Failed to format the selected partition (Error: 0x80004005)

I am trying to install Windows Vista Beta 2 64 bit in my system and i have burned a dvd for the same. The problem that i am facing is that when i am booting from dvd and reach the task where i have to format selected partition then i get an error message saying "Failed to format the selected partition (Error: 0x80004005)" I dont know what that means and i want to know if there is a workaround for getting rid of it and proceed with installation??

I wanted to know if you have installed SATA driver before trying out the formatting task? If not then install it first and then proceed with formatting. I am not sure but i think that Windows Vista might not be able to recognize your SATA drive because of missing SATA drivers.

I dont think so, in my case windows vista can see my SATA drive and it displays it Name, Total Size and Free Size as well. I think there is something else that i causing this error to occur but i am not able to make out exactly what. Is there anything else i need to check or a solution that i can try here after?

Hey Shingane if you are having an IDE disk then try using that and check out if you are getting the same error. I think there is something wrong with your disk.

I have now tried using my old working IDE disk but no avail. I am still getting same error message. I wanted to know if there is a need for installing any additional drivers. I mean i haven't installed any drivers using driver disc and since installer was able to read partition table i dint found a need of it. What will you suggest?

I think that you will have to format the entire drive rather than partitions. If you dont mind that then take backup of all your crucial data , format the drive and try installing your Windows Vista Beta 2 64 bit after that.

I am running in to same issue and i wanted to know if formatting the whole drive will really help? in my case i dont have formatting partitions which are NTFS but i am not able to format primary partition which is not NTFS. I dont mind formatting the whole drive but i just want to know if anyone has tried it out for solving this error?

I will suggest you both to delete that partition and create a new one rather than formatting the whole drive. If you want then you can install windows vista directly in to the entire disk and update the size later. I personally find my first suggestion better but you do have two possible solution for fixing this issue.

hu8mypho Your suggestion was really helpful, i deleted that partition and created a new one and the installation process went smooth and i dint faced any issue further. I have installed Windows Vista Beta 2 64 successfully !!!!! Thanks a lot.

you guys are awesome!!!! I just spend 15 hours fixing a my screw up of trying to set up a multi boot on a 64bit vista machine only to find out the hard way the disks included were only recovery discs not the Vista OS! Kept getting error after error, and was unable to restore. No OS was found on my HD and then when I finally got a ISO copy of Vista and gotto this screen it gave me the same issue of not formatting. I deleted the partition then added it again, and it formatted successfully! Hoooray!!

I thought I would share this link though too, because this is the best fail safe disc to have in any geeks arsenal.. ultimatebootcd. It really saved me after corrupting the MBR some how.


-ND10N-
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein