Pain in the boot

[Bardock]

Hey.
I am trying to install windows 7 64 bit on my moms laptop with xp.

If I run from the dvd, it asks me to select a driver. Doesn't say which one but I read somewhere else it's most likely sata driver.

I got these drivers from intel and put them in but then it said device not found and the installation wouldn't start.

I have ordered a usb flash drive but it won't be here for a while.

My other idea was to make a bootable hard drive partition and load the install from that.

But xp won't let me resize partitions and partition magic won't load. It says "XMS Alloc Error" when the dos part of the partition magic boot disk starts to load into ram and never advances or opens the program.

Have you guys ever heard of a situation like this? I have never seen the select a driver screen in a windows 7 install and have used the same windows 7 dvd and partition magic bootdisk on other machines with no problems.

Also, looked in BIOS for anything that says SATA and all I saw was "Sata Native Mode" which I have tried enabled and disabled, doesn't seem to matter.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Dahak]

Which intel drivers did you download? the desktop and mobile ones are different.
Also what laptop is it, they may have the drivers for it. but most of the time if its sata native should be on, but some times there is a different setting for the sata controller and i have seen it sometimes be sata/raid or sata or ide compatibility

 

[Ketchup]

Does the laptop offer AHCI mode? If it came with XP, probably not. In which case I don't see any drivers on that screenshot that would work, from what I can read anyway. What model is the laptop?

If it won't detect the chipset automatically (which would be odd considering it's probably an older Intel chipset) you will need to get a driver and put it on a flash drive.

So, let's start by knowing what this laptop is, and go from there.

Also (don't let this question insult you, but) have you done a fresh installation of windows 7 before? Just want an idea of where you are coming from.

 

[bbhaag]

My wifes older(ok very old) Core Duo Toshiba laptop does something similar every time I wipe it and do a re-install.
I actually have to pre-install the official sata driver from Toshiba or Windows 7 won't recognize the drive and proceed with the install. It's gotten to the point where I have the driver archived on my external drive because last time I had a hard time finding it due to the age of the laptop.

 

[Bardock]

Huh, very interesting.

@Dahak: I used this driver: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM/GU/PM/GMS/940GML/943GML and Intel(R) 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port - 27A1 - Windows 7 64-Bit

HP NX9420

Chipset 945PM

Nothing I tried worked.

@Ketchup79: no offense taken, glad for the advice. I have done this a lot to a lot of machines and never had this happen.

No AHCI in bios.

Every time I put this into google and read a solved thread the person solved it by downloading another ISO and burning a new dvd or putting it on a flash drive.

I just started downloading Windows 7 64 ultimate with SP1 iso but it still has 18 hours to go on my slow connection.

The dvd in question is very scratched too.

 

[Dahak]

While i have seen issues with scratched media, i have not seen it cause a non detecting hard drive, usually it will crash during load.

Looking over the machine specs, it should see the hard drive with no issues.

Question, was the laptop working correctly before the attempt to install win7?

 

[Bardock]

Yea it was working great with xp, I am only changing it because of the april 8th thing.

 

[Bardock]

Got my usb 16gb drive in the mail today and am installing windows 7 x64 on the computer with no problem.

I guess it doesn't matter why the dvd didn't work. Maybe it's an ide dvd burner drive and windows needs to boot from a sata one?

Thanks for the help anyways guys, usb drive seems to have saved the day for me.

 

[bbhaag]

Good to see you got it sorted out.:thumbsup: Sometimes those older setups can get a bit tricky.

 

[Ketchup]

Good to see you got it sorted out.:thumbsup: Sometimes those older setups can get a bit tricky.

Yup. Glad it's working Bardock.

 

[Bardock]

@bbhaag: yea the old machines are a pain some times.

@ketchup79: thanks bro.

I don't think I will ever use a dvd to install windows again.

The usb way was so much faster and easier, it took about 20 minutes to install.

It's my mom's computer so now she doesn't have to buy a new one when xp goes away.

It works great with windows 7 and now that it has 64 bit OS and has been reformatted it seems a lot faster.

 

[Matt1970]

It's usually the newer hardware that you run into driver issues but good to see you got it. And yes, installing Windows from a USB drive is soooooooo much quicker.