Windows 7: Difficulty Installing Windows 7 on a Dell XPS 720

Been scouring the net but haven't been able to find anything so I thought I'd post. Sorry if there's been a lot of these types of threads but here's my issue.



Installation of the operating system for Windows 7 actually goes without much difficulty but when I go into the post install setup the monitor goes blank. I've been poking around and what I've managed to conclude is that Dell likes to use it's own generic driver for video display rather than use the Windows Standard VGA Compatible Driver that should start up by default.

The reason why I've come to this conclusion is because I tried booting the new install in safe mode and I could actually see the initial setup page. Of course you can't do the post install settings in safe mode so I couldn't go any further.

My question for you guys, is there any way for me to disable the Dell OEM drivers that like to start overriding the generic drivers that come with windows? And if so how?

CoreFlood, I think you have half of of the solution already. Boot in safe mode, install the drivers you want (worst case just uninstall the problematic ones and Windows 7 will take care of installing them when you reboot) and reboot normally.

Why do you say: "Of course you can't do the post install settings in safe mode so I couldn't go any further."? Have you tried that? That is what safe mode is supposed to be for

Let us know

Well my issue comes after I put Windows 7 on the new partition that I made for it. When I tried booting Windows 7 in safe mode I got a dialog box telling me that initial setup and configuration cannot be done in safe mode. The only thing that I can seem to do is boot the recovery console from disc.

Anything else besides safe mode my monitor just goes blank and the little light goes yellow telling me that my monitor isn't receiving a signal at all.

CF, Dell won't let me see your board's specs without your service tag, so my suggestion may not be applicable: can you remove your NVidia 8600 and perform the setup with a integrated video controller, then put it back and set the drivers for it?

I also just noticed you only have 1G memory. Are you using Windows 7 X32 or 64 bits? That is in theory not enough for 64 bits (although I have seen reports that it works), and it might be too little for 32 bits to run efficiently as well

I could tell you what the MB was if I could get on my machine, at school now. Anyway I have 4GB of memory and I'm installing the x86 version of Windows 7 Professional.

Check your message box, I'll send you my service tag.

Oh and from what I can tell there isn't any other place to plug in my monitor other than the video card :\

Thanks CF. I forgot the Dell system specs suck, they are very confuse, you can't really tell what the mobo model is or even the graphics card. I wish they had the same as HP (I have one of each. Very differen website info).

But I think I see a potential cause for your troubles: you have a TV tuner card, right? Can you remove it and try again? We might have to start pulling hardware to see what is causing it, but this is a good start

Let me know, but pay attention to that class right now...

Well that was a pointless afternoon, my one class was canceled :P

Anyway I cracked open the tower and tried booting without the tv tuner card and that didn't do anything. I doubt at this point the sound card would be causing problems so I left that alone. That and the video card was all that was attached to the motherboard.

Anyway the MB is a Foxcom LS-36 to answer your earlier query. I got something better though for you guys to look at all the same, hurray CPU-Z

Also updated my system specs

Oh and on another quick side note (don't really think it matters but...) the copy of Windows 7 Pro that I'm using I actually got through my post secondary institutes contract with Microsoft via the MSDN Academic Alliance service. Again don't really think it should affect anything but I thought I'd put it out there.

Does your 8600 GTS card have two DVI outputs? If it does, have you tried the "other" output?
Just a thought.

Thanks CF for all the info. I am basically stumped... Your BIOS is up to date, I don;t see anything strange (not that I am good at reading that output, but nothing jumps out).

One suggestion: do a repair install and try to load the drivers for the NVidia when asked, check item 7 in this tutorial: Clean Install Windows 7

Let us know

If you are not dual booting and have your system recovery disks or can make an image to store externally, then I would boot into Windows 7 installer and wipe and format the entire drive using Advanced>Delete>Create>Format. Then let Windows 7 installer do it's job without possible interference from some Dell recov partition.