Cannot boot upgrade CD

What about running the DVD from Vista? Put in tray and click on drive, or explore and run Setup as Admin.

gregrocker said:

What about running the DVD from Vista? Put in tray and click on drive, or explore and run Setup as Admin.

It would appear that's the only alternative left. So, I second that.

And that would change the setup picking up my hard drive? The only difference is that I'm mounting rather than actually physically creating a DVD. Nevertheless, I can try this. It'll take me three days or so, however.

Snadbad said:

And that would change the setup picking up my hard drive? The only difference is that I'm mounting rather than actually physically creating a DVD. Nevertheless, I can try this. It'll take me three days or so, however.

Well, since you have the Windows 7 "upgrade" DVD, running setup.exe from within Windows is how your suppose to do it. I don't know if it's changed since XP, but you could never boot from an upgrade CD. And yes, it will detect all your hardware listed in Vista.

Since Vista, you can boot with an Upgrade DVD just as you can with full Retail. In fact, they are the same installer. It is only the key which signifies the version is Upgrade or Retail.

In this case, something is blocking HD from showing in install while it shows in BIOS (correct?).

Sometimes running the install from Windows will force it to see HD since the SATA controller is already up and functioning.

Mounting should work the same however there can be complications with mounting that need to also be eliminated as a cause. If you don't want to burn a DVD, then extract the files to the desktop and run Setup.

gregrocker said:

If you don't want to burn a DVD, then extract the files to the desktop and run Setup.

Another good piece of advice, if you can't currently afford to get some DVD's [this is where DVD-RW's come in handy though]. It's always best to have the .iso on DVD though, at the very least for the repair software on it. However, you can still access the repair program without a DVD. It's on a small partition Windows creates at installation. That partition could be a life saver for many people. Microsoft got it right this time with Windows 7. I'm extremely impressed with it.

I did try extracting and running. No dice. This is absolutely ridiculous. I could use browse for the drivers, but I couldn't find any.

What I do when I hit a wall with install troubleshooting is to remove the HD from problem machine, install Win7 to it in another same-core machine with all other HD's unplugged, then return the HD to problem machine.

If Win7 will start, it will swap out all of the drivers in quite a show, requesting several restarts, but performance is fine on the dozen or so times I had to do this. It doesn't always work, but enough that it is worth the try.