Win7 clean install won't complete

[ibex]

I am doing a clean install of Win7 Prof 64 from a genuine Win7 DVD on a new PC - all new components - nothing of any sort previously installed.

The install proceeds normally to he point where it does a restart. On restarting it comes up with the message "Updating registry entries" and then restarts.

I have stripped out all but one stick of RAM (now 2GB) and also swapped sticks. There are no external components other than monitor, KB (PS2) and mouse (USB).

I have run a repair and got these results (copied by hand so summarised):

The Startup Repair response was "cannot repair this computer automatically"

I allowed it to send information to Microsoft for a solution, and then I allowed it to send additional information. It immediately dropped back to the "cannot repair" window.

A summary of the messages in the "View diagnostic and repair details" window follows (although I'm not sure which are most relevant):

System Disk = \Device\harddisk0
Windows directory = D:\Windows
Autochkrun = 0

Then in the section - tests performed

Name: check for updates
result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Tiem taken = 0 ms


Same result for each of System disk test; Disk failure diagnosis; Disk metadata test; Target OS test; Volume content check; Boot manager Diagnosis; Event log diagnosis; Internal state Check; Boot status test; Setup State Check;

Then Root Cause Found: Failure while setup is in progress.

I am at a loss to identify the cause of the problem or figure out how to move forward.


Current Operating System, pre-install
• Do you have a single OS on your computer, are you planning on multi-booting with this installation? NO previous OS - no multi boot
• Are you multi-booting now? NO

Current Hardware
• How many internal hard drives (HD) are connected to your system? 1
• Are they IDE or SATA? SATA
• How many DVD drives are connected to your system? 1
• Are they IDE or SATA Drives? SATA DVD/BluRay reader
• Any external HDs used? NO
• Are they connected by USB or eSATA?
• Check Disk Management for any HDs listed with a yellow triangle and explanation point? No prior OS to check with
• Is this a New Clean HD? YES
• Have you pre-formatted the HD? NO Using the Win7 install to do this

Windows 7 installation details
• Which build number and version of Windows 7 are you installing? don't know build number, Professional
• Are you installing a 32 bit (x86) or 64 bit (x64) OS? 64
• Where did you get the ISO file from? genuine OEM DVD from parts supplier

Installation Media
• Using a USB memory key?
• From another partition or hard disk?
• From a DVD? YES


Other
• Any Over Clocking of the RAM, CPU or GPU? NO

 

[DocBrown]

Welcome ibex,

For your first post you did an excellent job of providing as much info as possible, best I have seen in a long time.

Only question I can see to start with is how is your monitor connected, VGA, HDMI, DVI ?

Hope we can get some other members input on this also !

EDIT: Did you have the computer connected to the internet during the install ? For updates ?

 

[ibex]

Welcome ibex,

Only question I can see to start with is how is your monitor connected, VGA, HDMI, DVI ?

EDIT: Did you have the computer connected to the internet during the install ? For updates ?

VGA - I have also tried using a different monitor that uses a DVI connection

yes - connected to the internet - but being a new PC I'm not totally sure it is connecting. Although all other PC's on the switch are connecting OK so should be fine.

 

[karlsnooks]

Ibex,
Welcome to the forum.

Now I'm going to make a wild guess based upon pure intuition.

Here's what I 'll show you how to do:
To 100% write zeroes to your hard disk before the real install kicks in gear.
This will take a little while, influenced by the size of your hard disk.

1. Turn on your computer. The purpose of this is so that the DVD door can be opened.
2. Open the DVD door.
3. Turn off the computer with the DVD door open.

1. Insert the Win7 DVD and close the DVD door.
2. Power on your computer.
3. When that very first dialog appears where you would normally push the NEXT button, then use the SHIFT + F10 key combo to get to a command prompt.
4. The command prompt will be X:>

Now you are going to run the DISKPART program so that you can "clean" the hard disk.
In the following, type the command shown and then hit the Enter key.
Do not proceed to the next command until the current command is finished.

1. DISKPART (the command prompt will change to DISKPART>)
2. LIST DISK (this will list the disks present)
3. SELECT DISK 0 (assuming disk zero is the desired hard disk)
4. DETAIL DISK (this will show you info regarding the disk you selected)
5. CLEAN ALL (this is the command to write zeros to entire disk)
6. EXIT (this will exit you from the DiskPart program)
7. EXIT (this will exit you back to the Win7 install program)

Let us know if all installs correctly now.

Now will someone tell me how do I post a reply which doesn't delete the extra spacing I throw in for readability. This is getting aggravating.

 

[ibex]

CLEAN ALL is underway, although no progress showing on screen.

I have an 80GB SATA drive available to try the install on if the 1.5TB drive is the problem.

 

[DocBrown]

Ok, let us know,

another user has had trouble with an OEM instal DVD from a parts supplier also

 

[karlsnooks]

with 1.5 Terabyte, you probably want to go to a movie and then come back. To bad the March Madness basketball games are over for today, otherwise, I'd suggest taking them in.

I will be interesting to know how long the "clean" takes on a drive of that size.

 

[ibex]

2 hours 15 and counting

 

[WindowsStar]

It is going to take awhile. But we are here to help.

 

[ibex]

OK - so the CLEAN ALL finished with no errors after 5 hours 15 min. The rest of the install ran just as before and rebooted in the same location just after displaying the message "Updating registry entries".

I reran the "REPAIR" to check the log and it appears to be identical to the previous logs.

On another forum someone pointed out that the log shows
System Disk = \Device\harddisk0
Windows directory = D:\Windows
Autochkrun = 0
and said that shouldn't the Windows directory be on C: ?

When I run the install there was one unallocated "lump" of disk space. I just choose the "NEXT" option. It seems the installer is creating two partitions.

name: Disk 0 Partition 1: System reserved Total Size:100.0MB free:71.0MB Type:System
name: Disk 0 partition 2 Total size: 1397.2GB free: 1386.3GB Typerimary

Is this normal and is it OK for Windows to be on the D: drive?

Thoughts about next steps?

 

[DocBrown]

That is the Normal way win7 installs, it creates a 100mb hidden partition for some back up boot files, bit locker files, etc.

Win7 should be installed on the largest partition.

 

[TJ1376]

This post is remarkably similar to mine!

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/72436-help-install-build.html

If you find an answer, please let me know. I get the exact same error. After install finishes, computer reboots, reboot fails indicating something is corrupt. Run the repair tool, cant repair, look at the log and I get the exact same setup error.

Good luck.. I am on my 2nd week of troubleshooting. If I find a solution, I will post in here to let you know.

EDIT: Below is my setup. I am curious if we share any similarities:

Motherboard: Biostar TA790GXE 128m
CPU: AMD Athlon II x2 255 Regor 3.1ghz am3
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 500 gb drive
DVD: Sony optiarc 24x DVDR sata model ad-7240s-ob
Mem: OCZ 4gb (2x2g) 240 pinn DDR2 SDRAM 1066(PC2 8500)(Have also tried 2gig)​

DVD & HDD are hooked up using SATA cables.

20" Hanns-g monitor hooked up via HDMI (Have also tried VGA)​

These installs have failed after reboot:
Win 7 x64 professional install dvd
Win 7 x32 home install dvd
Win 7 Enterprise install from USB (ISO downloaded)
DOS (win 98 version)​

 

[SIW2]

The log last entry will tell you what went wrong.

It is on the drive of the failed install, e.g.

"C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setuperr.log"

Boot 7 dvd , go to command prompt, type

Notepad

when notepad appears, click File>Save, browse to the setuperr.log and have a look.

 

[TJ1376]

The log last entry will tell you what went wrong.

It is on the drive of the failed install, e.g.

"C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setuperr.log"

Boot 7 dvd , go to command prompt, type

Notepad

when notepad appears, click File>Save, browse to the setuperr.log and have a look.

Not trying to threadjack, but what does it mean if this file is empty? Its size is 0kb.

 

[SIW2]

You might find you have another setuperr.log in the Rollback directory.

 

[karlsnooks]

Ibex,
Did you ever find a solution to your problem?

If you did, I'd be very interested in hearing the solution.

My research has only shown that Win7 seems to have problerms with 2TB harddrives, but I've found nothing definitive.

If you still can't get the install to work, then I'd suggest partitioning the harddrive into smaller partitions. For Win 7, loaded to the gills, 250 GB would more than suffice. I assume the reason you have such a large disk is that you want to be able to save videos, movies, music, pics of considerable size and quantity. You will also simplify many other backup and restore activities and problems by partitioning into smaller units. You have seen how long a simple write of zeros to your drive took when the computer wasn't doing anything else. You must think ahead to the day that the harddrive dies. You would like to have a backup of the drive before that happens. If drive A crashes, then you need a drive B ready to go in its place.

Give us an idea of what you plan to do with 1.5 Terabytes and we can probably make some suggestions as to how to utilize the space and handle backup in a reasonable manner.

 

[WindowsStar]

Thank karlnooks, I was just thinking the same thing. I had a weird issue with a 2TB drive a while back and was reflecting on that when catching up on this thread. I broke it up into 3 partitions. 100meg (Windows 7), 250GB and 1.3TB for Data. C: Is 250GB and 1.3TB is D: all worked fine after that.

 

[ibex]

sorry to be so slow to respond. Just started a new job today so no time in work hours anymore to look at this. Only got time at home (but at least I'm getting paid now).

No solution to the problem yet.

Re the 1.5 TB - no specific plans - it was just a good price point for disk/$.

I will partition the disk as described above and see what happens, although advice on how best to set it up is welcome. this will be the primary games machine - when it gets a new graphics card. Plus MP3 and movies.

At the moment I am trying an install with all "unnecessary" options disabled on mother board. eg USB3, com, parallel, floppy etc even though nothing installed on them.

Will report back soon.

 

[ibex]

The log last entry will tell you what went wrong.

It is on the drive of the failed install, e.g.

"C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setuperr.log"

Boot 7 dvd , go to command prompt, type

Notepad

when notepad appears, click File>Save, browse to the setuperr.log and have a look.

I tried to do this. I have booted from the install CD and gone into notepad

In notepad I see 3 disk drives.
System reserved (C: )
Local Disk (D: )
Boot (X: )
and removable CD drive (E: )

X: has 4 folders Program Files, sources, users and Windows.
Sources has 4 folders en-US, inf, License and recovery and 3 files hwcompat, hwexclude and idwbinfo
recovery has 1 empty folder en-Us and no files

am I looking in the wrong place?

 

[ibex]

made a number of BIOS changes
Drive "A" set to none
IDE Channel o Master shows the disk ST31500341as
IDE Channel 0 slave shows NONE
IDE Channel 1 Master shows the DVD
IDE Channel 1 Slave thru IDE Channel 9 Slave all show NONE (are set to auto but report NONE)

eSATA, GSATA, COM and Parallel ports are disabled
Turbo SATA3/USB3.0 is disabled
Azalia is disabled
Onboard USB3 is disabled
onboard IDE is enabled
Extreme hard drive (XHD) is disabled.

the PCH SATA control mode is set to IDE
options are IDE, RAID(XHD) and ACHI. Should this beset to ACHI or is IDE the correct default?

Also confirmed First boot is Hard Disk and in disk priority the disk shows first in the list. Second boot is CDROM.

This has got me past the original error and into "Completing Installation".

However I took my eyes off it for a moment and it went into a reboot loop so I'm going to try again to see what happened.