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Stuck on 'Starting Windows' screen during install
I've found others on the forum attempting the same thing as me, but with different problems. I'm hoping this isn't a duplicate.
I recently purchased a Dell XPS 15 (l521x) that came with Windows 8. The system boots from the hard drive through UEFI by default, so I think the hard drive is already GPT. I am attempting to install Windows 7 from a UEFI bootable USB. The system goes through the 'copying files' phase and then goes to the Starting Windows screen. As the colored dots of the Windows logo are circling, the system freezes. Can someone help me fix this problem? The following are the steps I took in order to install Windows 7:
- Formatted a brand new 4GB USB drive to FAT32
- Downloaded Windows 7 ISO (I have a key)
- Extracted ISO files to USB
- Made adjustments so that USB is UEFI bootable (efi/boot/bootx64.efi)
- In BIOS, set SATA Operation to AHCI and disabled Secure Boot
- Select USB drive from UEFI boot menu
Many thanks in advance as I've been fighting with this for several weeks now.