Trying to install Win 7 on xp machine.. having trubs..

It seems, I cannot load the os from the dvd. Attempts to do so have failed in this case. It appears to work, but then flops mid stream with some error. It is a sister in laws machine who lives cross country, I am trying to walk her through the necessaries over the phone.. anyways..

Using a method that worked for me a few weeks back, I sent her a new hard drive.. sata 500gb.. and given that the dvd install failed, I attempted to create two partitions on the new drive one.. 450 gb containing nothing.. and the other 5 gb containing all the os files.. This drive, I made active in windows xp drive manager..

Trouble is, when she boots, with just this new drive plugged in, she gets NTLDR is missing error. For some reason, it is not picking up the bootable drive partition and booting from it, though I could swear I just used these same steps to great effect not too long ago..

Any advice appreciated..!!

If you only created a 5 gb partition then I can only assume you didn't install the Win7 but just stored the install files there? It isn't bootable because it needs to be installed first to boot.

I believe you said she has an XP machine and that you sent her a secondary HDD, so she can plug it in a secondary drive slot, boot from her XP drive, then copy those install files onto her XP desktop, installing them to the newer drive from there by runnng Setup.exe. I would not run Setup from the 5gb partition because the early space on the drive is needed for the boot files, so she should instead copy them to her XP desktop, run setup.exe, select a custom install to the other drive, choose Advanced Options, delete the partition, create a new larger partition, format and install the WIndows 7 there. It will create a dual boot menu with XP.

I cannot run setup.exe, as it states it is not a valid win32 application.. Should have mentioned.. I am trying to load 64bit Win7 from a 32 bit XP..

A few weeks back, I had a similar situation, but was able to boot off of the new 5gb partition, by copying the install files to it, and marking it as active in disk management. After all, the computer will boot from the DVD, why not a hdd with the exact same files on it?

I am not sure what I am doing wrong, or if there is a way to make a 64bit installer work inside the 32 bit older windows. any advice still appreciated..

Hi

Try a USB stick.

musiclover7 said:

It seems, I cannot load the os from the dvd. Attempts to do so have failed in this case. It appears to work, but then flops mid stream with some error. It is a sister in laws machine who lives cross country, I am trying to walk her through the necessaries over the phone.. anyways..

Using a method that worked for me a few weeks back, I sent her a new hard drive.. sata 500gb.. and given that the dvd install failed, I attempted to create two partitions on the new drive one.. 450 gb containing nothing.. and the other 5 gb containing all the os files.. This drive, I made active in windows xp drive manager..

Trouble is, when she boots, with just this new drive plugged in, she gets NTLDR is missing error. For some reason, it is not picking up the bootable drive partition and booting from it, though I could swear I just used these same steps to great effect not too long ago..

Any advice appreciated..!!

I am Sorry My freind, Upgarde is not possible, instead do a custom insatllation. :)

Could it be that the XP doesn't have the SATA drivers for the sata hard drive you sent?

I can format the drive inside xp, so I do not believe that is the case.. I do not want to run an upgrade.. I want to do a custom install. I cannot recall the error we got when installing from dvd, but it would start to expand, and then mid way, would report some error that I think was driver related.. It would say, sorry setup cannot install windows..

So, I am trying to copy install files over to the hard drive, and run the install from a partition on that drive, but get the ntldr error.. I have used this method before.. Not sure why it is not working now.. Before when I used the method, I marked the partition active in Vista, to make it bootable.. I did the same thing in XP..

Sent her a USB key yesterday. There are 2 drives in the mix.. One with XP, one brand new.. I partitioned the new drive inside xp, such that it had one partition at 450gb, and another at 5 gb, this second containing the windows install files.. I then marked the second partition active on that drive.. Had her shut down the machine.. unplug the old hard drive to remove risk of overwriting her old data, and boot.. Unfortunately, I am getting ntldr errror.. I had her go into bios, and check to make sure hard disk was the first boot device, and that her hard drive was listed.. No good..

So I sent a USB key yesterday.. should get there some time next week..