Windows 7: Windows 7 disk won't boot computer

Hello,

I have my serial number that I got from Microsoft a while back and I burned the iso to a bootable dvd however when I try to boot with the burned disk, all that happens is I get a black screen with a flashing cursor at the top of the screen. I left the computer like this for aproximately 2 hours tonight and it never ended up booting up.

I've tried using imgburn as well as magiciso to burn the image to the disk and both of them have made coasters of several dvd disks now.

From what I remember when I first installed Win 7, I was atleast able to double click on the setup.exe program and it would bring up a windows 7 window in vista that was like an installer. However when I try that now, I just get a message telling me that autorun.dll is either not made for this version of windows or it is corrupt. I can't imagine the iso file becoming corrupt from simply sitting on a drive that I rarely use between the last time that I burned the iso image to a dvd and installed Win 7 and now.

Perhaps this is a common issue that somebody here knows how to deal with. Apparently MS isn't allowing any more downloads of the iso so I'm pretty much stuck with the iso that I have an hoping that it's not really corrupt.

Any help greatly appreciated.

You have to get the computer to boot from the CD-Rom. You might have to click on F12 for the boot options or access the bios by clicking on the "delete" key while your computer is starting and then change the boot order.

Yes, I should have mentioned that. My computers bios is set to boot from the CD/DVD drive first if there is a bootable disk in it, and if not then it boots from the HDD. So it is trying to boot from the DVD however it's not actually booting, it's simply sitting with a flashing white cursor on the screen

I'd say you have a corrupt copy of the ISO file, have you checked your copy against the md5 hash of the complete iso?

No, I really don't know how to do that. That would be a bummer, I was planning on using this up until March 2010, when funds should be a little less tight.

grab the tool in this thread.
Windows 7 ISO Verifier

Thanks for the help. It tells me that it is not recognized as a valid Windows 7 iso. I guess that's that then. Won't be able to get Windows 7 up and running again.

Thanks for the assist.

Everyone who is running Windows 7 should have a good copy of Win 7 media for legitimate repair purposes.

The rules of this site do not permit me to provide specific links but I think (hope ) I'm allowed to suggest generally that you could probably locate a copy of either the RC or the RTM if you are familiar with how to search for and download torrents. You just have to be sure to check the hash values and compare to MS official ones (listed in the FAQ on this site) to make sure whatever you have downloaded is, in fact, a true unmodified copy of the original media. Hashtab is another good free app for doing that.

Btw, you could install and run the RTM version unactivated for a total of 120 days by "rearming" every 30 days (allowed 3 30 day rearms after the first 30 days). I think there is a tutorial on this site on how to do that. After the 3 rearms are used up, you would have to enter a key and activate to continue using an RTM version.

Anyway, once you have obtained whatever media you have decided to go for, by whatever method (from a friend or from a torrent or buying it or whatever (btw, only $30 for Pro RTM if you have a valid .edu email address)) then just burn it using a good app like Imgburn (free) and burn at a slow speed and check the box to make the burning app verify the burn after it is finished to make sure your burn is a good one and not corrupted.

Good luck and I hope that you don't let this little "bump in the road" stop you from using Windows 7.

Thanks for the information. My partner is a professor at the local college so I know she did have a valid .edu email address at one time (even though she never uses it), so I'll check out that thread about buying Windows 7 for $30.00 that I saw earlier and see if it's something that we qualify for.

For that price, I need not wait for better times next year, her classes start up again tomorrow so I'll get her to make sure that her college email address is working or get them to turn it back on since she's been on hiatus for the past 13 months.

On my own PC gaming forum I have seen our members talk about torrents once in a blue moon, so I'll ask one of them to tell me what I need to do to try it that way since I don't know anybody personally that has Windows 7 either beta, release or whatever, so that nobody has to break any rules around here.

One last question...

I know what RC means, but what does RTM mean?

Thanks

You have to burn it to a DVD at the slowest speed possible. I had that problem and I fixed it after a 2.5x burn.

RTM = Release to manufacturing. Ie it's the build that'll be in the shops come 22nd October.