Stuck during installation

Hi fellows

I am having a problem during windows 7 installation.

I have 2 identical notebooks, Dell inspiron 1420. In one of them I had no problem, I could install windows 7 and it works very well. There are 2 differences between the both of them:

- We have changed the lcd screen of the one with the installation problems (don`t think it could be a problem) and it used to have dual boot because it used to have the latest ubuntu OS and Windows XP.

First, it didn't want to erase the partitions, and we had to format the notebook with the XP Disc, erasing the full disc and lose all the data of the partition without OS.

Then, when we could start the installation, it all worked out perfectly untill the installation is in its final step (completing installation). The wi-fi button shines and the installation stays still.

We have tried many things...flashing the bios, restore its fabric default settings, check HDD for failures, connect directly to the internet with a cable just in case that the installation needed to update, downloading the iso again directly from microsoft page and burning a new DVD (twice), etcetera.

The weirdest thing is that there are 2 notebooks, exactly the same ones, and one of them works perfectly.

If somebody have any idea, we will appreciate to be informed, because we've run out of ideas, and we`d hate having to go back to XP.

Thanks a lot!

Hello Runif and welcome to the Seven Forums!

Indeed it's really weird. But we can search for a few things:

1. When you say the wireless icon flashes, you mean it turns on, or it turns on and off repeatedly?

2. If we should focus on that wireless thing, I can suggest 2 things:
a. Turn off the other notebook if it's on during install, perhaps it tries to connect to the same network and results in an IP conflict.
b. Turn off your wireless access point/router during install. Maybe an IP conflict or something is taking place again.

3. Disable the wlan from BIOS if possible.

Windows 7 should probably have detected and installed the correct drivers for your wireless card, and maybe it tries to connect somewhere which might cause the problem.

Try that and let us know if it helped. That's the only thing that comes to mind right now.

Hi Limneos!

Thank you for your reply. We are doing what you suggested now...so, I will let you know if it worked once we have finished the installation.

Hi again.

We did what Limneos said and it stood still in the same place again.

Now, about Sevsman suggestion, I would wait without getting worried if there it was any clue that either the hard disk or the cd rom drive were working; but none of them does, so I think that there must be a hardware conflict.

Thanks for the suggestions, and we`ll let you know if we find the solution.

Hi, i just had the same problem upgrading a computer for my mom's business. It hung and the led on the cd drive stayed on... after 6 hours of waiting (unattended) i said screw it and popped the cd out... instantly the hdd activity picked up and less than a minute later it restarted and continued to the setup folders. 7/10 i'd say they just messed up some scripting that doesn't end the cd activity just endlessly loops.

Kweks said:

Hi, i just had the same problem upgrading a computer for my mom's business. It hung and the led on the cd drive stayed on... after 6 hours of waiting (unattended) i said screw it and popped the cd out... instantly the hdd activity picked up and less than a minute later it restarted and continued to the setup folders. 7/10 i'd say they just messed up some scripting that doesn't end the cd activity just endlessly loops.

Kweks

Hi and welcome to sevenforums

More likely the dvd is corrupt. Where did you get the ISO, and how did y our burn it?

Ken

Kweks said:

It hung and the led on the cd drive stayed on... after 6 hours of waiting (unattended) i said screw it and popped the cd out... instantly the hdd activity picked up and less than a minute later it restarted and continued to the setup folders.

You should re-burn the dvd at a slower speed, the slower the better, because what you described sounds exactly like an improperly burned dvd, so the drive was struggling to read certain parts because of this and when a dvd drive has a hard time reading parts of a dvd/cd it slows its read-speed down as much as possible in order to try and read data from those problematic parts.

PS : I see in your system specs it says 512MB of system ram. I think that is too low of an amount of ram for Win 7, as 1GB is minimum, this could also pose a problem for installation of win 7.

http://windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements