Issues Loading Win 7 on SSD on Acer M3970

[Little Darwin]

I am trying to get my Ace Aspire M3970 tower upgraded. I have installed a Verbatim 120GB SSD drive that I hope to install Windows 7 on, so that I can then upograde to Windows 8... I would prefer to have the system on the SSD, and leave the HDD for data.

In using the ACER recover disks that I had created, I can get it to start loading on the SSD, but it took a long time for installing services, then seemed to hang for a very long time on installing drivers, until I gave up and let it slide. If I press F12 dusring boot, I can partially boot from the SDD, but it hangs at the windows logo fading in and out for many minutes before I give up.

The system is stock except for the SSD, and I have removed the wireless card. It is an i3 second gen 3.3ghz with 6GB RAM.

The recovery disks work on the HDD, because I reloaded the HDD with them the other day.

I was unable to boot from the SSD at all early on, (I have tried loading a couple of times) until I flagged the partition as active in Disk Manager on my working Windows 7 HDD. I had tried to load Win 8 with my $14.95 upgrade on the SSD and it failed before trying to load Windows 7 on the SSD.

I seem to be able to read from and write to the drive just fine.

The BIUOS seems to only recognize the HDD for booting when I go into BIOS settings, but it does give me the option of selecting the SSD if I press F12, and that is hgow I am getting to the point I am now.

Any ideas on what I should do?

Thanks for any help!

 

[whs]

1. I think you would do better with a proper installation disc. You can get the Win7 .iso from here, burn it to CD and activate it with the product key on the COA sticker.

2. Make sure you disconnect the HDD when installing on the SSD. Else you run the risk that your bootmgr ends up on the HDD.

3. It may be useful to clean the SSD before installing. Here is how: http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/

 

[Little Darwin]

Thanks whs,

I have been tinkering since I left the message, and your guidance is good. I used the recovery disks, but before I did, I removed the two partitions on the SSD and then unplugged the SATA cable to my HDD and did a load. I am now running update for my Windows 7 on the SSD.

After the numerous updates complete, I will shut down and hook up the HDD.

It is amazing how fast Windows 7 can boot from an ssd.

 

[gregrocker]

If you're going to upgrade to Win8 then it's not necessary to set Win7 up since you wouldn't want to pass through all of the corrupting Acer bloatware and useless duplicate utilities anyway, but instead want to do the Custom Clean install from the booted Win8 installer.

With Win8 unlike Win7 you must have the old OS on the HD first to do a Clean Install with an Upgrade version, however once the booted installer sees it you can then use the Drive Options to delete all partitions, create new and get the cleanest possible install.

Source: http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/b74f24cf-84ca-4acc-890d-149f87825b2f