Windows 7 Installation Failure - Overcome

Good tute Greg, thanks for your continued invaluable contributions!

Thanks Greg - I meant changing 1 to 3 in the Setup.exe file in the HKLM/SYSTEM/STATUS/Child Completion area of the Registry. Will print these instructions and have them available if the Windows 7 installation gives me trouble again.

CamperD said:

Thanks Greg - I meant changing 1 to 3 in the Setup.exe file in the HKLM/SYSTEM/STATUS/Child Completion area of the Registry. Will print these instructions and have them available if the Windows 7 installation gives me trouble again.

What is the intended purpose of this reg edit? We're we discussing it in another thread where I referred you to this tutorial? Please post in that thread for continuity.

It may be necessary to use a program like fdisk to delete all the partitions and create a new one. You can get an iso copy of this at a site like: My BootDisk - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Partition magic is also a good program for deleting,adding and creating partitions.

Yes, you can use another boot disk intended for the purpose of wiping the HD, but why would you need to do that when the Win7 installation media System Recovery Options Command Line can be used to run Diskpart Clean Command as shown in tutorial which is all that's needed to clear the boot sector code that interferes.

Hi gregrocker,

Firstly thanks for posting these in depth tutorials, they certainly make solving computer problems a lot less daunting. I have a quick question. Similar to the guy on this thread that you answered before I have a problem booting my laptop following replacing a hardrive.

I was following the steps you outlined in the Overcoming Windows 7 Installation Failures tutorial but ran into some trouble on step 3.

The problems with following step 3 consist of
1. Unsure whether I have legacy or UEFI setup-This video provided suggested if your laptop has a
version 8.xx.xx = Legacy Bios
if it is version 4.6.x.xx = UEFI bios

However, my BIOS Version on my Dell Inspirion is : A06 (I assume this is a UEFI setup) based on Google searches.

2.Bypass UEFI to Install WIn7 is not possible - I tried to follow your advice here on how to bypass UEFI without success. It says "Boot into BIOS setup, if this is a new Win8 PC look for a setting to disable Secure Boot. Then enable Legacy BIOS or Compatibility Support Module (CSM)." But I believe I have windows 7 previously installed on the laptop hence these options aren't available, and I couldn't find anywhere else online what to do next.

Any advice on solving any of these issues would be appreciated

Thanks in advance.

What UEFI, CSM, Legacy BIOS, and Boot Priority settings choices are available in BIOS setup? If you have EFI the DVD should show up as an EFI device to boot as well as a legacy one. Try install booting both.

Is the HD detected anywhere in BIOS setup?

What exact error are you getting? The one quoted in title means its not even booting the DVD. Are you? What happens?

Thanks for your quick reply

The exact error is the following on booting up:

"Reboot and select proper boot device, or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key"

When you press a key you get the message

"PXE E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE- MOF: Exiting PXE ROM"

Image of error upon booting in full shown below


In terms of "What UEFI, CSM, Legacy BIOS, and Boot Priority settings choices are available in BIOS setup?"

UEFI settings = N/A
CSM settings = N/A
Boot priority settings = Hard drive, diskette drive, USB storage device, cd/dvd room, and network

Advanced settings tab in case helpful (where the first word in the brackets is the current settings)
is the following >
1. Powernow! (enabled, vs disabled)
2. Integrated NIC (enabled vs disabled)
3. USB Emulation (Enabled vs disabled)
4. USB wake support (disablled vs enabled)
5. Sata operation (AHCI vs ATA)
6. Adapter warnings (enabled)
7. Function key behavior (function key vs multimedia key)
8. Charger behavior
9. Miscellioneous devices > external USB ports (Enabled vs disabled)

Hard drive is detected

Completely agree, to follow instructions precisely.

I don't actually have a Windows 7 XP disk, because I was under the impression from a previous thread that all the relevant Windows 7 XP files were available in the iso link you provided? Or is it because I don't have a UEFI that I will now need a windows CD and to make that the Boot priority?
That is assuming copying the iso onto a USB, and then making the USB drive the priority would do nothing.