"Setup Was Unable to Format the Drive" error message appears during ASR restore (817708)

RESOLUTION

The resolution that this article describes is a preventative measure. If you are in a situation where you must restore to gain access to the operating system again, see the "Workaround" section of this article.

Hotfix Information

A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft, but it is only intended to correct the problem that is described in this article. Only apply it to systems that are experiencing this specific problem. This hotfix may receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next Windows Server 2003 service pack that contains this hotfix.

To resolve this problem immediately, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the fix. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services phone numbers and information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support

Note In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for Windows Server 2003.

For Windows XP, you must have Windows XP Service Pack 1 installed before you apply this fix.

Restart Requirement

You must restart your computer after you apply this hotfix.

File Information

The English version of this fix has the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel.

   Windows XP SP1 Version

   Date         Time   Version         Size       File name     Platform
   ---------------------------------------------------------------------
   06-Jun-2003  16:17  5.1.2600.1232   1,807,872  Syssetup.dll  IA64
   

   Windows Server 2003 Version

   Date         Time   Version         Size       File name     Platform
   ---------------------------------------------------------------------
   06-Jun-2003  16:10  5.2.3790.50     1,833,984  Syssetup.dll  IA64

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, correct the ASR.sif file so that you can start the ASR restore process on the computer.

This procedure uses an example ASR.sif file. The ASR.sif file that you use will look similar, but the numbers will be different. Put the ASR floppy disk that was created during the ASR backup process in another computer. Open the ASR.sif file in a text editor, such as Notepad. The relevant section of ASR.sif will be similar to the following:

[PARTITIONS.GPT]
1=1,0,2,,"c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b","0a575940-189b-01c3-92e0-3c772e43ac40",0x1,"EFI system partition",0x06,63,706797,0x1000
2=1,1,0,,"e3c9e316-0b5c-4db8-817d-f92df00215ae","a142f920-1af0-01c3-a1f4-04622fd5ec6d",0x0,"Microsoft reserved partition",0x00,706860,257040,0x0
3=1,2,1,,"ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7","b126f760-1af0-01c3-92e0-3c772e43ac40",0x0,"Basic data partition",0x07,963900,20482875,0x1000

Note The lines in this example wrap for readability.

The only significant line is the EFI system partition line:

1=1,0,2,,"c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b","0a575940-189b-01c3-92e0-3c772e43ac40",0x1,"EFI system partition",0x06,63,706797,0x1000

The EFI system partition is the partition that it is failing to format. You must know the size of this partition. Take the value 706797 (the second-last number on that line) and multiply it by 512. This equals 361,880,064. This means that the example system has an EFI system partition of about 361 MB. Compare this value to the following table:

	   Drive size            
(logical volume)      FAT type   Sectors     Cluster size (decimal)     Cluster size (hexadecimal)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15 MB or less         12-bit       8           4096                      0x1000
16 MB - 127 MB        16-bit       4           2048                      0x800
128 MB - 255 MB       16-bit       8           4096                      0x1000
256 MB - 511 MB       16-bit      16           8192                      0x2000
512 MB - 1,023 MB     16-bit      32          16384                      0x4000
1,024 MB - 2,048 MB   16-bit      64          32768                      0x8000

This means that you must format this example partition with 8-KB clusters (8,192 bytes). However, the file says to format it as 4-KB clusters (4096 bytes) (the last number in the same line, 0x1000, equals 4,096 in decimal form). Therefore, you must change the 0x1000 to 0x2000 (the decimal equivalent of 0x2000 is 8,192).

The new version of the line is:

1=1,0,2,,"c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b","0a575940-189b-01c3-92e0-3c772e43ac40",0x1,"EFI system partition",0x06,63,706797,0x2000

Save the file, and then start the ASR restore process with the modified ASR floppy disk. The process should now complete successfully.

"Setup Was Unable to Format the Drive" error message appears during ASR restore (817708)

SYMPTOMS

CAUSE