Windows 7: The Usual Suspect, infinite reboot loop

I'm building a computer myself and I can't for the life of me get windows 7 to install. Here is my configuration and what I've tried..



Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard Rev 2.0, BIOS version “FA”

Processor: Intel Core i7 930 2.80GHz 8MB LGA 1366 L3 Quad Core Desktop Processor - BX80601930

Memory: Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 SDRAM Memory Module - 6GB (3 x 2GB) - 1600MHz DDR3-1600/PC3-12800 - DDR3 SDRAM 9-9-9-24 version 2.3a

Optical Drive: ASUS Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

Power Supply: OCZ Technology GameXStream 850W ATX12V & EPS12V Power Supply

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500 GB - Hard Drive – Bulk

Graphics Card: GALAXY 70XKH3HS8GUX GeForce GTX 470 Graphics Card - PCI Express 2.0 x16 - 1.25 GB GDDR5 SDRAM

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders – OEM

Case: Cooler Master HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP Chassis - Mid-tower - 10 Bays – Black


What I first did to install:
I change the bios to boot from the Optical Drive

Put the Windows 7 CD into the optical drive.

Follow the on screen instructions for the windows install.

Windows copies the files, extracts and installs. The system reboots. When Windows attempts to start for the first time the windows logo comes up and does its animation. The system then reboots. The screen comes up that tells me windows didn’t start properly and do I want to try safe mode, etc etc. If I do safe mode drivers scroll until it gets to disk.sys. At this point it freezes for a minute or two and reboots.

Things I’ve tried:
I have pared down to 1 stick of 2 GB of the ram
I’ve tried using both of the other sticks of ram (individually) in case I had a bad stick
I’ve tried with an older ATI PCI video card in case it was a video card compatibility issue
I’ve tried reformatting and deleting the system partition and reinstalling
I’ve tried reformatting from another working computer and reinstalling
I’ve tried many windows repairs, often it says it can’t fix it, or tries something and restarts. Once it was “repairing disk errors” and it did that in about a minute. Didn’t work. Othertimes it gives me a failure during setup, tries to fix it, didn’t work.
I’ve reset the bios to optimized
I’ve tried manually changing the multiplier of the ram in the bios.

After about 25 -30 reboots bios resets and repairs it finally looked like it was working, did some more installation stuff, restarted, and started the damn reboot sequence over and over… Now when I run in safe mode the last line to come up is Loaded: \windows\system32\drivers\Classpnp.sys
Looks like it made it a step farther, for no reason, I really didn’t change anything except repeated attempts. Many more attempts at repairs and resets haven’t gotten any further.

I’m debating memtest86+ to test the ram, but I think it’s working fine, hard to believe all 3 would be broken.
Could it be a sata issue? My hard drive is supposed to work with no problems for windows 7.

That motherboard is using an ICH10R chip for SATA, and I've built many a Windows 7 install on it without having to inject drivers (even for RAID or AHCI), so I doubt it's the drive or the controller (usually you get a 0x7B bugcheck rather than a reboot).

If you can get access to the drive offline from a boot CD, it would be interesting to see the setup*.log files in the \Windows\Panther directory.

Woof, I wish I could help or add something positive but this is way above my pay-grade... I do hope you solve your issue soon

ran the memtest, looked at all kinds of logs from the windows install, and finally found some obscure power save setting in the bios that when disabled fixed the problem entirely... I"m not at that computer right now but when I get to it I'll post the fix for it.

I also have a gigabyte motherboard and also had the same problem since installing Windows 7, and WHEN installing it as it did to you... what power save setting did you disable to be exact?

Thanks!

Ryze,

The very top bios setting is the M.I.T menu, click on that
Then Advanced CPU Features menu, cluck on that
In that menu there were two things i had to disable, one was C3/C6/C7 State Support, the other was CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)

theglowman,

Thanks for your reply, I'll check it out when I have the time

Ryze, did that work for you? Just curious

Well so far it has not done it... I disabled some stuff in the power management menu aswell... Something of it seems to have helped... So once again I thank you for your help!

First a very big THANKYOU for this post. Ive been through the Windows 7 install about 30 times (feels like 100) trying different things in an attempt to get the thing installed - every time ending in the loathed and feared reboot loop.
Finally I found this thread and in the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3R BIOS menu
M.I.T -> Advanced Frequency Settings -> Advanced CPU core features set:
C3/C6 State Support [Disabled]
This fixed the issue for me.
Initially I disabled also C1E Enhanced halt - but after a successful install I went back and reset that to auto and reinstalled leaving just C3/C6 State suport - which worked fine - so its that that does it (I also tried just C1E disabled - which gave reboot loop).
Thanks again for those who posted here - this was not something immediately obvious to try...
Edit: This was with BIOS F13 - latest stable. There is a beta BIOS out from Gigabyte - I haven't tried with that - might be fixed?