Solved! Asus laptop won't format partition

[kwrigh18]

I have been having trouble with my Asus laptop and I am trying to do a clean install of windows. When I try this I am unable to get far as I am unable to format a new partition on the hard drive. It will let me add a new one and delete old ones but it won't let me format it. I was thinking perhaps the problem was my hard drive so I ran chkdsk /r C: in the command prompt and it came back windows has scanned the file system and found no problems. I am very very new to this kind of stuff so I guess my question is does this mean my hard drive is fine? And if it does what else could my issue be? The next thing I could think to try would be a new sata cable? Unless anyone has any other suggestions? Any advice at all is appreciated! Thank you.

 

[Barty1884]

You don't need to format it? Simply delete the partition(s) that exist, and let the Windows installer format the drive during install.

 

[kwrigh18]

Yes I guess I left out some information. I started trying to manually format when the automatic install gave me this error "we couldn't install Windows in the location you chose. Please check your media drive. 0x80070057" so just letting it format on it's own automatically is not working.

 

[mgallo848]

From Microsoft: https/support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2476568/error-0x80070057-when-you-format-a-hard-disk-drive-to-install-windows

 

[kwrigh18]

Mgallo848 thank you for your response. I have seen Microsoft's information and I have tried all the steps to no avail. The last step where it says formatting should complete correctly is when I get the error we cannot format the selected partition.

 

[Barty1884]

chkdsk found no issues ? That error code is usually a hardware issue with the drive.

I would try a clean command via Diskpart:
https/neosmart.net/wiki/diskpart/#If_you_can8217t_boot_into_Windows_10

"list disk", "select disk #" (where # = the corresponding drive number) then "clean".

Once complete, "exit", "exit" and then try to install again.

 

[mgallo848]

Follow Barty's post above. It's a way to erase it using the command prompt. If that doesn't work then the HDD may just be bad.

 

[kwrigh18]

I am working on following the steps in Bartys post now. Fingers crossed lol. Could the hard drive be bad even though running chkdsk returned no errors?

 

[Barty1884]

It's certainly possible, yes. The preferred test would be the Drive manufacturer's own software (SeaTools, DataLifeguard etc). But those require a functioning OS to test.

 

[kwrigh18]

Doing it that way still provides the same error. Sigh. Guess I will get a new hard drive and hope that works. Thanks so much for all the help you guys!!!!!

 

[Peter Martin]

i think the drive is borked