Fatal error 0x80004005 at installation

While trying to reinstall Vista I repeatedly get the error message
"Windows could not assign a drive letter to a partition on disk 0.
The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for
installation. Error code 0x80004005"

This was after an activation error message locked me out of the system
(my browser wouldn't run as well) so I decided to reinstall. During
the repeated install failures, all with this message, I ensured that
the partition was re-formatted before installation to stop gripes
about 'not enough space' and in case old stuff would prejudice the re-
installation. I even re-formatted it as DOS via a boot disk at the
end (it was happy to call it 'C:'). I tried having the Vista partition
made active but to no avail.

The disk is 6 months old and it has a number of partitions on it: a
DOS 'boot' partition (active), XP, Vista (this one) - all primaries
and 2 Data spaces and a Linux distro or two in the extended. The
whole show was being (happily) booted via GRUB for a few weeks prior
to this.

I was expecting (as it had before) to find Vista taking over the
booting of itself and XP and to sort out the Linux booting later.

Anyone seen this error in this context before?

Cheers,

Reformatting a partition is not going to help if you have a corrupted MBR.
Deleting/creating/formatting a new partition will rebuild the MBR. Give it a
try.

What did the Linux support groups have to say. After all, you are mixing two
operating systems on the same disk. Give them a shot.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)



"Hilarious" <pofadda@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1193358044.160999.228630@o38g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> While trying to reinstall Vista I repeatedly get the error message
> "Windows could not assign a drive letter to a partition on disk 0.
> The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for
> installation. Error code 0x80004005"
>
> This was after an activation error message locked me out of the system
> (my browser wouldn't run as well) so I decided to reinstall. During
> the repeated install failures, all with this message, I ensured that
> the partition was re-formatted before installation to stop gripes
> about 'not enough space' and in case old stuff would prejudice the re-
> installation. I even re-formatted it as DOS via a boot disk at the
> end (it was happy to call it 'C:'). I tried having the Vista partition
> made active but to no avail.
>
> The disk is 6 months old and it has a number of partitions on it: a
> DOS 'boot' partition (active), XP, Vista (this one) - all primaries
> and 2 Data spaces and a Linux distro or two in the extended. The
> whole show was being (happily) booted via GRUB for a few weeks prior
> to this.
>
> I was expecting (as it had before) to find Vista taking over the
> booting of itself and XP and to sort out the Linux booting later.
>
> Anyone seen this error in this context before?
>
> Cheers,
>

Found this and take a moment to put things right.

The fact that there are several extended and maybe a couple more
primary partitions on a hard disk ought not make any difference , and
indeed, until last month my system ran well with a very simular hard
drive setup.

But now we are talking Vista !!!!!!!!!!!!

Vista cannot understand anything to do with partition reconignition.

In fact Vista is so full of holes in this area that everywhere you go
to find what error codes mean, some seem to find solutions for awhile,
but all end up with " the only thing left to do is to re-install Vista.

Yeah right ~ go there and you will get the dreaded 0x80004005 error if
you have more than one partition, usually complaining that you have
insufficient room though it only requires 392MB and you have some
13~15GB of space left on C: drive.

The reality here of course is that many laptop owners with the recovery
partition being first up on the hard drive, cannot get past this stupid
error code.

Bottom line, dump Vista and try to bill MS for all your wasted time and
money. It's the only language they listen to.


--
Snapafun

Seeking USER_FUNCTIONALITY always.
Regards
Frank
Big or small, any challenge requires the same commitment to resolve.