setup was unable to use the existing system partition...

As the partition is Logical, you have no Primary partition free space.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
The System Partition is the 100 MB one at the front of the drive. A Windows 8 install will normally make a 350 MB partition for the boot files and the Recovery System. I do not know why it isn't putting the Recovery files in the new partition, but it appears it is not. Possibly because it is a logical partition.

A normal system has quite a bit of free space, but yours is showing as having 0 MB free. Do you remember what it was before you started the Windows 8 install? Have you put anything in there yourself?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
The System Partition is the 100 MB one at the front of the drive. A Windows 8 install will normally make a 350 MB partition for the boot files and the Recovery System. I do not know why it isn't putting the Recovery files in the new partition, but it appears it is not. Possibly because it is a logical partition.

A normal system has quite a bit of free space, but yours is showing as having 0 MB free. Do you remember what it was before you started the Windows 8 install? Have you put anything in there yourself?
I don't remember. : (
I am using Windows 7 right now, but I recently installed Windows XP on a dual boot for old nostalgia's sake. I uninstalled it, but it still shows up on my boot screen as an option (it doesn't load though), could that be taking up the space?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
From what I can tell, the System Reserved partition in Windows 7 should only use around 76 MB of space out of the 100 MB. If yours has more, something else is in there, possibly the XP stuff.

Did you use any special software to set up the XP dual Boot? You might check msconfig.exe and see if you can remove the boot entry from the system. But you still might have other files left over, such as ntldr, it the system was set up that way.

Since I do not know if using a logical partition to install Windows 8 has any effect on where it puts it Recovery files, I suppose I would start with putting a Drive Letter on the System Reserved Partition and finding out what is in there. A list of what I show is a the bottom for comparison. You might also think about changing the partition to primary, just in case it does effect the install regarding the placement of the Recovery files.

If you have any questions, post back so we can check the situation.

To assign a drive letter (there is probably a tutorial here somewhere), you start the Administrative command prompt and type Diskpart. After that you can check the partitions to see which one you want to assign the letter to. So follow the commands below and make sure you are looking at the correct 100 MB partition. This assumes you have one hard drive which would be disk 0 and partition 2 is the partition you need. If you have another drive, make sure and select the correct drive and partition.

list disk
select disk 0
list partition
select partition 2
assign letter="S"
exit


Now use DOS commands to check the partition. A dir /a command will show the hidden files and you should be able to see what is actually there and remove any unwanted files/folders.

When you are done, open Diskpart again, go through the same set of commands and use remove letter="S" to get rid of that mount point.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>S:

S:\>dir /a
Volume in drive S is System Reserved
Volume Serial Number is 48C5-65FA

Directory of S:\

10/19/2013 09:09 AM <DIR> $RECYCLE.BIN
04/12/2011 10:11 PM <DIR> Boot
11/20/2010 07:40 AM 383,786 bootmgr
04/08/2010 05:57 PM 8,192 BOOTSECT.BAK
07/23/2013 01:02 PM <DIR> System Volume Information
2 File(s) 391,978 bytes
3 Dir(s) 22,446,080 bytes free

If the folders listed are not exactly correct, such as Recycle bin, it might be because I have the Windows 7 drive in an external dock.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
I'm not sure what's happened but you seem to have 2 x 100MB partitions. I suspected your later installation of Windows created a second one for some reason (maybe the first didn't have enough space?). Normally Windows will store some boot files in it.

One of your problems (if you're on MBR partitioning, rather than GPT) is that you are now at the 4 partition limit imposed by MBR partitioning scheme. I presume that's why your last partition has been created as logical rather than primary - otherwise you would have exceeded the 4 partition maximum - which would have been worse!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    OS X / Windows 8.1 Pro / Ubuntu 13.10
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    15" MacBook Pro retina 10,1
    CPU
    2.3GHz
    Memory
    8GB 1600MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD400 / Nvidia GT650M
    Screen Resolution
    2880 x 1800
    Hard Drives
    256GB SSD
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