Windows Install Issue?

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I tried to install Windows 7 Ultimate on my new Sony VAIO NW11S (I sold a load of my child hood IT equipment) and this is what it says when I try to install it onto a partition:setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate.
My hard drive WAS formatted as GUID (Linux worked before this) (I tried to install retail OSX but found that there was no KEXTs for the Radeon 4570) so I could install Snow Leopard.
So like 15 minuets ago, I completely formatted my HDD and made 3 partitions ready to install Windows and OSX.
I installed Linux on SDA 1.
Linux works just fine.
But when I went to install Windows on my SDA 2 partition, I formatted it and it gave me that error.
How can I fix this?
I have nothing plugged into it.
Thanks.

As far as I know Windows can still only be installed onto the first physical partition of the primary drive and be expected to run unassisted.
Tricks can be played through grub to boot an installation made when the drive was the primary drive and has since been moved elsewhere, but they basically trick Windows into believing it's running from drive C: as usual.

The easiest way is to install Windows first and then Linux - because (a) Windows will just overwrite the boot sector anyway and a Linux installation on another partition will (apparently) vanish, and (b) if Linux is installed after Windows then a Windows entry will appear automagically in the boot menu. Plus, of course, the boot sector is handled responsibly.

Please post the result of "fdisk -l".

Windows can be installed on any partition (provided it is NTFS), "location" of it is not important.

Isn't that true only when there's a primary partition available for Windows to write certain files to (ntldr, ntdetect etc.) and boot from?
In OP's case that partition effectively doesn't exist - unless Windows is now somehow able to handle ext3/4 partitions.
By installing Windows in its entirety on the primary partition the problem simply never arises.

Every OS need to install its boot loader in a primary partition, it's not unique to Windows. Madbones already reserved sda2 for that. Even if Windows can't read extFS, it has no problem formatting it to NTFS. In fact installing Windows after the partitions are created is one way to force Windows not to create additional recovery partitions.

Madbones, did you format the harddisk in GPT? Only 64-bit Windows can boot from GPT drive, and your motherboard must be using EFI instead of BIOS.

Yes, it has to be primary. But does not have to be the first, as you said earlier.



We don't know how he partitioned it, which is why I asked for the output of "fdisk -l" so we have an idea what is happening.

Yep, true. My bad - brainfart.

I think it's unlikely that will be NTFS.

sda1= Serial Device (a = 1) and 1 = first partition (although not necessarily).

It can be a partition of any type/format.