Thanks a lot for your help man. Your idea about upgrade to w10/restore from backup and another user who suggested format a partition using mini partition tool lead me to the option to clone the old...

Yes unfortunately I already tried this, startup repair is unable to repair any issue.

No dice :( Wiped to zeroes, created NTFS primary partition minus 1 GB, and then wouldn't let me proceed to install on that partition with the error "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an...

I will give it a shot, thank you. Although as I mentioned I did install Windows 10 on this SSD, through a second laptop without issue but when I put the SSD in the original laptop it would not boot...

Thanks for the suggestion - though it doesn't look like it's anything I haven't tried.

When going through the install process I either have the option to delete the existing partitions that I...

Yes pretty sure, here is the before/after and all I've done is click next. Thank you.

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I tried. It starts the install process and within 10 seconds then the error "Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for...

Thanks for the reply. This I have no idea about, how do I know which I'm doing? All I'm doing is pressing F11 to get the boot manager and selecting my bootable USB stick when it's powering on.

I have a Sony Vaio laptop (VPCYB15KX), a bit old but working nonetheless currently running Windows 7 Home Premium and works fine, but is quite slow so I decided to upgrade to an SSD. Picked up a...