0x8004240f Windows Vista Error: Complete Solution
Written by Pavan Kumar on March 24, 2009
This is the first Vista post and I am dealing with an error which no where has solutions all over the internet. Just three days back, I bought a Dell Inspiron Laptop 
and in the very second day, I wrecked it 
. It was the error with code 0x8004240f. I will make everything a clear note as at least someone will find it useful. Also, here I am going to write what I did and how I fixed my system. I cannot be held responsible for whatever mistake you do by referring to this post. The issue will be dealt in enough details and read everything clearly before you start work. If you are covered under warranty, its better to call the support team.
First, how this originated. As you know all company setup systems come with a standard partition. Even this Dell Inspiron model was shipped with two partitions with one for recovery section of size 10GB (may vary for you based on your OS, mine is Windows Vista Home Basic Edition) and rest for the OS and installed applications. I tried Partition Magic to get my hard disk divided as my desire, but this had the issue. I over trusted the Partition Magic and ignored the OS warning that this software is not compatible with this version of Windows. And the installation itself had a problem, it asked to make some changes to the hard disk. The next reboot could not start the OS, it resulted in blue screen of death followed by an automatic restart.
Next, I tried to restore the notebook to factory settings, even this did not work . Next plan was to reinstall the OS. Here I found the problem. I tried to install the OS onto the large partition (some 222GB of 250GB HDD). The intention was to safeguard the recovery partition. By this time, I noticed that the large space was entirely named as unallocated space. Creating a new partition of that unallocated space was in vain. Each try resulted in the same 0x8004240f error. If you search for this error, you will find a lot of entries, but visiting each link results in same forum entry, same replies and NO SOLUTION (Hope my post makes it to front of Google to help the people in trouble ). Some MBRWORK is the solution they say, but it did not work for anyone based on those discussions, even it did not work in my case.
I found the error details in Microsoft site, but details were for some high disk space servers, not these laptops. Now, I decided to make use of that 10GB partition, thought that would be an easy solution. But it was not, Vista requires 16GB+ disk space to install. Follow the practical steps I did.
Deleted the 10 GB partition.
Recreated the 10 GB partition. This also created the other 222.8 GB partition, even I did not expect that, but I was happy.
Next, I tried to install the OS into this large space, the following error popped up:
Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error occured while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error code:0x80070057
Next, format the partition.
Delete > New > Format – these are the next steps I followed.
Then install the Windows Vista OS. Let me make it clear, my partitions were 25GB, 25GB and it did not allow me to create partitions of the rest unused disk space.
There were no problems with the rest part of installation. Installing OS was successful. But the hard disk partitioning was still a nightmare. I only had those 25GB partitions along with the 10GB partition which was empty. One among the 25GB partitions were installed with Vista.
And still some 175GB+ space was unallocated. I tried to create a new partition from Vista Disk Management. You can access it by right click on Computer in start menu, click on Manage > Storage > Disk Management. It did not work.
Finally, I could Extend the existing last partition(25GB) to include all unallocated space, this worked. Then all disk management was easy and quiet.
What I should have done to partition hard disk in Vista?
I never knew about Vista Disk Management. Even Windows XP has the disk management tool, but partition made with this results in destruction of all data in your hard disk. But Vista Disk Management does not destroy any data on your system. Its wise and easy to use Disk Management tool in Vista.
I think this helps you guys in trouble. If you have any other solutions, please share in comments. Also, if you have problems, we shall discuss and try to solve the same here. Now, you know how to overcome 0x8004240f error. But in this process, you have destroyed your backup partition. Here is the tutorial [http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/recreate.htm] to re create a recovery partition on your Dell.
Update: The tutorial that was linked here for partition recovery does not exist anymore. Please google for finding an alternative one.
People who liked this also read:
Thanks. I have started using Vista recently. If i get this error. I will use this as a resource guide to remove it.