Q: Boot Camp - Setup was unable to create a new system partition....from Windows install

I think I'm going to cry from joy. I bought a new iMac and tried to partition it. Needless to say, 30 minutes of Apple Support and 4 tries later I had given up. This solution worked. IT WORKED.

I removed the external harddrive, and as an extra measure, I moved the USB for the optical drive from the second port of four all the way to the left port. I'm currently as happy as a clam.

Thanks.  These solutions did the trick.  Couldn't for the life of me figure out why Windows would not install.  God bless the Internet.

Had the same issue and removing the usb thumb drive resolved it. Thanks Fadhli

Wow, I can't believe it but it was the USB port. My new iMac 27" only has USB 3.0 ports but lucky I have a keyboard with USB 2.0 ports. I put the USB thumb drive into the keyboard port and it worked. This thread saved my but, I never would have guessed this on my own.

I was doing so in the new mac book pro. Got the same issue. Thanks for the help all. I had a USB external drive, and 8gig usb stick. I had to put in the Windows 7 disc into the cd rom and unplug all the USB devices. Restart, and it worked from there! thanks all.

Hi guys,

Today I just run into this problem (I was initially run into Mac Mini OPTION key with Wireless keyboard problem first. Have to go to the shop and get a USB wired one to finish the installation).

Here are the steps:

1. If you are stuck with Mac Mini automatically boot in Windows installation and encounter the problem "NO BOOT DISK-PLEASE ENTER... TO FINISH...".

2. Don't worry. Press and hold the power button on Mac Mini to force it to turn off.

3. When restart, quickly press on your Apple Wired keyboard (OPT+CMD+P+R) or Windows keyboard (ALT+WINDOWS+P+R). The screen will flash once (now you can release those buttons).

4. In the MAC OS go to Bootcamp Assistant and remove Windows Partitions (to avoid future problems).

5. Now prepare the following BEFORE you install windows: Remove all devices that are currently plug into your USB ports (leaving only 1 for your bluetooth mouse and 1 usb to create Windows installation disk on it - keep this in the very left USB port).

6. Use BC assistance to create disk and partition your drive (I assume you have already downloaded the Windows supports and have saved them on another USB thumb drive)

7. When it is done, it will automatically restart (don't press any things)

8. So now go through the installation process like normal (remember to format bootcamp drive) (and now you will only have 1 USB for your mouse and 1 for Windows disk).

Cheers.

1 more small thing:

When you have to type your User name in Windows, you can plug your keyboard USB in (wait for 1-2 mins for Windows to recognise it) and use it to type.

I had the same problem with my new MBP Retina 15" early 2013. Two days of installing and trying and installing. Horrible. Apple Support (Care Protection Plan) finally said: Cannot help. Call Windows support. ;-) Your advice helped. Thank You!

Well I tried everything in this thread but it didn't work for me.

What worked for me is in this link .. http://www.mindflakes.com/blog/posts/2013/5/13/boot-camp-windows-7-and-usb-insta llation-gotchas/

I am also pasting the text here, in case the original poster removes the page.

May 13, 2013 3:23 PM PDT

A few days ago, I decided to pull the trigger and install Windows on my Retina MacBook Pro at a LAN Party. It’s a perfectly fine machine with a decent graphics card and CPU. I started Boot Camp Assistant and followed through with the instructions to install from the USB drive using the ISO of Windows 7 I had on my Desktop. If you follow Apple’s steps to the letter, your installation of Windows will never proceed.

If you do follow the steps, you will most certainly get an error of “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. ” when you select the BootCamp partition that you had just formatted in the Windows installer on your Mac. This can occur on PCs too but basically the issue is that the USB drive is initialized as another valid bootable disk. If you were to Google this, you will findsolutions online that involve yanking out the USB drive and reinserting it before pressing “Install Now” on the Windows 7 installation screen. This “Install Now” screen is a big centered button that prompts your to install now and the arrow is set inside a blue circle that’s like a gem.

This is where Apple’s helpfulness can get in your way. By default, Boot Camp Assistant copies the Boot Camp support files to your USBdrive. It also adds an Autounattend.xml file to the root of your drive to automatically install Boot Camp support drivers and utilities in Windows. With Autounattend.xml present, you will not have the opportunity to yank out and reinsert the USB drive before continuing. Instead, the setup just proceeds as if that button was pressed. While this is a good file for disc installations, it causes a massive problem forUSB installation which is most likely to be the case for all new Macs from now on since they do not include disc drives by default. If you try to ask Apple to ‘fix’ this, they will just blame Microsoft which admittedly isn’t blame free either.

To solve this problem, move or delete Autounattend.xml on the root of the USB drive and proceed with the normal steps afterwards . After Windows is done installing and since Autounattend.xml was nullified, you will have to run the Boot Camp support installer from the BootCamp folder on the USB drive.

It’s a shame Apple’s instructions just do not work. The fix required would probably mean removing Autounattend.xml functionality forUSB Drive installations. In the meantime, this worked for me.

Had same problem on new 15" Retina with 1TB drive.  Was loading windows from super drive plugged into right port and USB on left, then I got this error. 

Solution: SWAPED AROUND.  USB in left port.  Superdrive in right.  Boom worked first time.

Note: If you get the "no bootable drive thing... just hold down option key (not cmd) at start up and select HD from menu.  remove windows with boot camp and try again.

Had the same problem with brand spanking new 13" mid-2013 Macbook Air (1.7Ghz i7, 8GB RAM, 512 SSD). Would not install to Disk 0 Partition 4 after formatting the BOOTCAMP partition - getting the error message "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.  See the Setup log files for more information."

After reading this thread decidec to try again using the left USB port. Ran Bootcamp Assistant to remove the aborted install partition and start again. Moved the USB stick from the right USB port to the left port and started the whole process again. And again the same error message after the Format step.

I went back to start screen (using left arrow at the top) and tried again, same error. The next time I went back and started again, after pressing format I moved the USB 3 stick from the left port to the right port - and hey presto am installing Windows 7.  Hope it finishes!

Seems it needs to see the switch mid-way through the install... must be Windows 7 loses the USB or something, and inserting in new port makes it show up again (or something like that)/

Thanks all for the comments - helped me greatly!

Yeah, got this error message (like the rest of you) on my new iMac, tried the most common fixes a couple of times and they didn't work but that is not the strangest thing that happened to me while using boot camp. After using boot camp to partition my drive for the third time, got to the format partition section of the windows installation and after the error happened again I restarted my mac to find "NO BOOTABLE DEVICE". So I then restarted the iMac again holding the option key (incase the computer thought that windows had been installed) and I chose the only option (Macintosh HD) booted my mac up fine, but then noticed that on my finder there was a new mounted hard drive called "14" which was exactly the same size as the partition that I had asked boot camp to create and had somehow been formatted for use with Macintosh. I then tried to use boot camp again and it said "BOOTCAMP CANNOT CREATE A PARTITION AS A PARTITION HAS ALREADY BEEN CREATED BY ANOTHER UTILITY", even though I haven't used another utility. I then opened disk utility (to check the status of my drive) only to find an existing partition that is not removeable....I have seen the original error message (mensioned in this discussion) once before out of the four previous Macs that I have installed windows on but this is the only mac I have ever used that has Fu**ed me over this much. It's brand new and I haven't got a clue how it has formatted a bootcamp partition itself during a restart???????

If you mac geniuses can help it would be appreciated although I will be taking it in to an apple store very soon.

Here are the specs of my iMac just incase your interested:

27in iMac (Late 2013)

3.5GHz Quad-core i7

16GB DDR3 SDRAM

4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M GDDR5

3TB Fusion Drive

(Obviously a SuperDrive aswell for the Win7 Disc)

Thanks in advance for any help or for even reading this somewhat boring and confusing s**t!

DJR

Im having the same problem, on a iMac late 2013 model trying to install windows 7. Iv tried the solutions here and not had any success! I am installing it from an external cd drive along with a usb stick which is required by bootcamp to download relevant files...

Any help will be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks

@AL302 - first suggestion is to chill, its probably not as bad as you think (although I know it feels like it at the time).

I happened to be doing another (mid-2011) MacBook Air today and got your exact same problem. Its been a few days so you may have already found a solution. For me it was as simple as forcing it to boot from the USB BootCamp created. The problem for me was that it was trying to boot from the newly created and formatted partition (which has nothing on it).

To fix, I went through these steps:

1) power off

2) make sure your USB that BootCamp created is in one of the ports

3) power on while holding down the option key

4) You will see the Mac OSX HD (whatever you named it) and the USB with BootCamp/Windows on it (may say WINSTALL or something similar... the USB icon is the giveaway it is the right one) as selectable, use the arrows to move to the USB and press enter.

5) It should then boot from the USB, and you will see a message briefly saying something like "Booting from BootCamp created install..." or something like that.

6) From there it will run the rest of the process to install Windows 7

The other thing I noticed after completing the Windows 7 installation this way was that the Apple specific drivers/utilities had not been installed. To fix this, with the USB still mounted (you may have to remove it and plug it in again for Windows to recognise it) is to open the BootCamp folder on the USB, and run SETUP.EXE from there, it will guide you through adding all the Apple specific drivers.

Hope this helps!

UPDATE: Just noticed you said you were installing from Win7 DVD... you should be able to following the same steps, only at the point where you see the HD and USB icons, you should see the Win7 DVD (if it is in the SuperDrive), and it should run from there. Another option you can do is start up while holding down "C" key - that used to be the old way to get them to boot of the CD drive (as it was then) but now DVD.

Good Luck!

Message was edited by: elddum

@Zaheer_m, you need to be more specific on you problem... there are a few versions of the problem here, so to say its "same problem" is a bit broad.

What symptoms are you seeing?

What messages/errors are you getting?

What steps did you take?

What things have you tried to resolve it, and what happened after that (did you get different messages?)

Give us all a bit more detail and we might be able to shed some light for you.

Cheers!