Bad 7 OEM Installation Disk?

Unplug all other HD's and peripherals,

Boot into BIOS setup, reset to defaults, set SATA controller to AHCI, Hard Drive first to boot, Save changes and Exit.

If you notice UEFI Boot choices in BIOS Boot Priority menu then proceed with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with. If you don't want a UEFI install or it becomes more trouble than you're willing to handle you can Bypass UEFI to Install WIn7. This video can help you decide: UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS - YouTube

Then boot into Windows 7 installer DVD or flash stick burned or written using tool and latest ISO for your licensed OS version here. I would use a fresh ISO written with tool in Step 2 as yours is in question. If it fails again try the flash stick install.

At first installer screen Press Shift + F10, or enter System Recovery Options to open a Command Box, type:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK 0 (after confirming Windows 7 target HD #)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="WINDOWS 7"
ACTIVE
EXIT
EXIT

Next click Install Now, then Custom install to Clean Install Windows 7 to the partition you created. If it fails then report back at which step and the verbatim error message.

In addition read over these steps to understand the tools and methods which work best to get and maintain a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. The steps are the same for retail.

After install you can adjust partition size or Create new partitions for data, etc. in Disk Mgmt. You are creating the partition here for the purpose of wiping the HD and marking Active which overcomes certain install failures.

theog said:

AS you have the Retail Windows 7 version,you can legally download the ISO from here: Windows 7 Direct Download Links, Official Disk Images from Digital River to replace your DVD.

I did try this, but the download kept quitting at 2.9 of 3.1 GB unless the initial value was wrong. The (1) DVD I tried to burn anyways ended up erroring out in the laptop during creation.

gregrocker said:

Unplug all other HD's and peripherals, Boot into BIOS setup, reset to defaults, set SATA controller to AHCI, Hard Drive first to boot, Save changes and Exit.

The only non-default setting(s) I tried and left changed were boot order (HDD/Optical) and that Secure Boot item that needs to be off for Win 7 based on all the tutorials.

System Recovery was not an option at all, with Windows never having previously loaded?


I had my OEM disk in, and did hit default in basic BIOS anyways, then booted off the disk using F8. I could see it was going to reboot again as previous without showing the install prompt/window and hit shift+F10 to try the suggested CMD entries.

I'm not actually sure what happened next. I got the CMD box, some other warning message that flashed too quick to read, a couple "Are you sure you wish to cancel Windows installation - doing so may cause etc etc" boxes, but also the License Agreement page of the normal installation process.

So I carefully closed the other windows as best I could until that one was on top, and went from there, which fully installed.

Last night I got the last of my needed programs installed and created a system restore point.

Then I downloaded some gadgets onto this new machine, CoreTemp, GPU Observer, and Open Hardware Monitor. Aside from CoreTemp & OPen Hardware suggesting both cores are running at 32oF the other hardware and the OS itself haven't had too much problems as devices or updates were slowly added using Windows or whatnot.

I will say 7 does have a lot of new quirks to figure out compared to XP.

But no clue at all why the disk suddenly started working, and in such a weird fashion.