Err Msg: Setup is Unable to Locate the Hard Drive... (110695)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.5
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
This article was previously published under Q110695
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: 132739
TITLE : Setup Disks Created With WINNT /O Fail To Find Hard Disk

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:5/6/2003
Keywords:kbsetup KB110695
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