Common Installation Problems and Their Solutions

Optiplex GX620. this system has no old-school kbd & mouse ports.
Tried backup/restore to new drive for a week and all failed.
Now trying fresh clean install with Windows 7 Ultimate on DVD, fresh 500gb drive that I have checked for errors.
Install bails ~20% of "expanding, or less.
Error 0X80070001 "Windows cannot install required files.

Is there something about a USB-only system that makes it difficult to install, upgrade, restore from backup, etc? Prior to trying this install I tried about a dozen times to restore to a new drive using a clean backup image [using Image For Windows], which backup I had validated byte-for-byte. it would fail to validate on the Restore, citing "stream error".

only thing I have not checked is a thorough overnight memory test. The system was up and running for a week solid with the original Win7 Pro on a small hard drive... no issues that I could see.

thx for any advice.
z

I'll try dropping the vid card on next retry. the pcix16 is a common nvidia card.it defaults to plain jane vga

took a tip from somewhere on the forum to dump memory; pulled all but one stick. nothing in usb except keyboard dongle.

i had high hopes for win7....

DocBrown said:

zapp22, Have you dis-connected all extra USB devices other than KB & mouse ?

Only 1 monitor, NO TV card installed.

What video card do you have or is the video on the MB ? VGA, DVI, or HDMI ?


Have you looked at our Questions list ?

Questions to use for help with Installation Issues

p.s. is it "normal" on an install from DVD for the "Expanding Windows Files" section to just stay on "0%" for a long time, or is that telling me something evil?

Doc, is there a way to verify/validate the DVD itself?
are some DVD/ROM/RW units suspect?

DocBrown said:

zapp22 said:

p.s. is it "normal" on an install from DVD for the "Expanding Windows Files" section to just stay on "0%" for a long time, or is that telling me something evil?

Yes that can be typical of it getting hung up on a hardware problem, video, ram, etc.

one more question: on each of these repeated reboot/retry/fails, I note that the drive shows the boot partition having been established, but the bigger partition I assume has little/nothing, and the install routine wants to default to "installing Windows 7" on the Partition 2. Shouldn't I be deleting those failed partitions each time?

TSS Corp. I'll have to check the exact model on the next fail, which should be just any moment now. These are the standard units dell put in a bunch of Optiplex machines.
It is IDE, position Zero, and has a companion CD-only on the same IDE bus, position 1.

DocBrown said:

zapp22 said:

Doc, is there a way to verify/validate the DVD itself?
are some DVD/ROM/RW units suspect?

DocBrown said:

Yes that can be typical of it getting hung up on a hardware problem, video, ram, etc.

Yes, Sony DVD drives were a problem in the Beta testing installs.

What make & model is your DVD ? IDE or SATA ?