Windows 7 Installation Freezes

Night Hawk · 29 Dec 2009

A good run of memtest to see if any bad dimms are present would be the best move so you can isolate and remove any. That will also show if any are present before touching the other system you know is working.

The idea is to either confirm or rule bad memory as the problem. Another thread lately saw a bad dimm when someone added more memory on and started seeing problems solved by bringing the bad dimm back for a replacement. Apparently all 3 dimms the original pair and the returned defective one were the brand and type as well as speed and timings there.

gregrocker · 29 Dec 2009

Try running the installer from Vista to do a Custom install, not Upgrade.

You may not need SP then.

This sometimes works as it can pick up missing drivers from system32.

Another thing I've done several times is move the HD to another computer, unplug it's HD, install Win7 without activation and then transfer back to old machine.

It will swap out all the drivers in quite a show, requesting restarts. But it has always worked with good performance when I've had to do it.

Night Hawk · 29 Dec 2009

Even without activation any installation on other then identical hardwares will run into problems due to the hardware profile created during the installation itself. You would still need to perform a full install later.

The idea is to find out what is preventing a normal installation and see that problem corrected so you won't be running into other problems later. If you do find bad ram that will cause programs to crash and Windows to run haphazardly if not seen to.

Besides memory bad sectors on the hard drive from wear if the drive has been in use for some will hamper things. If the memory is found free of errors when tested a good drive diagnostics is one thing to go with next to see if that's the problem.

Slashmolder · 29 Dec 2009

Just finished a mem test, no errors. Windows Vista is stuck on installing service pack 3 of 3 37% right now so I can't get all the specs but I know it is an ASUS M2V-MX mobo with 1202 bios, 2 gigs of ddr2 (667 iirc) ram, the cpu is an AMD Athlon 64, the gpu is an nvidia geforce 7300.

The computer is a few years old but it hasn't has too much use so I doubt the harddrive is bad. I've never had issues with it before.

EDIT: actually the ram is DDR2 800

Night Hawk · 29 Dec 2009

Something is wrong since Vista is also seeing problems as well as 7 attempts. As far as drives never say never even if you haven't seen a lot of wear put on it. With no error found with the memory you have to start looking at the drive as one possible source there.

When preparing to install 7 did you reformat the drive or simply replace the previous Vista install with the custom option? Generally when starting off with a newer version or simply going to clean an older drive I first nuke the existing primary and create a new for a total fresh start. That prevents anything lingering around causing problems later.

Slashmolder · 29 Dec 2009

I completely deleted everything and then created a new partition and it automatically created the system partition.

gregrocker · 29 Dec 2009

Night Hawk said:

Even without activation any installation on other then identical hardwares will run into problems due to the hardware profile created during the installation itself. You would still need to perform a full install later.
.

I've done it a dozen times, including on the computer I'm writing this from. There is not even a performance hit if it works.

The hardware issue is resolved as soon as the drivers are swapped out. It then activates as if it was installed on that machine in the first place. There is no signature retained of the previous hardware.

Maybe you are thinking of XP, which normally required a Repair Install to start up after changing HD between machines.

OP: May I suggest you try a Custom install from Vista first? If it works it is a much better installation than an In-place Upgrade.

Slashmolder · 29 Dec 2009

Even if I get this to work, I would like to add a few more gigs of memory to this computer. Is there a way that I should be able to get the x64 version of 7 on my machine? If need be I can download x64 vista off mdsn.

gregrocker · 29 Dec 2009

Can you run the Win7 installer from Vista and get it to Custom install over Vista?

If not, try making a second partition in disk Management, format NTFS primary, then direct Win7 Custom install there.

Night Hawk · 30 Dec 2009

Slashmolder said:

Even if I get this to work, I would like to add a few more gigs of memory to this computer. Is there a way that I should be able to get the x64 version of 7 on my machine? If need be I can download x64 vista off mdsn.

The 64bit Vista even will run on 2gb of memory. The MS recommendation however since the 64bit uses about 300mb more then the 32bit due to less swapping out to the drive by paging file is 2.5gb.

7 will be more efficient with the present memory to start with. Going backward from 7 to Vista isn't the answer to start with there. You need to find out what is preventing any installation from working.

How long did you let memtest run? That's supposed to be left running for some time in order to let the stress tests repeat over and over.

Besides bad sectors on a drive bad read/write heads can be another cause easy enough for problems installing. You could try plugging the drive in on the other system to see if 7 will go right on with ease. Simply unplug the present OS drive to avoid any changes to that just to see if the drive is working normally.

The other option is simply download of the manufacturer's drive diagnostics program that should show what problems if any are being seen. Ive run into that a few times on old builds where you could read from but not write to the drive installed in order to even nuke them! You wouldn't even be able to install anything to the working OS already on.