Installing Windows 7 on Emachines t3418?

[musiclover7]

I have an older Emachines desktop here that came with XP, but also says windows vista capable. I would assume, if it is Vista capable, it would also be 7 capable. I have an older 7600gt video card in it, and have upgraded the RAM to 2gb maximum...

Anyways, when I go to install 7, I get an error like.

'A CD/DVD Device Driver is missing. Please insert the media with this driver, and click continue'

I have searched for any missing drivers. I have tried installing to two different hard drives. One a WD1600BB, the other a more modern Seagate 500gb Sata...

I have tried two different DVD drives to install from, one an older IDE, the other a newer SATA.. and in all cases, I get the same error. I also made sure all USB devices and card readers were completely removed from the mother board..

Any advice appreciated..

 

[Tews]

A DVD drive is not necessary to install Windows 7...You can use a thumb drive... Brinks tutorial -=> Here
The method that I have been using for years is to create a new partition and extract the contents of the ISO there, then run the setup.exe file... Either method will work fine and save you the cost of a DVD disk... Enjoy!!!

 

[musiclover7]

Giving it a go.. Unfortunately... do not have a flash drive big enough.. I can never seem to hang on to those things for very long.. Anyways, I created a bootable partition on the SATA driver, and am going to try installing from there.. will take the dvd drive out of the equation, and hope it loads.. Let you know here shortly.

 

[musiclover7]

Well... first attempt was a no go.. I would like to install 7 onto the 500gb drive, and to that end, I created a 5gb partition on that same drive, and tried to turn this partition into the bootable drive as the instructions stated.

Unfortunately, when I use UltraISO to make the drive bootable, it automatically combines any partitions on the target drive, such that the partition I boot from, becomes the partition I will want to install to. As this seems to be the only means in front of me.. I need another method, so that I can boot off of a 5gb partition, and install to the 460gb partition on the same drive..

thanks..

 

[Lee]

Using the DVD you created attempt loading Windows 7 from the machines existing OS. This will usually work when all else has failed. What this does is to load the win 7 files onto the existing OS's partition. Once the files are loaded and decompressed the install application will then do a restart to finish the installation. As soon as the computer restarts remove the installation DVD and then follow the on screen instructions. I have had to us this form of installation on a couple dozen computers and it has always worked (for me anyway). Good Luck

 

[musiclover7]

Now it seems to be working..

 

[musiclover7]

Yeah.. just created two partitions on the drive.. one 6gb with all the install files.. I set it to active in disk management, and then booted the machine with that drive plugged in. It booted from the files on the disk, and it let me delete, create a new partition while continuing to keep the setup files in tact.. Thanks for the advice on that..!!