The last time I left you, I had just completed a transplant of my HTPC into a new Antec P182 chassis. That mission was a complete success. I've built enough PCs over the years, and it is such a nicely designed case, that the hardest decision I had to make was which hockey game to watch while I was doing it.

Well I attempted another operation on my "new" PC last night that didn't go quite as smoothly as the previous one: re-installing Windows Vista. I've had a few really annoying and perplexing problems with the system, like not being able to stay connected to Unreal Tournament 3 online games, and not being able to use The Orange Box at all because Steam won't work. The computer has had a number of hardware and software changes and configurations (TV tuner cards, wireless network cards, sound cards, video drivers and post-processing software, video codecs, etc.) throughout the past year so I chalk it all up to messed up config files and/or drivers. Seemed like the perfect time for a re-install.

The machine has two hard disks in it, both of the 2.5" laptop variety (for silence): an 80GB Fujitsu 5400RPM, and a 160GB Seagate 7200RPM. I've had the Fujitsu all along and added the Seagate later on, so the system was installed on the 80GB drive and the 160GB drive was used as a data disk.

Since I was re-installing the OS and wiping out both drives, I decided to use the newer 160GB for the system disk. Its SATA2 interface and 7200RPM spindle speed should give a nice boost in performance over the SATA1/5400RPM Fujitsu drive. The 80GB Fujitsu would go in my Vantec EZ Swap EX to be used as a removable, portable data disk. I formatted the Seagate in the current installation of Vista, rebooted and launched Vista setup from the DVD.

All was great until the point where you select which disk you would like to install Vista on. The menu didn't display the Seagate drive, only the Fujitsu. Of course, both drives appear in the BIOS, and I had been using both of them in Vista already. Strange.

Another strange phenomenon: during Vista setup, where you choose which drive you want to install on, you can choose to load a driver disk for any controllers that might not have been automatically detected. I did this for both onboard SATA controllers by loading the drivers onto a USB thumb drive, but to no avail. However, when I clicked the Browse button to load the drivers, I could actually see the Seagate drive in the list. So Vista was detecting the disk, even mounting it and allowing me to browse it, but refusing to install to it.

After attempting to use driver disks for the on-board SATA controllers (yes, I tried both), using the Disk Management snap-in in Vista to reformat and mark the partition as "Active", setting the SATA ports to use Legacy mode instead of Native mode, even trying out AHCI and RAID modes on the SATA controllers, all without getting Vista setup to recognize the drive, I was getting frustrated. I removed the Fujitsu completely, tried the Seagate in all ports on its own, and no luck. Searching online just kept producing the same advice: install the SATA controller drivers. Well I tried that, and it didn't work.

Another thread online recommended that I use Seagate DiscWizard to prepare the drive for installation. The author said that Vista might not install to a disk until it is "zeroed out". I downloaded and installed DiscWizard, which took quite a while as the download was slow and the install even slower for some reason. When I finally ran the program, it had the balls to tell me that I didn't have a Seagate drive installed in the computer! Looking in the Windows Device Manager, of course it says that the drive is right there, model ST9160823AS. ARGH. Apparently DiscWizard doesn't work well with SATA drives, according to other online posts.

Then, disaster struck...

As I was rebooting for what seemed like the 100th time, I re-inserted the hot-swap EZ Swap EX drive carrier (containing the 80GB Fujitsu with the current Vista install on it) into the bay, during the BIOS POST. I thought "it's hot-swap SATA, shouldn't be a problem"--famous last words. The BIOS POSTed and came to the boot screen, it tried to boot off the disk and just printed a bunch of mangled symbols on the screen. "Great", I thought, I just toasted the drive. At least it wasn't the Seagate!

The machine would no longer boot from that disk. Now I was thinking I should just give up and re-install Vista on the Fujitsu, but when I selected it as the install destination, Vista setup said "Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation". Oh boy, I'd really done it now. FUBAR. Now I had no Vista installation at all, and no disks that would work.

Then, by some supernatural twist of fate, I managed to find an article on the (wait for it...) Microsoft (!) support database with that error message on it. The article mentioned some of the command line tools available in the setup program, in particular, one command called "diskpart". The tool could list your disks, and when run with a "clean all" command, zero out all data on the drive. It does things that Disk Management and "format" restrict you from doing. Perfect, and by all accounts this was my last possible hope of getting this thing to work without buying a new hard drive.

I ran "diskpart" -> "select disk 0" -> "clean all", and sure enough it cleaned the drive. Then "select disk 1" -> "clean all", and the other disk was zeroed out. Reboot, start Vista setup, voila! Both disks listed in the installation destination choices. Select the Seagate disk, boom! It works. After the huge move to eliminate DOS from the Windows manifest, and after all of my attempts to use current technology to fix the problem, one good old DOS command saves the day.

I went to bed at this point, five hours after beginning this crusade, but when I woke up in the morning, a fresh installation of Vista was waiting for me. Was it worth the trouble? Find out in my next few blog posts.

Moral of the story? Command line rules, FTW!