Windows 7 installation doesn't detect hard drive

This really helped... Thanks a lot for the information...

That did it! Brillant, thanks a lot!

P.s.: Still wondering why Win7 doesn't detect unpartitioned drives

edit: If one doesn't find a command prompt, you can find one somewhere behind that "repair windows blabla...." after booting from a win7 setup disk. (or does this shift+F10 thing still work in win7)

juleswithoutaim said:

That did it! Brillant, thanks a lot!

P.s.: Still wondering why Win7 doesn't detect unpartitioned drives

New HD's need to be set up first.

theog said:

New HD's need to be set up first.

HD's where you just manually overwrote your partition table, that is ;-)

ignatzatsonic said:

Dave;

Are you just trying to format an empty disk?

Try this:

run diskpart command from a prompt.

Then each of these commands, followed by the enter key after each one.

list disk (to show the ID number of the hard disk to partition, normally Disk 0)

select disk 0 (change 0 to another number if applicable)

clean (this deletes all partitions)

create partition primary size=80000 (creates a partition with 80 GB space; to use the entire disk as one partition, omit the “size=value” parameter switch; use a similar command to create more partitions if needed or create in Windows 7 after installation)

select partition 1

active

format fs=ntfs quick

exit

Worked for me as well - THANK YOU!

Note that I did have to reboot for it to take affect.

Well this is nuts. I have a Intel 80 Gb SSD with W7 on it. Boots fine, no problems at all. It is an old install and want to do a fresh install.

I am getting the 'No Disc Found" when it tries to install. I tried the diskpart and it says my drive is Invalid. How can it be Invalid when I can take the disc out and boot into an OS?

Where did you get Win7 DVD? Have you used it to successfully install before? Did you burn it yourself?

Run Disk Check from Win7, then boot the DVD and try install again, post back the verbatim error message and the exact step shown here where it occurs: Clean Install Windows 7.

Holy crap - what a pain. Could Microsoft make it any more difficult to do a fresh install of Win7 on an older PC? The POST sees my drives. The BIOS sees my drives. DOS utilities see my drives. An older OS (WinXP) see my drives. But Win 7 cannot, or could not, until I did the following (in no particular order). What a pain!!!

1. unplugged all unnecessary drives. In other words, I unplugged a 2nd CD drive. I unplugged a striped RAID array. I unplugged my floppy/CF card reader. I left just the primary CD drive (where my Win 7 install disc was) and a single 500 GB WD SATA drive.
2. tell the BIOS that the 500 GB SATA drive is SATA, not IDE (as I had tried before, unsuccessfully).
3. run DISKPART from a DOS command window, from within the Win 7 Install environment ( <shift-F10> ), as described by ignatzatsonic above


run diskpart command from a prompt.

Then each of these commands, followed by the enter key after each one.

list disk (to show the ID number of the hard disk to partition, normally Disk 0)

select disk 0 (change 0 to another number if applicable)

clean (this deletes all partitions)

create partition primary size=80000 (creates a partition with 80 GB space; to use the entire disk as one partition, omit the “size=value” parameter switch; use a similar command to create more partitions if needed or create in Windows 7 after installation)

select partition 1

active

format fs=ntfs quick

exit

***********

Loading drivers from a USB drive from the motherboard manufacturer didn't help at all.

After finally getting Win 7 Ultimate installed and running, my power supply quit, and the PC wouldn't start at all. Nada. Replaced the power supply, now all I have to do is purchase a full version of Win 7, or re-install WinXP then re-install Win 7, 'cuz the re-partitioning and reformatting of my drive killed my XP installation, nullifying my Win 7 Upgrade license.

FUN!

Thank you so Much the above command prompt diskpart worked perfectly. I just had to change my drive from IDE to AHCI.