Has anyone encountered this problem before? I've used the same Ultimate DVD for 5 systems prior to this one. All installed fine. It's an exact copy of the Microsoft one. Checked hash and everything tallied. The motherboard's a Zotan G41 Value. BIOS says sometime in August 2009. Didn't remember what version it was but I was wondering what would happen if we tried to install Windows 7 Ultimate on a system without a SLIC 2.1 table in the BIOS.
Sound more like a driver/hardware issue... if it is a 100% original (untouched) disc it shouldn't matter if it has a SLIC table in bios or not.... a home build pc system with a retail version installed does not have a SLIC table either you know You forgot to mention if you have been trying to activate it with loaders, removewat or a bios mod, a little bit more information would be helpful in your scenario
No sirs. No loaders involved. Used just the Windows 7 Ultimate burnt from a downloaded ISO and as mentioned earlier, the download was fine and this same disc has been used to install Windows 7 Ultimate successfully on at least 5 other systems.
Like i said, it is totally irrelevant to assume this has anything to do with the presence or lack of the SLIC table inside a bios. How did you get the idea it could be related anyway?
Press F8 right before Windows loads, and try loading Windows in VGA mode (loads everything normally except for the display driver). If no luck, try safe mode from the same menu.
Burdafel, your suggestion worked but only ONCE. I got to use the system but since not all the drivers were present plus I wanted to update the BIOS to a SLIC 2.1ed one I created earlier, I did a reboot to have everything in the BIOS resetted to their default settings. After the reboot, it became worse than ever. Gave me that silly 'Windows failed to start ...... ' screen everytime. Now I can't even format and reinstall Windows 7 Ultimate. Currently waiting for an answer from Zotac because I have other questions about the board too.
What happened in my scenario was that APIC was by default set to Disabled so when I resetted the CMOS settings, that was what it went to which was why Windows 7 couldn't start up properly and neither could I install it again. A real headache until I dropped by Microsoft's website and got pointed to one of those question and answer sessions. The reason I didn't notice it initially was because the APIC setting on my Zotac board's settings page is near the very bottom which requires scrolling. Guess my situation is one of the rarer ones where despite Windows 7 installing the right drivers for my board, it still couldn't display anything until I switched to low resolution mode during startup first. Video driver on the manufacturer's website is the same version as that installed by Windows 7.