• Create a new or find an existing system partition. We were unable to create a new or find an existing partition

    Among the errors that prevent the installation of Windows 10 on a computer or laptop and are often incomprehensible to a novice user is a message that “We were unable to create a new or find an existing partition. More information see the installer log files." (Or We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one in English versions of the system). Most often, the error appears when installing the system on new disk(HDD or SSD) or after preliminary steps to format, convert between GPT and MBR and change the partition structure on the disk.

    This instruction contains information about why such an error occurs, and, of course, about ways to correct it in various situations: when there is no important data on the system partition or disk, or in cases where such data exists and needs to be saved.

    Similar errors when installing the OS and ways to solve them (which may also appear after some methods offered on the Internet to fix the problem described here): There is a table on the disk MBR partitions, The selected disk has a GPT partition style, Error "Installing Windows on this disk impossible" (in contexts other than GPT and MBR).

    Cause of the error "We were unable to create a new partition or find an existing partition"

    Root cause of Windows 10 not being able to install with the following message saying it can't create new section- an existing partition structure on a hard drive or SSD, which prevents the creation of the necessary system partitions with a bootloader and recovery environment.

    If it’s not entirely clear from what’s described what exactly is happening, I’ll try to explain it differently.

    This explanation alone may be sufficient for more experienced user to understand the essence of the problem and fix it. And for novice users, several solutions are described below.

    Attention: The following solutions assume that you are installing one single OS (and not, for example, Windows 10 after Linux installations), and, in addition, the disk on which the installation is being performed is designated as Disk 0 (if this is not the case when you have several disks on your PC, change the order hard drives and SSD in BIOS/UEFI so that the target drive comes first, or simply switch SATA cables).

    Correcting an error when important data is missing on a disk (partition)

    The first way to fix the problem involves one of two options:

    1. The disk on which you plan to install Windows 10 does not contain important data and everything must be deleted (or has already been deleted).
    2. There is more than one partition on the disk and the first one does not contain important data that needs to be saved, but the partition size is sufficient for installing the system.

    In these situations the solution will be very simple (the data from the first partition will be deleted):

    As you can see, everything is quite simple and in most cases no command line actions using diskpart (removing partitions or cleaning the disk using the clean command) are required.

    How to fix “Could not create a new or find an existing partition” when installing Windows 10 on a drive with important data

    The second common situation is that Windows 10 is installed on a disk that previously served to store data; most likely, as described in the previous solution, it contains only one partition, but the data on it should not be affected.

    In this case, our task is to shrink the partition and free up disk space so that system partitions can be created there operating system.

    This can be done using both the Windows 10 installer and third-party tools. free programs for working with disk partitions, and in in this case the second method, if possible, will be preferable (the following explains why).

    Freeing up space for system partitions using diskpart in the installer

    This method is good because to use it we do not need anything additional, in addition to what we already have. running program installing Windows 10. The disadvantage of this method is that after installation we will get an unusual partition structure on the disk, when the bootloader is located on the partition with the system, and additional hidden system partitions are at the end of the disk, and not at the beginning, as is usually the case (in this case, everything will work, but in the future, for example, if problems arise with the bootloader, some standard methods solutions to problems may not work as expected).

    In this scenario, the required actions would be as follows:

    1. While in the Windows 10 setup program, press Shift+F10 (or Shift+Fn+F10 on some laptops).
    2. A command line will open, use the following commands in order:
    3. diskpart
    4. list volume
    5. select volume N(where N is the number of the only volume on the hard disk or last section on it, if there are several of them, the number is taken from the result of the previous command. Important: it should have about 700 MB of free space).
    6. shrink desired=700 minimum=700(I have 1024 in the screenshot because I wasn’t sure how much space was really needed. 700 MB is enough, as it turned out).
    7. exit

    After this, close the command line, and in the window for selecting the partition to install, click “Update”. Select the partition to install (not unallocated space) and click Next. In this case, the installation of Windows 10 will continue, and the unallocated space will be used to create system partitions.

    Using Minitool Partition Wizard Bootable to free up space for system partitions

    In order to free up space for system Windows partitions 10 (not at the end, but at the beginning of the disk) and not lose important data will do, in fact, any boot software for working with the partition structure on a disk. In my example it would be free utility Minitool Partition Wizard, available as ISO image on the official website https://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html

    You can burn this ISO to disk or bootable USB flash drive(a bootable USB flash drive can be made using Rufus programs, select MBR or GPT for BIOS and UEFI, respectively, file system - FAT32. For computers with EFI boot, and this is most likely your case, you can simply copy the entire contents of the ISO image to a flash drive with the FAT32 file system).

    Then we boot from the created drive ( secure boot must be disabled) and perform the following actions:

    After applying the changes, restart your computer with Windows distribution 10 - this time the error that it was not possible to create a new or find an existing partition should not appear, but installation will pass successfully (when installing, select the partition, not unallocated disk space).

    I hope the instructions were able to help, and if suddenly something did not work out or you still have questions, ask in the comments, I will try to answer.

    Friends, good mood to everyone! In this article we will continue to analyze the pressing problems that periodically arise when installing the Windows operating system.

    And now let’s talk about what to do if a message like “ Could not create a new or find an existing partition when installing Windows 10″. But the solution in this case is quite simple. But let's talk about everything in order.

    So, in order to understand the essence of this problem, you need to carefully consider Win installation 10 to a laptop from a flash drive. There I told you that during installation, hidden system partitions are automatically created on the hard drive for backup copies and other recovery files.

    So, if to your hard drive is already divided into, or its entire volume is a single large partition, which is incorrect, then you get a situation where the installation program simply has nowhere to create the necessary system partitions. Please look at the screenshot below, that's what I'm talking about now.

    This is why the error “Could not create a new or find an existing partition“ appears, since all the space has already been allocated. Okay, what to do next in this case? There are actually two options here. The first is when the first one is produced clean install Windows 10 and there is no important information on the hard drive.

    In this case, the easiest way would be to immediately delete all existing partitions, and then re-partition all unallocated space on the disk into the required number of parts. This is done using the “Delete - Create - Format” buttons. And since there are no valuable files on the hard drive, you can experiment. 😉

    The end result of the experiments should be a clear disk partition structure. Moreover, in mandatory must be present system partition, on which the system will be installed and when created, hidden system partitions will be automatically added. For greater clarity, the picture below will help you.

    So, we will assume that we have dealt with the first option. Now let's think about what to do if there are still files on the hard drive that cannot be deleted. In this case, you need to make room for creating system disk C and all related sections.

    We will do this using command line, which is built into the Windows 10 installation program. To do this, press the key combination Shift+F10 (or Shift+Fn+F10 on many laptops) and in the window that opens, enter the following commands one by one.

    1. select volume N. Where N is the number of the last hard section disk from which we will take free space to create the future drive C.

    And here you need to take into account a reserve of at least 700 MB for hidden service partitions. For example, in our case, I give 30 GB for everything together. To do this, I enter the following parameter on the command line.

    After this, you can close the command line and click on the “Update” button in the Windows 10 installer. As a result, “Unallocated space” will be displayed in the main window, from which we will create our C drive for installing the operating system. By the way, remember that you need to subtract 700 MB from the total size.

    In general, this is how things are, brothers. I think that after reading this article, the error “Could not create a new or find an existing partition when installing Windows 10” will be completely over. And already in I will tell you how else you can free up free space on a computer without an installed system.

    That's all for now, ask your questions in the comments. And now, as always, I suggest you watch another interesting video.

    Installing Windows 10 on PC is very easy. All you have to do is paste it and follow the wizard. When installing, Windows 10 will ask you to select a partition. Typically, you simply select the partition or drive you want from a list and Windows does the rest of the job. However, sometimes Windows may show you an error message: " We were unable to create a new or find an existing partition". This error can occur for a number of reasons, even on perfectly functioning SSDs and hard drives. In this guide, we will look at how to fix, what to do and how to solve this error in Windows 10.

    1. Remove additional drives

    Nowadays it is very often used SSD drives for installation and workWindows And regular hard disk for data storage. When using multiple hard drives, you need to disable all hard drives, except the main one hard drive on which you are installing Windows. After disconnecting all other hard drives, try installing Windows again and see if you can continue with the installation.

    2. Disconnect all USB drives and memory cards

    In addition to the actual bootable usb Windows flash drives 10 if you have others USB drives and CD memory cards connected to your system, then in rare cases Windows cases may confuse these drives for regular hard drives. Disable these additional USB drives or CD memory cards and try installing Windows again.

    3. Use USB 2.0 port

    If you are using boot disk USB 3.0 to Windows installation, this could be the reason why Windows is giving you this particular error. To solve this problem, you can try using USB 2.0. Typically USB 2.0 are ports on a computer or laptop. blue , just insert the bootable USB flash drive into another port on your computer.

    4. Make the section active

    This method will erase ALL data on the selected hard drive.

    If the above methods do not work, then the partition on which you are trying to install Windows 10 may not be active. To make the partition active, you need to access the command line. To access, return to the initial Windows installation screen and click the link " System Restore" > "Troubleshooting" > "Command line". More details in pictures, like Windows 10.

    • Open the command line and run the command diskpart, press "Enter".
    • Next enter the command list disk to view all connected drives to your computer.
    • Find the drive where you want to install Windows. In my case, the disk number is "1", since I entered commands for the flash drive.
    • Enter the following command select disk 1 to select a drive. Remember to replace "1" with your actual disk number.
    • Next, clean up the selected disk clean.
    • To make the primary disk, run the command create partition primary.
    • Activate the section active.
    • After activation, enter format fs=ntfs quick for formatting file system to NTFS.
    • Now you can assign the drive by running the command assign.
    • That's it, enter exit to exit the diskpart utility and the command line.

    After closing the Command Prompt, restart your computer and try installing Windows again and the “We were unable to create a new or find an existing partition” error should be resolved.

    Thanks everyone for the answers. If I could, I would kiss everyone. I spent the whole day on this. But I had exactly the same problem with Windows 8, not 7. But that’s not the point. The operations are all completely the same. Almost the same. I collected from all the answers what helped me.

    What exactly I did:

    1) Stupid. I was dumb and angry. But the error was found somewhere at 3 o'clock in the morning - when I restarted the system, I always had an empty SSD (installed on the tablet). Then somehow it happened by itself, not on purpose, after creating the partitions (since there is only 30 gig of space on the SSD, then the main one was 25 gig, and the logical one was only 5. I don’t know if it’s correct, but I’ll wait and see)) I turned off the tablet and restarted it and just clicked next and the download started. Aee

    2) The main nuance: Priority by default will not work. The flash drive must be loaded first! Otherwise, it will either display a message stating that the system is not found (missing operation system_), or the flash drive will simply not start. The computer simply won’t see it.

    3) Downloading by copying the distribution, as was written before me, did not work for me. But not because it didn’t work out, but because the instructions (even the official ones via Partition help) require letters in the name of the railway and flash drive (sections are also listed in numbers), but I only have numbers. And I have no idea how to change them without having an OS.

    So, a short summary of everything I said above: 1) In the BIOS we set priority to the flash drive (Oh, yes, I almost forgot, the flash drive must be bootable, and not just a dropped image. Well, I think that was already clear) 2 )We do everything according to the instructions until the fateful moment X. 3) We create sections according to MASolomko’s instructions (I don’t know if it’s required logical partition, but just in case, it’s better to create it too, even if it’s not big) 4) Update it, and close the window with a cross. We are thrown out of the initial window windows installations 8. 4) Then click on the line “system restore” and select turn off. 5) Turn on the computer again (we do not remove the flash drive during the entire process, Windows will boot from it) 6) Everything according to the instructions, click next, next, etc. to the fatal screen. but there, too, everything is already without tricks. Select the Main section and click next. 7) Enjoy normal loading windows

    IMPORTANT: I ​​did not remove the flash drive during the ENTIRE process. You can try to pull it out while creating partitions, but it is useless in this case.

    I will ask the administration not to delete this answer if I violated any rules. Of all the answers, none of them suited me completely. Even with a normal system restart there are some nuances (like the case that I restarted AFTER creating the partitions).

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