Windows 7: Windows 7 will not install, period. Why? Please read...

Hello there,

Recently discovered these forums, so howdy first of all, my first post and all.

I'd really like your input on the following problem I face:

I have two PCs at home, a desktop and a laptop. The desktop, being my main computer, is "less open" to experiments such as new OS versions etc, so most of my tweaking happens on the (not-so-used) laptop machine.

Here's the story: Windows 7 will NOT install on this laptop. Which is something I cannot understand...

The laptop is Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1667G, a 2006 model. Its base specs are:

CPU: Athlon 64 (single-core) 4000+ (2.6 GHz)
VGA: ATI Radeon X700 128 MB
RAM: 2 GB DDR 400
HDD: Seagate Momentus 7200 100 GB

Windows 7 upgrade advisor didn't find any issues with the hardware of the machine. However, I have tried the following, and here's what happened every time. Note that the machine used to run Windows Vista x86 with no issues, before I decide to...take it to Windows 7.

Windows 7 x64:

• 7077 build DVD 1 went past "Copying files - 100%" and DID NOT go to "Expanding files". All options remained grayed out. 7077 DVD 2 (burnt at 4x, since the DVDs I used refused to be burned below 4x) actually went to "Expanding files", but stayed at 0%, seemingly forever.
• 7000 build, DVD 1: Reached "Expanding Files" and stayed at 0%. DVD 2 (re-burnt different image) - reached "Expanding Files" and DVD actually spinned for a bit - reached 1%, and then stayed there forever.
• USB stick: I did try to make a USB stick bootable with 7. However, the laptop did not explicitly support USB stick boot, so even though I tried to make it "appear like a HDD", it never worked out well enough.

Following these abysmal results, when RC 1 (build 7100) came out, I thought to give it another shot:

7100 x64 did the same as always - expanding files at 0%. I noticed after cancelling installation that some 700 MB had been copied to the installation partition, but still nothing happened.

Windows 7 7100 x86:

I tried to run x86 installer from within Windows XP SP3 x86 I installed on the laptop following all these unsuccessful attempts.

A bit of background info on the partitions:

Partition 1, ~45 GB, is Windows XP SP 3.
Partition 2, ~20 GB, is Ubuntu 9.04
Partition 3, ~30 GB, is free. I attempted to install 7100 on this partition.

7000/7077 were going on Partition 1, and when all failed, windows XP came on P1 instead.

Now - I decided to run the install from within Windows, since there was the option to "get installation updates from Internet" and all.

Every time, Windows did download a 1300 KB file for me, presumably some driver to use with the install. However, install went as follows:

• Attempt 1: Copying files, done. Expanding files up to 27%, done. Reboot. Expanding files to 100%, done. Installing features, updates, done. Here, it was supposed to reboot once more, but it never did - stuck on the wallpaper of the installation for quite sometime.
  I rebooted manually, and then the installation thought this a bad thing to do, and mentioned that "Installation should be restarted", offering me only rollback. Rollback succeeded.
• Attempt 2: As attempt 1, stuck at the same place not rebooting. Rebooted manually, this time installation seemed willing to go on. Reached "Completing installation" stage, waited for 1 hour, then terminated installation myself.
• Attempt 3: Reached "Completing installation" stage - Left the laptop on overnight. After 8+ hours, it's still at "completing installation".

Facts:

• Hardware cannot change, to make any more attempts. It's a laptop after all.
• BIOS cannot be upgraded, or USB stick used.
• Hardware is not as ancient as it could be - The mainboard chipset is to be honest (Socket 754 and all), and I could understand not being able to install the x64 version because the chipset can't support it properly / the CPU can't / whatever. But the x86 version? Especially when x86 Vista worked like a charm?!

Sorry for the excruciatingly long post - But any input will be much appreciated. I thought Win 7 would run better on this laptop than Vista (and I still believe they'll do better), but they have to install first for God's sake!

PS: Is there a way to track progress of the "Completing installation" part? That green bar on the bottom of the screen does actually fill? I can't recall, but I think I saw the bar getting greener...

Thanks in advance for your help and support (and time spent reading this!). Hope to hear any good ideas.

Have you checked the hash on the download to confirm the iso is not corrupt. If so have you tried extracting the contents to your hard drive and install from that, this would eliminate any cd or burn issues.

Linux on partition #2 and what type of partition is number #3? and is that formatted to NTFS? Was that created as a separate swap partition for ubuntu by chance? or simply as an extra storage partition?

Another question would be the drive partitioning tool used like GParted live or the limited version of that seen with the ubuntu installer? If you created an extended ext2 partition for #3 you won't be able to install any version of Windows on it until reformatted to NTFS.

Yes, checked and double-checked (the RC images were downloaded with Akamai Download manager as well, not with any software of my own). Is there a way to run the install from HD entirely? I'd be interested to know how to do that, perhaps it would help indeed (and it's the last thing I can do to be honest - I really want to report all that to MS, when I find a way to do that. If I can't install 7, being an ICT professional, then average users will probably eat MS alive regarding setup issues...)

Forgot to mention filesystems, my bad:

P1: NTFS, last formatted during: XP setup
P2: EXT3, last formatted during: Ubuntu setup
P3: NTFS, last formatted during: Win 7 setup (multiple times), or from within Windows XP (when attempting install from within Windows).

The disk always had 3 partitions. The current "P3" used to contain Vista a month ago, the current "P1" used to be storage (NTFS, for Windows use) and the P2 is/was Ubuntu for more than a year. So you could say the partitions 1/3 were created as OS/storage or vice versa, but they always were NTFS and created using Windows OS procedures.

My objection to all the procedure is that, this laptop may be a bit dated, but nowhere outside the specs to run Win 7 nicely. 2 GB of RAM, a DX-9 capable VGA (even quite low in power by today's standards), a decent CPU. There's no reason not to be able to run 7 on that somehow, if Vista did run on it.

Extract the contents of the iso with winrar or mount it and copy the contents to your hard drive and run the setup.exe.

I presume that meant mounting the iso with a tool like VirtualDriveClone or another program. YupYup

One thing first noticed with Vista and may be effecting you somewhat there with 7 is the need to see 7 installed on the first primary. I imagine you are running an older model ide drive as well by the 100gb size referred to.

Hello,

thanks for the input. Yes, the drive was actually the best 100-GB IDE drive existing in 2006 for laptops (and among the few, at the time, capable of 7200 speeds). However, I'd really like to leave the "delete all partitions / install Win 7" option as last, since nothing guarantees me at the moment that even with all the HD for themselves, they will actually be installed

yes virtualy

No need for that

The official hd requirement is 20gb so your cutting it a bit fine.

Windows can be installed on any hard disk and partition (except a logical partition).