Win 7 Pro 64 Hangs during installation on Intel S5520HCT server board

I have a mysterious problem I need help with. I have searched this forum and elsewhere and attempted what has been suggested ... but to no avail.

This is the situation. I am building two servers with identical hardware ... Intel S5520HCT mother board, dual Xeon E5607 2.26GHz, Seagate SATA 2TB drive, 8GB Crucial memory and OCZ Agility SSD drives. I am using the onboard video and motherboard has been update with the latest BIOS.

But when I install Windows 7 Pro 64 to 50GB partition on the SATA drive, or to a single partition SSD ... the system hangs after the final reboot right after "Updating Registry" and "Starting Services" during the "Completing Installation" phase.
The next input should be username and computer name ... but it never gets to that.

I have minimum hardware attached ... disabled networking in BIOS ... and tried with a number of different memory configurations ... etc .. etc ... but still the same result .. and I am now totally clueless. I even tested all my hardware on a Tyan S7025 board ... and there it installs without any issues.

What in the world do I do next? ... any help will be greatly appreciated

Aloha
Mike

Hello Mike -

I have had a similar problem with various flavors of Win7 - drove me nuts until I changed out the MONITOR during initial Win installation. Once totally installed, I changed to my "normal" monitor.

Win7 will not install on any of my systems that use a Dell wide monitor - sample problem you posted. However, I keep an older "standard" screen to use during Win7 install and it works every time. Once Win7 is insralled I change out to the Dell wide screen and it works great.

See if this works for you. Good luck.

Regards,
GEWB

... thanks for the suggestion and I did test that just in case ... unfortunately, still does not work. I may have to send these boards back and use Tyan S7025 , which is a similar board, if I don;t find a solution soon.

Hello Mike -

Bummer that didn't work for you. Posts back when you find the solution.

Regards,
GEWB

I had the exact same problem this week, though with Windows Server 2008 R2, and found this thread. I have the fix too.

The company I work for is an Intel partner so I contacted Intel's support about it. Turns out the ethernet driver bundled with Windows 7/WS2008R2 has a bug which hangs the system if the LAN cables are unplugged.

I took a CAT5e cable and looped it directly between the two ethernet ports then began the install again. It works! Keep the cable plugged in until you update the driver with the one from the driver CD or from Intel's website.

Hello steeviebops -

Thanks for posting a solution!

I wonder...what if you installed Windows without having the LAN / WAN attached? Perhaps disable in the BIOS first, then install, then reenable?

Regards,
GEWB

You can actually enter the Device Manager during install to Uninstall (not disable) these devices in error so that install will complete, then update them after install completes from the desktop: Device Manager - Access During Windows 7 Installation

GEWB said:

Hello steeviebops -

Thanks for posting a solution!

I wonder...what if you installed Windows without having the LAN / WAN attached? Perhaps disable in the BIOS first, then install, then reenable?

Regards,
GEWB

I'd say this would work, but you'd need to pre-install the Intel-supplied driver with DPInst before enabling the onboard LAN devices again. Otherwise, Windows would install the out-of-the-box driver and hang the system again. The Intel rep told me that if you have Task Manager open before the system hangs, you'll notice the CPU jumping to 100% when it does happen, and at that point you can't do anything else with it.

[QUOTE=steeviebops;1850890
I'd say this would work, but you'd need to pre-install the Intel-supplied driver with DPInst before enabling the onboard LAN devices again. Otherwise, Windows would install the out-of-the-box driver and hang the system again. The Intel rep told me that if you have Task Manager open before the system hangs, you'll notice the CPU jumping to 100% when it does happen, and at that point you can't do anything else with it.[/QUOTE]

Ah, makes sense. Thanks for adding the explanation to the solution!

Regards,
GEWB

I just told you how to allieviate it.

This has been our fix here for years to uninstall any driver causing installer to hang.

gregrocker said:

You can actually enter the Device Manager during install to Uninstall (not disable) these devices in error so that install will complete, then update them after install completes from the desktop: Device Manager - Access During Windows 7 Installation