Windows 7: Windows 7 Install Error

I was attempting to reinstall Windows 7 because it was getting slow, and I was almost finished and was on Completing Installation... phase I get an error saying that "Windows could not configure one or more system components" and then it started rolling back the system. I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate and I never had this problem before.

Clean install by booting to the DVD.

Sorry to bump this but I'm not getting any help from Google and I'm having this exact same problem. I'm doing a clean install from the DVD, nuked all of the partitions and tried installing twice. Same problem.

I'm not sure what is causing it here. I just took the disc out and found it was a little dirty, since that seems to be a common problem in what I can tell from Google (either that or it is a problem loading from an image / upgrade). I guess I'll report on if this worked or not...

Update - didn't work. I didn't think it would...

At any rate, for giggles I tried running a repair. It detected my Windows installation as D:\Windows. Strange. So I booted to a Fedora 10 installation disc I have and ran rescue mode to get a shell opened. I ran fdisk and looked at the partition layout - to my surprise it was reporting that the "System" partition Windows creates during installation had a problem (something about the sectors not lining up or something).

I deleted both the "System" partition and the regular partition I created from the Windows install, rebooted and booted back to the Windows 7 installation DVD to give the install another try.

Will report results... I really, *really* wish Windows' installation partitioning utility were actually sort of intuitive and told me *something* useful about the drive.

Didn't work either. Something is really screwed up here. I give up, I have no idea.

You may have some remnants of GRUB on the disk which are messing up Windows 7 install. Use DISKPART from the DVD's Repair Console Command Line to "CLEAN ALL" the HD to get the deepest clean.

I don't think grub is on there, this is a new laptop that came shipped with Windows 7. All I did was boot to a Fedora DVD to check the partition layout in more detail. The only OS that has been on this laptop is Windows 7.

It is a Qosmio X505 laptop, though I doubt that information is relevant to anything.

I just restored it to the way it was when I bought it and uninstalled all of the extra junk manually, though I know I didn't get it all. I hate having a non-clean installed system but I guess I'll live with it.

Run sfc /scannow to see if any System Files were corrupted beyond repair by the bloatware removal, as frequently happens.

There may be a factory boot or utility partition that is interfering with clean reinstall using DVD. Often this can be overcome by cleaning the HD using DISKPART or 3rd party wiping utility like Partition Wizard has. If you have your Recov Disks made already, you might want to wipe the whole HD since Recov partition is often disabled by clean install anyway.

That's what I did when I booted to the Fedora disc. I ran fdisk and deleted everything so the drive was completely blank.

You got me thinking, however - one thing I didn't try was rewriting the MBR. Oh well, it is working fine now, though I just wish I had a clean install.

Be on the lookout for a Windows 7 DVD to borrow for clean reinstall. You can unlock all versions by extracting ISO using ImgBurn then google the ei.cfg removal tool. Now you have a path to clean reinstall using the Product Key stickered to your machine.

Use Windows 7-friendly tools like free Partition Wizard bootable CD to wipe or pre-partition, or DISKPART from the DVD Command line.