Burned the iso to a DVD, 6x speed (4x was not an available write speed for my drive). Had 4gb ram in the system. Successful install.
I appreciate the help, and I apologize that the solution was a well-documented one, though I didn't have a DVD drive until now.
Nice to know and thanks for reporting back. Good work.
was the earlier installation of win7 x32 still on that hard drive, or did you reformat first?
It did have x32 on it. I erased the drive during the x64 installation, booting for the burnt DVD. I deleted everything on the drive. I didn't select "format" because the option was grayed out at that time.
Everything's working fine so far, the 8gigs show up fine, everything has top or near top marks on the Windows Experience rater except for an average score from my harddrive.
It shouldn't have been an issue initially for the USB installer, since the drive was empty when I attempted it. The new system just didn't like the USB installer. It did work perfectly on the old system.
After I installed x32 through the old system to the new hd, I didn't attempt prepping the new hd for moving, since I wanted x64 instead to handle the extra RAM. I didn't want to settle for x32. I couldn't get to the menu to delete it with the USB due to the driver error right before that step. However, the DVD came up with no issues.
Use the Universal USB Installer to write ISO to flash stick with Win7 in dropdown menu. It never fails.
You can also do a lot with free Partition Wizard bootable CD: deleting partitions, resizing all directions, jumping partitions over each other to Move, converting Primary/Logical, Rebuild MBR, etc. It is the best tool we have here.
Thanks for the information. To be honest, I did not use the USB installer because the USB did work through the old system and the technique I used was through a tutorial given by a Microsoft employee using DiskPart. I will try testing it just to give feedback on whether or not it may have worked.
I didn't delete the data off of the new hd through the old system because the process was very finnicky (moving and plugging in parts, that is) and I had gotten the dvd drive. Also, the drive was empty before and the USB didn't work.
If you would like more information, I'd be willing to give you more. I just don't want to take up your time with a resolved issue by continuing to post here.
My comments were also for others who will find this thread via Google.
You can mark the thread Solved at top.
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