Windows 7 installation difficulties

[dud]

I started this thread just to get a feel for how hard the rest of the community found their own Win 7 installation. I recently bought a used (mint condition) Dell Precision M90 with a T7600, 4 GB RAM, 250 HD and a Quadro FX vid card. Win 7 Advisor "advised" me that my laptop configuration met/exceeded all Win 7 requirements.

So I started installing ...

Two days later I THINK I have a good, stable installation. The reason I am not 100% sure is because of the various problems I had installing the OS including:

- Random hangups during install
- Win 7 freezes at "Completing Installation" screen
- Win 7 freezing at "Setup is starting" screen

During my last attempt the system stalled at the point I was choosing my security and network info so I just turned the system off and back on again. For some bizarre reason it (apparently) complete the install after that. I have since installed MS Office and a few older games without incident, confirming that each is sucessfully installed and running.

Without going into too much detail ... did I just survive an isolated incidence ... or is Win 7 realy that buggy and hard to install. I've done some research to find that I am definitely NOT alone in my pain ... but how really serious are these issues?

 

[dpodblood]

I've installed Win 7 on several machines, and never had the problems you're describing. It could be a hardware issue. Try doing some diagnostics against the hard drive, and make sure it's in good condition.

 

[FoxFifth]

I did a clean install of Windows 7 on a Dell desktop that had been running Vista. I was pleasantly surprised on how quick and easy the install was.

 

[RebateMonger]

I did a clean install of Windows 7 on a Dell desktop that had been running Vista. I was pleasantly surprised on how quick and easy the install was.

Yeah, a Win7 install should be quick and problem-free. If it isn't there's a hardware problem. I've installed it on a six-year-old XP Celeron laptop that wouldn't allow a Vista installation, on a couple of five-year-old Media Center PCs, on a laptop with a Chinese BIOS that was totally undeciperable to me, and on several very modern PCs. All without incident.

Edit:
Speaking of incidents, you really should determine what was causing your problems. They are liable to come back to haunt you. First thing is to run an overnight memory test and a couple of hard disk scanning programs to search for disk problems.

 

[dphantom]

zero issues with installing Windows 7. Best I have worked with.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had issues installing Win7 on those free Biostar 760G motherboards from Microcenter, until I did a BIOS upgrade.

 

[airdata]

The only trouble I've had w\ windows 7 installation was installing in a VM.

All installations I've done have been very quick and easy... completely hassle-free.

 

[Steltek]

Never had a problem with a Win7 install myself, including on machines that Vista just absolutely choked on. That being said, while it is not as sensitive to hardware faults as Vista was, Win7 can still have issues installing on a system with a piece of marginally functioning hardware

Although the Windows logs usually aren't that helpful, in this instance it might be worth looking through system and application logs for errors/warnings. You might also want to check Device Manager to see if you have any disabled system devices that don't have drivers installed. In addition to hard drive and RAM, you might also want to check your DVD drive to ensure you don't have one that is failing or that has a firmware issue.

 

[MonAcleJ62]

I also installed it on my Precision M90 and the only slight hardware problem I ran into was with my NVidia FX3500M video card driver, Other than that no worries. I like it better than Vista, but I still use XP Pro for certain programs I have which won't run under Vista or Windows 7.

 

[CHJF]

run memtest, had windowsXP do the same thing before. took me two days to find out I had a bad stick..

 

[fire400]

sometimes the hard drive will respond normally during an installation. and everything is fine and dandy, then for some damn reason, the hard drive has this reservation of everything that just happened during the installation and resets to that image state.

also, win7 has fail-safe features. like a restore point. it probably created a restore point and couldn't register all the new requests properly because of other hardware/software problems.