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Windows: Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300001

by on Aug.22, 2009, under Windows

Well… all these years of development and Microsoft still can’t get the installation part right. Not too surprising… huh?

If you have a storage controller or using motherboard RAID, it’s quite possible that you see this error message after loading the drivers. This could happen on systems with a single CD drive and It’s also likely to happen if you are installing storage drivers from a USB flash drive.

If your driver CD is still in the drive (or USB drive) and Windows CD out on your desk, you won’t be notified properly. Instead, you will see the above error message which was very frustrating in my case. Remember to replace the driver CD with Windows, wait until you hear it spin and then you will notice the Next button is no longer grayed out. It is not safe to assume that Windows would give you a hint. I wonder how much the missing error message was going to cost Microsoft that they decided not to add it.

Frustrating… very unprofessional of Microsoft to say the least.

CC0 1.0 To the extent possible under law, the creator has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.


35 Comments for this entry

  • Don Milner

    I have tried everything and then I tried this for my Dell XPS-M1730 laptop and it worked like a charm. I agree with you Dell should have put a pop up windows saying put back your windows cd because it slipped my mind that I changed them and totally forgot. Thanks again

  • Eric

    Wow…. this stupid error had me totally stumped….. Thanks for the info guys! You saved me more wasted time and aggravation!

  • Matias

    Thank you for saving me a bunch of time and hair pulling. You are right. Very unprofessional of Microsoft. For all the attention to detail in 7/R2, they sure missed a few things.

  • chad

    X3 who woulda thunk once I put the CD back in that error would have vanished.
    thanks for making this post.

  • Art

    I have been battleing with this ALL day. You really saved my butt on this one.
    I was about to turn an Alienware laptop into a UFO.

  • Milan

    Dude, thanks for the info. Was stuck here until I found your hint. Strange bug in windows 7 installer !

  • Chris

    Thank you. I’ve dealt with this for 6 g** d*** hours! =)

  • Rider

    Windows Server 2008 R2 has this same problem.

    When I say this post I went back and re-inserted the DVD and BANG … next button no longer greyed out …

    1 day I lost with this ….

    Thanks

  • Tom

    Wow. Thanks for the info. What a stupid error. I did have to hit the refresh button after putting the install dvd back in.

  • Kevin M

    I have to agree with the author of this thread. I wasted way to much time of this extremely simple and highly confusing situation. I cannot believe the only problem I was experiencing was that the driver disk was still in the machine. I put the Win7 disk back in and no problems from that point forward. Many people at Microsoft must have been sleeping on the job for this mistake!!! Grrrr

  • Gary

    Thanks for this guys, Microsoft never fail to amaze me with stuff like this!

  • Simon

    Oh My Gosh, what a stupid error message. Thanks for clearing that up! Glad I only spent 2 mins before searching online!

  • Zappa

    Thanx alot for the info, got me very frustrade for about 5 minutes before I googled it up… It’s for a 2008 R2. The none R2 version of 2008 and does not have this issue.

  • justin

    But what if you just flashed the bios and installed a new version. i got his error installing all windows. when installing windows vista it gave me the above error. how can i fix that wrong.

  • visitor

    Thanks for info!
    Saved me bunch of time as I was thinking my controller is too old.
    Horrible error reporting…

    Cheers!

  • dror

    man you saved my life !!!! thank you

  • Andy

    Micro (small) soft (limp) well that says it all!

  • Scherle

    OK, I feel stewpud for not catching this myself, but thank you very much!

  • Matt P

    Yes, OK i was the stupid plumb who left the DVD in the reader, but come on M$ this is very basic stuff. You wonder why so many people use Apple products…

    IF DVD=[WrongOne] THEN
    MsgBox ( “Oi mate change the DVD for the correct one, you call yourself an IT Expert?!)
    End IF

    Not

    IF DVD=[WrongOne] THEN
    MsgBox ( 0x0Random useless code”)
    End IF

  • Paul

    You are GOD.

    Better than ERROR 8x3000000xxx or such like!!! MS be ashamed.

  • Timur

    Thank you very much… I wasted a lot of time with this error and was looking for an Raid error… THX

  • Adam

    Jesus, my first server installation and got this error. haha feel stupid, but thanks for this, now installing 🙂

  • Ian

    thanks for posting.

    microsoft software quality is so poor these days, its hard to trust anything they do

  • Espen Telvik

    Still cant get it to work. got the error no matter what i do. i am running install from usb since i aint got no cdrom atm. Tryed linux install to format and re partition, but got no further

  • Jon

    You just saved me a ton of time tonight! Thanks!

  • David McLaughlin

    Awesome!
    Google got me to you, and this was my exact problem.
    I put in the Windows 7 installation disk, and vola it worked!

  • James

    Thanks Dude, Just busted my nuts on a SBS 2011 server on HP ML150 G6 with same error for 2 hours. With drivers on USB and Win CD in ROM installed fine. Thanks for the post!

  • Robert Chase

    I was loading storage drivers for a Cisco UCS chassis and installing windows on some LUN’s on the SAN and thought there was an issue with my storage driver or the LUN’s. I tried looking up the error on Microsoft’s site and got nothing useful other than their usual garbage docs. Googled the error message and got this VERY USEFUL blog post.

    This is a catastrophic usability bug and makes it painfully apparent that Microsoft does not QA their installers at all. Instead of providing some cryptic error message how about “unable to read installer media”.

  • Bud

    Classic .. same issue here! Windows 2008 R2 with a Qlogic controller that needed drivers during installation. Thankfully didn’t waist too much time finding this post.

  • Fritzeflink

    Thanks dude, you saved my live, I was about to throw that machine out of the window

  • vaibhav

    someone pls help, I have done everything out here , I am installing vista 32 bit from USB but everytime I am getting the same error . Pls help somebody and I have already formatted C drive still no clue.

  • 2ez4z

    All I just got my configuration to work after switching up some stuff on my BIOS. This was for the GA-EP45 motherboard. I set my options in the BIOS for SATA RAID “RAID” , SATA Port0-3 “Enable”, Onboard SATA Ctrl Mode “AHCI”.

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