midknyte]

Since it's 4GB of RAM, I'm assuming 64-bit Windows.

Also how much video RAM does the card have? Windows will reserve the same amount of system RAM as video RAM. So that would take away from available RAM for Windows.

[photolady]

Tried again this time the error message said it couldn't install on this partition, error code 0x80070057

[Midknyte]

Hmm. I found this, but it's for Win7.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...nstall-windows

Symptoms
You receive error 0x80070057 when you try to clean install WIndows 7.
Cause
This error occurs because the partition that is reserved for system is damaged.

Did you delete all partitions on the drive BEFORE doing the Win10 install? You might even want to use a third-party tool like Minitool to get rid of all the old partitions.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/free...n-manager.html

[photolady]

I give up. I'll find another hard drive for it and hope that works. Seatools passed this drive But ever time I try to install either Windows 10 or Windows 7 it says it can't format the partition and returns the error code I gave above. This after I used Windows 10 and then the Windows 7 disks.

This is a Hitachi drive.

And the thing that stumps me is this was working with Windows 7 on it before the previous motherboard was killed.

[Midknyte]

This is a Hitachi drive.

Doh. Seatools can do basic tests on non-Seagate drives, but it's still possible that it could miss other issues.

If you're going to get a new drive anyway, I'd get an SSD, at least for the boot drive. It makes a world of difference.

[photolady]

Windows will reserve the same amount of system RAM as video RAM. So that would take away from available RAM for Windows.

Why would it do that? If the card is installed separate from onboard why would Windows allot the ram (512) of the video card? That makes no sense to me.

[Midknyte]

Why would it do that? If the card is installed separate from onboard why would Windows allot the ram (512) of the video card? That makes no sense to me.

This is not new to Win10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...on-windows-7-b

For example, if you have a video card that has 256 MB of on-board memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system.

[photolady]

I already knew about the ram allotted in any 32bit OS. But on my computer, using Windows 7, under where they say to look, it says 16GB ram usable, and I'm running Windows 7 pro 64bit.

[photolady]

I'm not getting a new drive for him. He's spent enough on this computer already. Yes, I would love that he had an SSD but a regular hard drive for now will have to do. He's 74 years old and never used or even turned a computer on and just got laid off from his job after almost 14 years there.