Issues installing Win7 on new SSD Drive

Hi All,

The HD on my 2.5 year old Samsung laptop has lost its Primary, System (C:) partition, and it now shows up as unallocated space. The extended, logical Data (D:) partition is still in tact with all data readable, and I have backed it all up to another drive.

I have installed the drive into my desktop PC, and used Samsung Partition Find and Mount to try to scan it, but it just sets at the "scanning for drives" screen, and it never does show any drives, which I am told means that there are enough bad sectors that it can not find the partition. I do find it strange, however, that it doesn't find the D: partition either, nor any of my functioning drives.

Anyway, I ordered and received a new Crucial MX100 256gb SSD, and am having trouble getting Win 7 to install from the disk that came with the laptop, which I have used to install windows on this machine before.

This laptop supports SATA ll drives well over 500gb.

I have the BIOS configured as follows:
UEFI enabled
AHCI set to Auto
No overclocked is available on this unit.

I was using the latest version of Partition Wizard to partition the drive into a 90gb c: and the remainder as the D: partition, but then was told to just let Windows make the C: partition during the install. Either way, windows starts but then errors out during the file extraction process.

I disconnected the existing drives on my Desktop, installed the new SSD drive there, and windows installed just fine, so I know that the Drive, and Install Media are good.

I contacted SAMSUNG to find out about a BIOS upgrade, but what the gave me is an .exe with instructions that tell me to put the file into a folder and run from there. Now if I don't have windows installed, how am I going to do that?

I loaded the contents of the Win7 install disk to my USB 1TB hard drive, but my system does not see the drive. There is a USB HD item in the boot list, but no drive shows up there.

Can I make a bootable CD drive to put the exe on and update the BIOS from there?

Any other suggestions?

OK, I bit the bullet and disconnected the drives in my desktop PC, installed the new drive into it, and then installed Windows 7 on the drive there.

I then put the drive into my laptop, and it seems to work just fine. I have been told by some of my tech friends that running all the windows updates will catch all the proper drivers and get them installed, however when I run windows updates, it goes for a bit than errors out.

I then put the drive back into the other PC, re-partitioned the drive and reinstalled windows 7. I then put it back into the laptop, and this time attempted to do the BIOS update, but the file did not function like the instructions said it would. Instead of just doing the update, it seemed to want to look online for the latest file name or something, but I had no connection yet at that time.

I contacted Samsung again, thru chat, and after about an hour of the gentlemen downloading drivers and such he told me that the drive is not supported because it is SATA lll. I am given to understand that SATA III should not be an issue but that it should simply run at SATA ll speed.

Any comments?

Put the SSD in the laptop, Reset the BIOS to defaults, enable UEFI, try with CSM or Legacy BIOS and not, Secure Boot disabled. Use USB 2 port only for Win7 install as there are no USB3 drivers in installer.

The problem might be with BIOS settings. If you're using flash stick install format the stick only using Option One of UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows. Then boot the stick as a UEFI device to install to UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums

You can also disable UEFI, ensable CSM or Legacy BIOS, boot the stick as plain flash stick to do a Legacy Install, deleting all partitions during install to clear GPT formatting.

If you install in another PC, once you move it back Adjust Win7 to boot on new hardware with Paragon Adaptive Restore CD.

If the only problem was that Updates wouldn't run, troubleshoot the Updates error by googling the full text and error number. You may need to reset Windows Update components or post for specialized help in our Update forum following Windows Update Posting Instructions - Windows 7 Help Forums.

Then Enable hardware auto-updating via Windows Update (Steps 3 and 6) to Check for Updates, install all Important and Optional Updates, with reboots, until there are no more offered when you go back to check again. This is one of the most important steps in Clean Reinstall Windows 7 which I linked for you before, so important it is printed in red which makes it strange that you had only "heard about it from tech friend"