Workaround to Fix Windows 7 Unable To Create or Save New Files in the Folder Error When Unloading Box

Some Windows 7 customers who bought Windows 7 license from Digital River or Microsoft Store and other online store may have to download Windows 7 installation files via electronic software distribution (ESD), which is not in ISO image format.

The 3 Windows 7 installation files are an executable with the name in the format of Win7-XX-Retail-en-us-x??.exe (e.g. Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe or Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x64.exe or Win7-HP-Retail-en-us-x86.exe or Win7-HP-Retail-en-us-x64.exe), setup1.box and setup2.box.

However, when trying to install Windows 7, some users experience error when the program is unpacking and extracting the installation files from the boxes, and not even comes to the installation wizard which allows users to choose clean custom install or upgrade. The error is that during “Unloading the Box” message, once the status bar reaches the end, the following error occurs:

We are unable to create or save new files in the folder in which this application was downloaded. Please check the folder properties to make sure that you have security permission on the folder to write files and that the folder is not read-only.

Apparently, the Windows 7 installation files that been uploaded to msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net for everybody to download is corrupt. For 32-bit operating system users who attempts to upgrade to 64-bit (x64) Windows 7, the following error message displayed when user tries to run the setup.exe directly in the “expandedSetup” folder:

The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you’re running. Check you computer’s system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher.

Note: Some users who can be downloading either the 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) Windows 7 ESD installation files, the problem may be even worse, as some users reported that the executable cannot even unload the box, and no “expandedSetup” folder been created. Users facing these problem (no unpacking or unloading of any kind happens) should re-download the installation files of Windows 7 as the setup1.box and/or setup2.box may be incomplete, or terminated while download as the file size is bigger than 2GB.

Users who manage to extract the “expandedSetup” has a workaround fix to run the Windows 7 installation properly, at least until Microsoft fixes the corrupted “boxes” issue. Instead, it’s recommended to re-download all the three installation files again to ensure that the downloads is complete, full and not corrupt.

Meanwhile, in order to fix the Windows 7 installation issue, users can make a bootable Windows 7 ISO image with the “expandedSetup” folder. The installation of Windows 7, either upgrade or custom, can be started by mounting the ISO image in a virtual CD/DVD-ROM drive, or burn to DVD to boot up the computer from.