My path to successful install

First of all, thanks to all who have been posting fixes/suggestions for various win7 install issues;
Baarod, Orbital Shark, Maka, Chappy, jimbo45, ikilledkenny and others. Your help is GREATLY appreciated.

I also experienced the 0x80070570 error during “file Copying” or “extracting” part of the install. Burned a gazillion disks using 2 separate downloads of Win7, 7100, x64.

SYSTEM (about 3 years old)
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 3800 (socket 939 too…can ya believe it? Antique.)
Asus a8ne mb
2gb ram
nVidia 7300gs
a gazillion hard drives
XP Pro – my daily use pc.
Windows 7, acquired via newsgroups (2 different versions from 2 different posters.)

BUILD ISSUES (all clean installs, no “update installs”)
Burned 7 or 8 ‘coasters’ using ImgBurn and even Nero. Used all combinations of burn speeds from 2x – 16x. All failed during install with the 0x…. error, usually during the “expanding files” portion of the install. Some failed the Imgburn verification process.

I was able to get 1 ISO to install successfully in VMware after 3 or 4. I’ve built soo many slipstreamed cd’s and dvd’s using nLite, with no problems, I was hesitant to believe it was my burner or sw that was causing the issue.

WHAT WORKED
IMGBurn v.2.4.4.0 (freshly d/l’d from imgburn.com. I realized I had been burning with v.2.2 something. )
Burning using a DVD writer on another pc. (both burners are identical Sony’s tho. Go figure.)






OBSERVATIONS

• Installed successfully to nVidia, onboard raid array. Win7 setup discovered this raid array on its own…no need for me to add additional drivers during the setup process.
• My XP Pro pc had started acting a little peculiar in the last few days, before beginning this install. Just little hangs that were out of the ordinary. I don’t think it’s a virus thing…feels more like “one too many tweaks” kinda thing. Leading to…
• Make sure your build pc isn’t a cobbled mess.

INSTALL FROM USB DRIVE
This seems like THE way to do it;
http://windows7news.com/2009/04/06/how-to-install-windows-7-from-a-usb-hard-drive/
I think you’ll need a Vista pc to do it though. I ran “diskpart” in XP but it didn’t appear to have the same features mentioned in the above link. (I got so fed up with Vista on wifes laptop that I bought another hd and installed XP on it 2years ago. There will be NO Vista in this house. Rant over. Thanks for listening.)

That’s my 2cents worth. Wordy but, I hope it helps a little.