Windows 7: Installation Problems

I've been trying to install Windows 7, and so far I've got right to the final stage of actually installing but I've faced some problems.

After waiting for the installation menu to actually appear, I went through the normal setup just like Vista, where I selected my new empty 320GB hard drive and it continued to install. After finally getting to the end, it then came back to the start of the setup, where it asked me what hard drive to install it onto, and there were now 2, from the same hard drive but one was only 195MB free space, but it was the size of the whole drive.

I didn't go through the setup again, so I tried to boot from the hard drive, but it said "no boot manager" or something along those lines. I booted into the DVD again, but it said the same thing, and told me to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.



So basically, no Windows 7. Maybe there was something wrong with the ISO?

Hello Jack,

Could be a bad ISO. You might see if you can run a Startup Repair on the partition that Windows 7 did install on to see if it can fix the MBR boot file.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

This is the message I generally got when booting from the hard drive that I installed Windows 7 on:


And then when I did repair it through the system repair thing, I got this in a loop basically:


Now, it mentioned something about having everything unplugged, and I know this sounds stupid, but I didn't unplug any of my external hard drives, webcam or DVD drives as when I do for whatever reason and then boot back into Vista, it always does that "searching for drivers" thing, which bugs me. So should I unplug everything that's not going to be recognise with Windows 7, and then repair again? Or do a fresh install?

I'd recommend to unplug everything, check bios for boot record virus protection to be disabled and do a fresh install (re-create NTFS partition)

Hello Jack.

It all depends how bad you want to install Windows 7; is all the extra trouble worth it to you?
Were I you, I'd go for it; isn't experimentation what it's all about? You can almost bet money all the extra hardware is what's causing the trouble.

Keep us informed!











Later Ted

That's the idea, I want to test it, I want to be a part of the whole beta thing. I find it quite fun. I was too young to do it with Vista, but I don't want to miss out of 7.

I will attempt to re-install it tomorrow after school hopefully, with everything that is not needed unplugged, and hopefully it'll work. It's definately on there as it gives me the menu shown in the second picture. Oh and should it be taking up 30GB or so? I believe I saw that the install was taking up that much - I was shocked.

Jack,

I think you may have an infested Windows 7 ISO. That funny looking coding at the bottom of your first (bootmgr missing) image looks a lot like the works of a virus. I would recommend getting another ISO and formatting the computer to wipe it clean.

Yeah I did think the smiley face was a bit random. PM sent.

Seven creates a 200MB partition at the start of drive for the boot data. (If it's a fresh drive, with no other OS installed / connected)

And yeah, those symbols under CTRL-ALT-Delete do look sus simply because they are there, not from what they are

(Some look like Wingdings / webdings symbols ?)

Hi Smartey,

That's strange. Windows 7 did not create any other partitions with me. It only installed on the partitoin that I installed it on.