An academic affiliate of M$ sold me what turns out to be an upgrade install of 7. I need to get 7 installed asap on a drive that's already partitioned so I can load personal academic work, SQL server, and be sure everything works before school ends. A little background: I use a drive bay and have a 300GB w/7 Pro (about 5 years old and not sure how long drive will last), a 320GB w/XP for gaming and a newer 500GB with partitions and backed up data. I want to eventually dual boot a fresh 7 and a server flavor like exhange on it (and use excess space on each drive to store BU images. I'll also burn the images.) Q - I've read how I can presumedly double install 7 using the UPG media IF done on a blank drive. Does anyone know how I can do so on a partition? Tools I have to work with: ISO burns of UPG XP & UPG 7 Pro 64b, official/academic disc of XP Pro and UPG 7 Pro 64b and an R.C. of 7. I'm afraid if I load my academic XP and then try UPG that, it'll disable my working XP when 7 'subsumes' it. I also can borrow a 7 Home UPG disc if I find a way to not hose it's license. When I try install 7 UPG on the partition install does not find the drive, gives a white window and asks for a driver for the hard drive. Samsung/Seagate says there is none. Q2 - Is there a way to load XP and use the UPG disc without hosing the XP license already in use? Or use the R.C. and UPG to get a complete 7? I've seen the slmgr - rearm for the trial period. My problem is the install process with these UPG discs. You guys seem to be the pros from Dover on this stuff. I hesitate to use 'hacks' and such but your site seems safe and knowledgable. Swear if I can solve this I'm loading Linux Mint on an old PATA to surf with and forgoing MS updates. Appreciate any input and thanks, Mac
It's not the hard drive that's missing the driver, it's the controller that is most likely in AHCI mode and therefore doesn't work with a generic driver. If you currently have a working installation, look in device manager for the controller; it's probably listed as a SATA or AHCI controller in "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers". Then find a recent driver download from the manufacturer web site and use that during the installation.