Vista Home Premium 32bit to 7 Premium, 62% BSOD

Hello all. I built this system about 1 month ago:

GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P AM3 DDR3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard


SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported


CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Suppy


AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ955FBGIBOX

CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1333C9


Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

Linksys Wireless-N PCI Adapter With Dual-Band WMP600N Network adapter - PCI

The original OS was Windows XP 32bit SP3. I upgraded this system to Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit SP2 with no issues.

I then went to upgrade the system to Windows 7 Premium. I chose the "Upgrade" install and not the "Clean" install. I've checked the updater to confirm that all my system information was adequate. I uninstalled the ATI Catalyst Controller, iTunes, etc. that it wanted me to. Oddly enough, the ATI Catalyst Controller was the most recent driver that supports Windows 7.

I checked online to see if the hardware was all supported by Windows 7. The Sapphire Vapor-X video card was not compatible or compatible... it simply wasn't on the list of either. The X-Fi Extreme Gamer said it was NOT compatible... yet, I had a driver for Windows 7 and the Windows 7 Application checker said that my sound card was ready for Windows 7... thus a discrepency.

I went on with the installation. I get to the last step where it resets the computer at 62% and I get a BSOD for about 1/3 of a second. It goes by too quickly for me to capture it. It then restarts the computer instantly with the result of "Upgrade was not completed successfully. Restoring prior OS yadda yadda". I've gone through this about 5 times now trying different things.. keeping the Catalyst controller installed, uninstalling the video card, removing the sound card, etc. Nothing seems to work.

It was recommended to me that I do a clean install... however, I have read that many others have done a clean install and theirs STILL doesn't get past the 62%.

Is it my hardware? Do I need to buy MORE hardware now that 7 is out that is on the compatible list? Any help would be appreciated.

Hi SC, and welcome to the forums

I dont'see any compatibility issues with your hardware, but a solutionn that seems to work in these cases is to try installing with only one stick of memeory, thus 2G in your case, and with on board video, which unfortunately you can't. I would also remove the sound card. If you can try installing with minimum hardware (only keyboard and mouse) that is the best

good luck and let us know your progress

wallyinnc said:

Hi SC, and welcome to the forums

I dont'see any compatibility issues with your hardware, but a solutionn that seems to work in these cases is to try installing with only one stick of memeory, thus 2G in your case, and with on board video, which unfortunately you can't. I would also remove the sound card. If you can try installing with minimum hardware (only keyboard and mouse) that is the best

good luck and let us know your progress

Thanks for the suggestion. Do you know of instances that this worked well and consistently in? After yesterdays fiasco, I'm almost ready to give up trying to install Windows 7.

I tried doing a clean install yesterday and it didn't work.

First, I tried in Vista, chosing the custom installation. It started to install like it normally would, but once it got 1/2 way through the install the screen turned off... and never came back on. I had to reset the computer... and when I did, I had 3 options to boot from:

Windows 7
Rollback Option
Windows Vista

NONE of them worked. Each of them brought up the Windows 7 load screen and never loaded anything else. SO, I had to put my Vista disc in and do a clean install of Vista. Once I had Vista installed and working (didn't install ANY drivers or update anything, SP1 Vista 32bit Home Premium) I decided that I would try to upgrade to Windows 7 again on this new, clean system.

I then tried installing booting from the Windows 7 DVD... figured that this might be different than installing from Vista. For some reason it took FOREVER for it to even load the install screen from the DVD... I thought that it might have locked up. After around 4-5 minutes, it gave me the actual "Choose your language, etc." section. I started the install with high hopes....

... and ended up looking at the same situation. An install that would not finish past 1/2 way through the installation, and 3 boot options again that didn't allow me to do anything. At this point, it seemed like Vista was my only solution.

Please note, I DID have a slightly different instance at some point. I can't remember when it happened... but I did get to the point where the install got to about 3/4 the way done, reset itself like it normally would, it loads Windows 7 logo, the nice flowery leafy-background comes up... and then BAM! Monitor turns off. Black screen with NOTHING that can break it but reset... and it's not a fluke. Each time I would reset it would do the same exact thing.

At this point... I don't know what to do. The only difference between my computer (that has Windows 7 working on it) and this computer (the one that I'm working on) is that my computer has a sound card and video card that are both listed as supported on the Microsoft website.

This computers hardware, as you can see above, is hardly outdated. I'm considering dumping another $700 just to replicate what I have in my other comptuer (the one with working Windows 7) to see if it would get this computer running with Windows 7.

I'd HOPE that isn't the final solution... but right now, I'm not seeing anything else that makes sense.

OH, and I was on the phone with Microsoft yesterday for 1 1/2 hours trying to get a new CD key for Windows Vista... since I have the upgrade version and I had to do a clean install... now I can't activate Vista due to my version being for "upgrades" and not clean installs... I WOULDN'T HAVE TO DO A CLEAN INSTALL IF YOUR NEW O/S WOULD INSTALL.

Sorry for the venting. This site has been very helpful to me thus far. I hope that someone else may have some insight into this situation.

I would consider removing the soundcard, and 2 gigs of RAM... however, I'm not sure if the video card could also be the problem.

NOTE: I thought that I remembered reading this somewhere, but the motherboard has an onboard Realtek ethernet port... I could swear that I read somewhere that this could also cause issues.

Then again, I booted from the Windows 7 DVD... so O/S Drivers should not have been a factor.

As an aside note, when I mentioned that my other computer (that has a working Windows 7) is the same with the exception of the video and sound card... that's not entirely accurate. I have a different MOBO, CPU, and RAM. However, I didn't see on Microsofts website that these would be a factor to consider for Windows 7 compatibility, so I didn't think to mention them. However, I've read in another thread that updating the BIOS helped them install Windows 7... so maybe that is another option?

Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

SC, I can't say one memroy stick and no video card works consistently, but it is a solution I have seen working in some cases.

The onboard LAN card is also a known reason for problems. Disable it in your BIOS before you try to install

Talking about BIOS, do you have the most updated one?

Let us know if you make more progress

Your first post says you have 6GB RAM, so I'm assuming your installing Win7 64bit.
Your system spec says 32bit.
Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Do you have the Upgrade version or the Full Retail?

I'll give you a couple of things to try, but we can help you more if you can tell us what you have done so far, this Seven Forums sticky thread has a list of the questions we're looking for, Questions to use for help with Installation Issues, answer as many as you can. This will give us a better idea where to start.

What are you using to install with, MS DVD, D/L ISO file burned to DVD or USB?

Have you updated your BIOS?
Load new BIOS and set everything to defaults.

Are you using a DVI cable?
Use a VGA cable if you can. If you don't have on board graphics or a VGA connection you should try to borrow a graphics card that does. We have seen problems with the DVI cable.

Take out all but one RAM card.

Any over clocking of GPU, CPU or RAM?
Set all to defaults.

Dis-connect all peripherals, leave only monitor, keyboard and mouse.

If there are any energy saving settings in the BIOS for the CPU, turn off if possible.

If you can give us more info from the link above and fill in the system specs in the lower left corner, we will be able to make better suggestions.