Installing 7, SATA Drivers? Hard Drive problems... HELP!

[Gorogon]

So here's the lowdown.

I have an Asus x86v thats a few years old and it bluescreened on me a ways back, and since I no longer had the recovery disks (originally vista), I decided to just load linux onto my machine, and I did and it was fine.

I got tired of linux and decided to upgrade to windows 7. After trying to install windows 7 using a legit DVD, I noticed my Hard Drive wasn't being recognized. Did some reading, and someone said to just completely wipe the hard drive and then it would be easier. So I did.

Well the same thing is happening now, once I try to install, I can get to a point, but I get the error "no drives were found" blah blah blah.

After reading more, I figured I probably needed to load the SATA Controller drivers, and luckily I still have my Driver/Utility disc. I copied all the drivers off the disc and put them on a USB and there are literally 200 or so, and I can't figure out which one to select. I've tried selecting them all and hitting next but it cycles through them and nothing happened.

I'm running in compatibility mode and I don't think I have RAID or whatever. I've tried literally everything I could find online and nothing has worked. I'm at a loss here. Any help would be awesome.

zzzzzzz

Forgot to add that the Hardrive does come up on BIOS, just not when I try to install. Also, I did go in and partition/format the Hard Drive. And by chance, or who knows, it popped up once, but wouldn't let me continue.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Gorogon, welcome to Seven Forums!



Have a look through Method Two and the other information in this tutorial at the link below for some additional ideas and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

   Note

The clean all is also very useful before starting the Windows installation process to correct for disk format errors of many kinds, to include over-writing the Linux / Grub boot loader, that is known to cause serious issues when installing Windows to a HDD / SSD that has had Grub as a loader in the past;

​

 

[gregrocker]

Where did you get Win7? How do you plan to activate it?

Did you burn the DVD yourself? The prompt for drivers almost always means a bad installer. Confirm the ISO and burn another DVD with ImgBurn at 4x speed.

Check in BIOS setup to see if your HD registers there. If so set the SATA controller to AHCI to try install. If not check the cables, reinstall it until it registers in BIOS. You may need to replace the HD.

If HD registers and it fails try wiping the HD from installer with Diskpart Clean Command.

If it fails again in AHCI mode, try IDE mode.

 

[Gorogon]

I can't clean the disk using that command because when I type "list disk" in the command prompt, it returns with "there are no fixed disks to show".

I know it isn't the DVD because it is a legitimate Windows 7 Home Premium disc. Additionally, I have tried installing windows xp and get the same sort of "no hard drive detected" message. My hard drives show up perfectly fine in the BIOS so I am pretty confused.

Should I try and wipe the disk again? Feels slightly useless because I was getting these errors before I ever wiped it in the first place, when I still had linux installed.

 

[Gorogon]

Willing to pay someone $10 via paypal if they can help me get this working! I'm wiping the drive again because I think Dban said there were some nonfatal errors last wipe.

We'll see what happens.

 

[bigmck]

Since this has happened twice in the last month on here, I will ask. Do all of your hard drive partitions have a letter assigned to them? If there is no letter, they won't show up in Computer. == If you can post your expanded Disk Management, that would help. I am not sure if you said you could access it or not.

 

[Gorogon]

It's wiping and will be done in about 30 minutes. I'll post results after I double check. I'm not sure if they were. If that's all it was, I'm going to punch myself in the face and send you $10 good sir.

I'm using Gpartition or something like that, which I created a boot disk. I'll post results in a few minutes.

 

[Gorogon]

Ok, so I can't assign a letter to the partitions. From reading around a little, it looks like I have to already have windows loaded to be able to assign it? In the MiniTool Partition Wizard I'm using, the "assign letter" option is blocked so I don't know what to do.

 

[Gorogon]

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like when I'm trying to create a partition with a letter.

http://s240.photobucket.com/albums/ff251/jrdnbeale/?action=view&current=Photo08282129.jpg

 

[gregrocker]

PW CD doesn't use drive letters at all. It is irrelevant because Win7 does what it wants with them during install anyway. If you wiped the HD try now to Clean Install Windows 7.

If it fails boot into isntaller Command Line to run Diskpart Clean command and then create an NTFS Primary partition marked Active as shown in Step 2.2 here: SSD - HDD Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

If that fails reset your BIOS to defaults, set SATA controller to AHCI mode to try install. Report back.

 

[Gorogon]

I've already tried resetting my bios and such.

The biggest problem, is when I go into the windows 7 installer, and from the command prompt, try and pull up my hard drive so I can format it, (aka type "list disk") or whatever, it tells me there are no hard disks found or something along those lines.

The craziest thing is, I decided to just put Linux Ubuntu back onto my system for the time being, and it recognized the hard drive no problem.

Very Confusing.

 

[bigmck]

We still need you to post a snip of your expanded Disk Management. What you posted before is not it. Use this tutorial if you need to know how to use your Snipping Tool. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html
To find you Disk Management hit Start and type Disk Management.

 

[gregrocker]

Can you get a camera snap of the Partition Wizard drive map with listings?

Also try creating and formatting an NTFS Primary Partition using PW, rightclick to Modify>Set to Active, Apply.

Then boot the installer and try install again.

 

[Gorogon]

Well here is a screenshot from Minitool partition wizard.

I created 2 separate partitions when I installed Linux again so I could still mess around with the other and try and get it to recognize. The Ext4 is where I loaded linux and I formatted the other as an FAT drive, which should be recognized by windows. I will reformat it again as an NTFS but I've already tried that and it didn't do anything so.

Btw, the top one is primary. No Letter is assigned to either partition as well, as it won't allow me to.
Also, the FAT32 drive is set to active while the Ext4 is not.

 

[gregrocker]

To install Win7 to the HD, click on the Disk # to highlight it then quick Wipe the HD to clear GRUB corruption from the boot sector.

Reformat the disk with a 100gb NTFS Primary partition, rightclick to Modify>Set to Active, Apply.

Boot the Win7 installer with all other HD's and peripherals disconnected.

 

[Gorogon]

Ok, reporting back on the reformat I just did.

I reformatted the FAT32 to an NTFS and made sure it was set to active. Then rebooted the Windows 7 installer and it still failed to recognize, even in command prompt.

Edit: And I will try the above ^ now.

 

[gregrocker]

I gave you the steps above to wipe GRUB off the HD which can block Win7 install.

 

[Gorogon]

I am fairly certain GRUB has something to do with it, but something strange happened.

I didn't have time to wipe the whole hard drive earlier today, I reformatted it like you said (with 100gb partition, primary, NTFS, active) and wiped just the partition.

And surely enough, it was recognized when I launched windows 7. I just about jumped out of my seat.

Anyway, I tried to install windows 7, and it looked like it did smoothly, however when it restarted my pc, it gave me an error before it even booted up.

So I figured GRUB was probably still to blame, since I only cleared just that partition, so later on I wiped the entire drive. Then I formatted it again the exact same way I had before, and now it won't recognize again. I just want to punch myself. This is so frustrating, it feels as if the computer is just trying to frustrate me more and more.

*sigh*. Trying another, more extensive hard drive wipe and then will give it another crack.

 

[gregrocker]

There are other steps you've not replied to. If you want this installed it takes utter thoroughness without missing a single step.

I asked you to try AHCI as well as IDE mode. Reset BIOS to defaults first.

I suggested to wipe, then create and format an NTFS partition, then mark it Active to try install. Diskpart Clean command takes 30 seconds and is all that is needed here.

Are you plugging installer into USB3 port? Try others to find USB2.

Do you have EFI BIOS? If so remove EFI boot disk from BIOS boot order, enable BIOS Legacy mode.

Once you complete each step with replies there will be more. We have a 100% install rate here.

 

[Gorogon]

I appreciate your help, and I will go ahead and redo all of these methods and see if perhaps I did something wrong with one of them.

Every method you have mentioned I have tried several times each but I shall go down the list again, being as thorough as possible and post results.

Thanks.