Disc Read Error upon install

[visarts]

Hi there,
I had Vista Ultimate installed for a long time on my PC, and just today bought the student upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium. The download went fine, and I selected the custom install, since it couldn't upgrade from Ultimate.

The setup screen appeared, and it extracted the setup files, and then reboot my computer. Right after my bios boot screen, I got the message "disc read error - press ctrl alt delete to reboot."

I did order the disc backup so I'll be getting that in the mail eventually, but what went wrong? Everything appeared to be normal right up to this point, and I don't know how to solve it.

Thanks very much

 

[Tews]

Hi visarts... Welcome to the forums!

This is an alternate way that you might try while you are waiting for your disc.. Extract the files to a spare partition/drive and run the setup.exe from there... If you continue to get a disc read error, then your hard drive may be going on you... Let us know how it goes...

 

[visarts]

that's the problem, though, right now I can't get into the file because it was downloaded to my desktop

 

[Tews]

ahh... that does present a problem .. well this wont help you now, but consider making another partition after you get it/IF you get it installed, as a data/backup drive...

 

[DocBrown]

Can you get a boot into Safe Mode in Vista yet with the F5 or F8 Keys ?

Then copy the file from the desktop to somewhere else ?

 

[visarts]

Well I actually have a second hard drive installed, so I probably should have kept a copy there, but no, unfortunately, I can hit f8 till I'm blue in the face and it won't do any good - the boot process doesn't get that far. And I also doubt it's an issue with my hard drive, since it's only about a year old, and up till now I've never had a single issue with it.

 

[visarts]

I was also hoping I could redownload it to my laptop (which I'm using now) burn it to a disc and try it that way, but when I try to log in to digitalriver it says "no orders found"

 

[Tews]

Lets hope that you can get it installed once you get your disc... Oh... just an FYI ... Ive returned brand new drives as soon as I got em in the case....

 

[visarts]

is the disc backup of an upgrade bootable?

 

[Tews]

I cant say one way or another.. maybe someone who has received one can say.... Can you boot using your vista disc??

 

[visarts]

ah, see, there's another problem - one of the reasons I'm trying to upgrade is because my old vista disc got cracked in half, and I haven't been able to do a clean install of vista because of that

 

[Tews]

Sounds like you're in a pickle until your disc arrives.. Wish there was something else I could suggest...

 

[visarts]

That's alright. I'm worried, though, that something is screwed up beyond the ability of an install disc to figure out.

 

[Tews]

Worst comes to worst, throw in a different drive when the disc gets there...

 

[visarts]

Thanks for all the help. What I've done in the interim is use the 64bit disc that I had to at least give me vista for now. I'll post an update whenever I get the 7 disc.