Windows 7: critical system drivers missing

All,

Firstly thank you in advance for any help. I have had a read through the common questions section and tried a few things but to no avail!!

Firstly my laptop is a Acer Aspire 5738z with an Intel T4200 processor.

I bought the laptop with Vista however i was never very impressed and when the OS seemed to get corrupted i decided it was time to try 7 but have been unable to install it.

The installation gets all the way through and restarts. it then comes up with and error:



File: \Windows\system32\DRIVERS\q12300.sys

status: 0xc00000e9

info: Windows failed to load because a critical system driver is missing, or corrupt.

I have deleted the Acer recovery partition and downloaded drivers from the Acer website however each time i get a the same error but with different .sys files.

Am i missing something or is this just a case of getting the correct drivers loaded for the install to work. I have tried numerous combinations and am running out of patience!! PLEASE HELP!

Hi there, I hope you're doing a Clean Install Windows 7

I agree with Dinesh 100%... Doing an "upgrade" can have problematic results at best..You're most likely going to bring the problems you had with Vista to 7..

Forget about upgrading and do a clean install... you'll be glad you did...

Hi Dinesh,

Thanks for the reply. Yes doing a clean install, i have deleted all the partitions using diskpart and am installing to unallocated disk space.

The only think i did notice is that in a command window there a drive x: called boot that it will not let me format. could this be the Acer recovery partition and i've not managed to deleted it correctly?

Chris

Simply wipe out the entire HDD and try installing again.

sorry for asking such a simple question but what would be the best way of doing this?

Solved Hard Drive - Unable to Select or Delete during Installation - Vista Forums

Use the above tutorial to completely erase your HDD.

Try a full clean & full format.
Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command
1) Boot DVD.
2) Press Shift+F10 (for command prompt)

Type in command line
DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK # (win 7 HD)
CLEAN ALL
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT=NTFS
ASSIGN
EXIT
EXIT

great!

Thanks for help i will try this and report back.

Chris.

Clean All command will zero the drive which takes a long time on a large HD but is the deepest clean.

Very likely that boot partition is blocking your install so good to get it cleaned off since you want your HD cleaned.

Then boot DVD, select Custom install, use Drive Tools to create New partition(s) as you wish, format before installing to first partition.

Intsaller is driver complete with newer arriving quickly via optional Windows updates. Put your wireless driver on a stick in case needed to get online. After updates, find any drivers missing in Device Manager plus any favorite apps on the Support Downloads webpage for your model computer/device.