First of all, congratulations for the amazing boards, I stumbled upon it totally by accident, and found solutions for some "old thorns in my digital shoes" right away. Since then, I've been following Win 7 threads and finally decided to give it a try. Got the .ISO from the Repository thread, and followed its steps by the book. Regardless, I can't install Windows 7 no matter what. And since I found no solution to my specific problem (I swear I used search) I decided to sub and post. I currently use Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 and wanted to dual boot. Here's what I did. I created a new partition (30gb) on my HD just for Win7. Then I burned the .ISO on a DVD and booted from it. it copied windows files and such, but when it gets to the "starting windows" screen, the nightmare starts. Sometimes the glowing logo simply won't load, or it freezes in the middle of the animation with no hint (beside of it) that the installation crashed. Or it fully loads and keep glowing forever with no indication of progress (no HD, DVD activity, progress bars, nothing) Burned the .ISO again on another disk (I used a RW DVD in the 1st time, so I thought it could be causing troubles) with no success. Then I decided to try installing from windows. Started the setup, selected the brand new partition I've created previously, and presto! Installation commenced. it loaded windows files but when it first rebooted the PC, it freezes on "starting windows" screen again. There was one time, the installation finished, but when win 7 was loading for the 1st time, it showed a message, something like "this installation was unsucessful, blah, blah, windows will now unload the changes made." And restarted my PC, going back to my Vista. My system: Atlhon 64 X2 4800+ 2Gb DDR2 RAM 250 Gb HD NVidia GForce 7900 GTX Please guys, help me... I don't know what else I can do...
I'll try taking a guess here. I think you probably need to use a different hard drive. It could be the partition where you installed Win 7 lies in an odd area of the drive, and that might be causing the problem. I have a triple boot computer, and I have each OS on a seperate hard drive. I installed Win 7 disconnecting the other drives, and then reconnected after Win 7 was running OK. I have it set up so using EasyBCD bootloader coming off the XP drive, and can access any of the drives at boot. Works great.
If you installed Win 7 x64 you'll need more space then 30gb. Also check if you have any hidden partition that could be an issue as well. I would allocate 50 gb for Win 7 and format and retry the install.
mmm... that could be an issue... I'll try installing it tho with virtual PC just to check if somehow the .ISO got damaged. But I think your guess may be accurate enough... If this is the case, and since I don't have another HD available, then it leads me to another question. Does Win7 worth enough the effort so I could safely get rid of Vista for good, and do a clean install of Win7? Thanks
I suppose you've already enabled AHCI? If so or not, try disabling or enabling it. Disable = set to IDE and try to install again.
Is your system overclocked at all? Generally during BIOS flashes/installs/any situations where a crash could lead to disastrous results, I set everything to stock settings and take out all sticks of RAM except one. Your hard drive could be bad, but I'm thinking it's more along the lines of what others said - not enough space or a conflict with Vista being on the same drive. When I used to dual/triple boot I also had all my OS's on different physical disks, so I cant comment as to how well two different operating systems agree when they're on the same disk. Last, I feel that, yes W7 is good enough to replace Vista. A lot of people think of it as Vista SP3, or "what Vista SHOULD have been" and there is quite a bit of truth to both those statements. I pondered the same thing before I installed 7, and originally planned to reinstall vista on my second drive "just in case". I then realized, why waste time? What "just in case" could there be? I would never use it for anything. So instead I just put in on a VM along with XP. You know what? I haven't found a need to use either one. I'd say get rid of vista and get 7 all the way. From what I've heard, dual booting with Vista+7 is a nightmare to begin with.
problems installing win 7 I've keep hearing, people have vista and want to dual boot win 7,i really can't understand it,i was so glad to get rid of vista,i backed up my files to discs,reformatted my whole drive did a clean install,and just have win 7 rtm,with bios mod.why do people need 2 operating systems,especially when ones a dud.mate do you self a favor, you'll have less problems, if any.just an edit-i have win 7 on my laptop and desktop and have had no trouble with anything except media player 12,buggy,and didn't like the look of it,so uninstalled it and installed media player 11,my machines are running the best they have for years.
The reason I want to dual boot is that I have loads of apps and games installed that I'm not sure it will run properly under Win 7. So I'd like to test it for a while before getting rid of Vista for good. But since I managed to install it via Virtual PC, I'll be able to run some tests anyway. On the other hand, I don't know why, I'm getting too many BSoD's lately so I'm afraid of removing Vista before installing successfully Win 7, and not being able to do a boot install. Oh and btw, tho I'm a 'dud' like you said, I share the PC with my wife and she simply freaks out when I do major changes like this on it...lol Poor lady hates to relearn.
I found that the majority of Vista compatible apps work fine with Windows 7. There are a few pieces of software out there that are programmed to install ONLY for a supported OS even though they'd probably be fully functional under new ones. Plus there's virtually nothing to re-learn. If she was able to learn Vista after making the switch to XP, she'll have no problems with 7. There's hardly any big changes related to how the OS actually functions...the majority of changes are fixes/upgrades/making everything even easier that it already was. Plus I'm sure she'll enjoy stuff like Aero peek/snap, jump lists, libraries, etc. I know I love it.
misunderstaning sorry you misunderstood me,i was calling vista a 'dud',not you 'dude'.notice the 'e'.all my applications and games work better on win 7.and i think your wife will find how you move about in win 7, is not much different then vista,if she can use vista, she could use win 7 easily.