Hello,
I have discovered the following while attempting to install Widows Vista Home on a freshly "wiped" or "zeroed" hard drive with a newly flashed BIOS. The Vista installation CD loaded files and recognized the HDs, but it would install since there wasn't a volume that supported its requirements. At first, I thought this may be a driver issue for my Segate ST3160811AS but soon learned the Microsoft OS provides the segate drivers. I performed the following tasks to resolve the issue.
I closed out of the installation window that displays and recognizes the drives and the installation CD defaulted to the installation window with the "repair" options.
I clicked the "repair" link and opened a command prompt.
In the command prompt, I entered the following commands with out quotes:
"diskpart"
"list disk" (not needed but I like "seeing" the list as a check)
"select disk 0"
"list disk" (not needed but I like checking the correct disk is selected"
"create partition primary" (if you want to specify a size, do a "help create partition primary" to get the information. Personally, I would suggest that you not create a size."
--The above should have created a "primary" partition in a "RAW" format and a volume with an assigned letter. Let's check
"list volume"
--I would suggest you leave the volume in the "RAW" format. This will allow Vista to format it in its default settings.
After creating the volume, which usually has a letter "c" assigned, I close out of the command prompt and restart the computer.
Once I created the primary partition and "Raw" volume, the VISTA installation CD allowed me to "select" a HD to install Vista and all has been well so far.
I am placing this here because it may help some people.
