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

just to add to the mix. . . i just got a new macbook retina.

Originally used a USB flash drive. Hit the same barrier described here.

Spent a few hours with drive unplugging / replugging silliness. No progress. Went back into OSX to attempt using an external DVD drive. There is no option for that in Bootcamp assistant now - must use USB.

Grabbed a different USB stick and started again. This time I used the other USB port on the macbook (the one on the left). Everything worked fine this time!?

You still have to go into "advanced options" and hit "format" when you get to the partition screen.

Moral of the story: different stick, different port. Sounds random. If that doesn't work, try changing your socks and putting on a hat.

Good luck!

Same thing happened to me. After repeating the same step many times (and formatting the partition several times) and getting the "Setup was unable to create ..." message over and over again, I decided to abort the install and back out using the back arrow <- (upper left corner of the Windows dialog box). After I got to the first Windows 7 screen, I decided to try the install one more time, and went forward in all the windows. This time it worked!

Remember to select the right partition (in my case disk 0 partition 4). Also, remember since the originally Mac created BootCamp partition was formatted, it will no longer be called BootCamp.

Good luck

I encountered the same issue on my Mac mini 2011 model. I removed all physical drives (external HDD, storage media) connected to the Mac, excluding the Windows 7 USB flash drive installer and ran the installation. It worked for me.

thanks Fadhli. I google and saw you, yes. just remove your external Hdd .it worked for me

Thanks Fadhli, I removed my Time Machine HDD and it allowed me to install Windows 7 😀

Thanks Md Fadhi worked perfectly!!!

Much appreciated

Glad it worked for you guys!

After countless retries, removing the attached external hard drive was the solution. Thank you!

Thanks Fadhli! Worked for me (Macbook Pro Retina, Lion 10.7.4, Windows 7 x64). Just a note that the whole process (including running the bootcamp assistant) must be done without any USB flash drives attached. An obscure reason, espeially since you probably have your USB drive still attached for downloading the Apple drivers.....Pity Apple hasnt listed this in their bootcamp guide.

Also on a side note, I discovered that you cannot use a USB3 flash drive since Windows 7 doesnt support USB3 out of the box. I was getting super aggrivated then I tried using a USB2 flash drive and it worked perfectly.

Thanks alot!! It definitely helped to fix my problem.

palomonkey71 had the answer for me - I was getting an error while trying to use my shiny new USB 3 flash drive. Thanks for the heads up - I was able to install easily using an older USB 2 drive

Tried all of the approaches above, but none worked😐. Kept getting the error above. Tried searching the USB and DVD for drivers that might be missing...again no luck. Then backed up to the windows DVD install screen and there was an option for checking compatability (something like repair Windows Installation)...PRESTO!!!

Good luck!😉

Changed from left usb to right usb and it worked.