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Black screen with cursor installing Win7 from USB
Lenovo Y500 shipped with Windows 8, I purchased Windows 7 Ultimate x64, installed from USB DVD-ROM drive. Last year, the hard drive died, no longer had the DVD (took a picure of the key, thank gods) or USB DVD-drive, and to reinstall I needed to download the Digital River Windows 7 ISO, make a bootable USB drive, and reinstall from there.
My backup computer is WinXP SP3 32-bit so it couldn't create the bootloader. I eventually had a friend create a USB installer using their Win7 computer, and it worked. I forget what other troubleshooting I might have had to go through. The new hard drive failed, so I replaced it again, but don't have a Win7 computer from which to make a USB installer.
CURRENT SITUATION:
Need to install Win7 on Lenovo Y500. Have a USB drive, appropriate iso image, and a working XP SP3 32-bit machine.
Here are my steps:
- System was already in Legacy (BIOS) mode (default was UEFI, fixed this to first install Win7)
- Downloaded Win7 USB installer on XP SP3 32-bit machine
- Googled and found I needed bootsect.exe, so I went and downloaded that too
- Copied bootsect.exe to the correct folder and created a Win7 USB installer
USB Win7 Installer creates without error
PROBLEM 1: Booting to Win7 USB installer gives NTLDR missing error.
- Did some Googling, used my 32-bit version of bootsect to run "bootsect /nt60 h: /force /mbr", where h: is the drive letter for the USB stick on the XP SP3 32-bit machine
Fixed NTLDR error
PROBLEM 2: Booting to Win7 USB installer gives black screen with mouse cursor (indefinitely) after loading bar then very brief loading logo.
- Did some Googling, disabled AHCI mode on the SATA controller
-- Did not resolve the issue
- Tried creating the USB installer with Rufus
-- Did not resolve the issue
I don't know how to resolve this issue.
HARDWARE CHANGES:
- Between 1st and 2nd install, replaced SATA HDD under warranty
- During 2nd install, 4GB memory module (of 8GB and 4GB) became corrupted, replaced both modules with 2x8GB MUSHKIN 997067 R memory kit.
- Between 2nd install and present attempt, replaced SATA HDD with SSD (CRUCIAL CT960M500SSD1)
HARDWARE ANOMALIES:
- Unit contains an integrated 16GB SSD drive. I have moved this to the lowest boot priority so it will stay out of the way.
Last edited by serrath; 22 May 2015 at 14:13.