Err Msg: Setup is Unable to Locate the Hard Drive...

 Last reviewed: April 10, 1997
Article ID: Q110695

The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Windows NT operating system version 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server version 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0

During Windows NT Setup, just after Setup restarts your computer, the following error message may appear: 

   Setup is unable to locate the hard drive partition prepared by the
   MS-DOS portion of setup.
Setup (WINNT.EXE) by default places temporary files on the first available drive with enough free space, but because WINNT.EXE can see drives that Windows NT may or may not support, sometimes these temporary files become inaccessible to Setup. (Unsupported drives may be compressed drives, unsupported SCSI drives, or drives on secondary IDE or ESDI controllers.)

To work around this problem, use the /T switch with the WINNT command. The /T switch specifies the target drive to which temporary files will be stored by Setup.

For additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 

   ARTICLE-ID: Q132739
   TITLE     : Setup Disks Created With WINNT /O Fail To Find Hard Disk

Additional query words: prodnt
Keywords : kbsetup ntsetup
Version : 3.1 3.5
Platform : WinNT
Issue type : kberrmsg

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Last reviewed: April 10, 1997
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