Almost no response from windows 7..angry wife

[MacGyvr]

Does this still have anything to do with the original thread?

 

[Keiichi25]

That's the issue in the BIOS there is no choice to go from RAID to ACHI only Auto Detect RAID/ATA. I have just found a post elsehwere where someone said that the XPS 720 chipset was to oold for ACHI. Is that why it doesn't show up or are there some drivers that need installing?

I am pretty confident there is no reason to keep the RAID0 for this pc and seperate drives would be more useful.

While you could also do Raid 5 to cover all 4 drives (3 striped, 1 parity), performance suffers in that designation.

Respectfully: Simply not true. Many servers come with only 4 drive bays and RAID 5 is the default setup per the manufacture. I have used RAID 5 on 4 drives many times and it works perfectly with no performance hit. In fact is much faster than RAID 10. Because the machine is not mirroring and stripping at the same time. -WS

Actually, you are incorrect...

Servers will come with varying drive cages... In the case of the OP, he is speaking of a Dell XPS 430, which is NOT a server, but a desktop computer. If it is similar to the XPS 720, Dell has only allotted 4 physical internal bays to put 4 3.5" drives

Of the servers I have seen, current Servers will do a minimum of 2 drive bays (1U Rack mounted units). I have seen some servers that will go up to 8 SAS 2.5" drives on a 2U based rack system and could go up to about 16 if need be. When I specified the setup for the user, he would be able to do a maximum of 4 drives.

As for no performance hit, perhaps for a desktop. However, I have seen in an exchange environment where having a RAID 5 setup with 4 SAS disks were hammered and causing serious performance hit that it was highly recommended to do a RAID 10 setup to improve disk performance on a busy machine.

Depending on how crazy someone wants to be on performance, there is differences on a RAID 5 configuration and a RAID 10 configuration, and it depends mostly on how badly you need to do disk access.

 

[WindowsStar]

While you could also do Raid 5 to cover all 4 drives (3 striped, 1 parity), performance suffers in that designation.

Respectfully: Simply not true. Many servers come with only 4 drive bays and RAID 5 is the default setup per the manufacture. I have used RAID 5 on 4 drives many times and it works perfectly with no performance hit. In fact is much faster than RAID 10. Because the machine is not mirroring and stripping at the same time. -WS

Actually, you are incorrect...

Servers will come with varying drive cages... In the case of the OP, he is speaking of a Dell XPS 430, which is NOT a server, but a desktop computer. If it is similar to the XPS 720, Dell has only allotted 4 physical internal bays to put 4 3.5" drives

Of the servers I have seen, current Servers will do a minimum of 2 drive bays (1U Rack mounted units). I have seen some servers that will go up to 8 SAS 2.5" drives on a 2U based rack system and could go up to about 16 if need be. When I specified the setup for the user, he would be able to do a maximum of 4 drives.

As for no performance hit, perhaps for a desktop. However, I have seen in an exchange environment where having a RAID 5 setup with 4 SAS disks were hammered and causing serious performance hit that it was highly recommended to do a RAID 10 setup to improve disk performance on a busy machine.

Depending on how crazy someone wants to be on performance, there is differences on a RAID 5 configuration and a RAID 10 configuration, and it depends mostly on how badly you need to do disk access.

Sorry but you are incorrect.

Here is a server:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-241475-3884319.html

4 SAS drives extremely good performance. I have the same server as a G7 with 8 SAS drives RAID 5 and the performance difference is negligible. I have Dell, HP and IBM many with 4 drives, many with 8, many with 16. Once you get to 16 drives performance goes way up. We have hundreds of servers.

As for Exchange that is a whole different animal. The configuration for that is complicated. RAID 6, RAID 5, and RAID 1 if you want the best performance out of it. We have been working very closely with HP and Microsoft on our new Exchange 2010 Servers. Amazing stuff.

I just happen to be at work. Just a sec……yup just talked to the HP engineer and he in is agreement RAID 5 on 4 drives will yield very good performance. Once you drop to 3 drives then everything begins to suffer.

Since neither I nor he has used RAID 5 on 4 drives in a desktop machines we cannot speak to the performance there. But in the server area he knows. 25 years with IBM and now 15 with HP.

 

[masplin]

Unfortunately it wont install Windows. Here are steps I have taken:

1. Reset CMOS
2. Restarted and reset time all fine
3. Changed boot order to CDDVD, HD#3, RAID
4. Put Windows 7 Prp 64 bit upgrade disc in drive, shut down and disconnected RAID drives
5. Started up and installation loads up
6. Shift F10 to Optimise the HD as per the tutorial. All went to plan and created a 100GB primary partition (small error in tutorial as syntax is create partition primary size=102400)
7. Went back to installation and set it off installing.
8. Then error: Windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files for installation are available and restart. Error code 0x80070001.

Any suggestions?

 

[masplin]

For clarity I am installing on a drive that has never been part of RAID and was used for backup only. I have not tounched the RAID drives except physically disconencting thme and moving them down the boot order. Also to reiterate this is an UPGRADE disc as pc was shipped with Vista 32 bit.

 

[gregrocker]

Where did you get Win7? Did you burn it yourself? If so, burn another DVD at 4x speed with ImgBurn.

What is the SATA controller setting now in BIOS setup?

 

[masplin]

No it's an official microsoft upgrade disc. Same one I used when upgrading from Vista.

 

[masplin]

I left the SATA controller to RAID on so maybe that is the problem?

 

[masplin]

I was assuming with only one HD attached the RAID ON = AHCI from the info I found yesterday.

 

[gregrocker]

What are the other choices now?

You want to try AHCI, SATA or IDE in that order.

 

[masplin]

Not sure where it fell over last time so set it going again. Seems to be fine second time round in that it has restarted. sorry time wasting

 

[Barman58]

That particular error can be like that - one misplaced spot of dust on the disk or the drive lens can cause it, so nothing to apologise for

 

[masplin]

next hitch is it says the prodcut key is invalid. 110% sure I have typed it correctly. Is this because I havent wiped the RAID drives and that product key it still in use?

 

[gregrocker]

If it is Upgrade version key then

skip the key insertion step

because when you install to wiped HD

you'll have to wait until after install

to to do a workaround to get it to accept key:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

 

[masplin]

ah didnt realise I could miss the step of putting in product key i.e. leave it blank. However after I go activate I get this error:

0xC004F061 The software licensing service determined this specific product key can only be used for upgrading not for clean installation.

 

[masplin]

I have tried phone activation and spoken to someone at Microsoft. They say I cannot use this upgrade disk to install windows 7. I must reinstall Vista and then perform the upgrade. I think this is where we started 16 pages ago so please tell me they are wrong!

 

[masplin]

I'm really getting my knickers in twist. Re read the tuturial and found the registry workaround which has worked. so seems I am all up and running. Thanks for assisitance and apologise for my flailing. Mike

 

[gregrocker]

Congratulations on getting up and running!

Since this was posted several pages back, you might have forgotten the rest of these steps, too:

If you have an Upgrade version DVD it may not accept the Product Key upfront. If not, continue with installation anyway, then when you get to the desktop use one of the workarounds given here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

Use the drivers given by Win7 installer and optional Windows Updates first. I would not change out any drivers unless performance dictates or driver is missing in Device Manager. You should get the latest display driver in Updates, but if not import it from Dell.

Install programs slowly over time to gauge any performance changes. Don't allow any programs other than AV and gadgets to write themselves into msconfig>Startup as they are freeloaders on CPU/RAM and can spy on you. Use a lightweight free AV like MS Security Essentials with the Windows Firewall only.

When it is finished, clean and order the HD perfectly using state-of-the-art free CCleaner and Auslogics Disk and Registry defraggers. Then save a Win7 backup image so you never have to reinstall again.

Windows 7 requires no tweaking other than normal system settings - it will absolutely work against you!

 

[masplin]

got as far running registry cleaner and defragger. Having a complete mare with trying to create a system image using windows backup. Firstly tried onto a network drive and got various errors so to save time tried to putit on the other partition of this pc. Didn't throw an error, but has been spinning it's wheels for 2 hours whch is far too long. Couldn't do anything with pc so had to power off - ouch. On restarting the backup seems to show a system image of 10GB - is that the right sort of size as have not installed any programs except cleaners?

Also had an issue with having to do a startup repair after the 2nd lot of windows updates was installed. Started ok 2nd time. Just wondering if any of this is a sign that this pc can't handle Win7?

 

[1Bowtie]

Why in the world would you run registry cleaners on a fresh install, you need to install Windows 7 and get aquainted with it before you start mucking up the system