firefly2442 Posted January 8, 2010 Share Posted January 8, 2010 My friend asked me to help him install Windows 7 after complaining of blue screens and his Windows XP machine freezing. I said sure and went over to his house this evening. When I got there he showed me how Windows XP would get to the loading screen and then just sit there with the loading bar and not continue. He didn't have anything he wanted to backup so we put the Windows 7 disc in the drive and started it up. I should mention that he had his computer plugged into his HD TV. Windows 7 install starts up smoothly and I picked the option to format the drive. This is done quickly and then it installs Windows 7. Then the computer restarts and we skip loading off the DVD so it can do the username setup and all that. This is where the problem occurs. It gets to this black screen and just hangs there. I'm thinking maybe it's his TV and we should use a regular LCD monitor because the computer doesn't really have any good graphics drivers yet. So I plug in the monitor and still the same thing. Well, no big deal I say, we can just install it again quickly using the regular monitor. I go back in and partition the drive and then it starts installing. It's able to extract the files and almost gets through the install and then it pops up something saying: "Windows cannot install the required files" and then 0xsomething for numbers. I had my laptop handy and I googled this but all I could find was errors from people with Vista or Windows 7 who had burned an ISO and then tried to install. This is straight from the box and the weird thing is it worked perfectly the first time. I restarted the computer and tried it again but the same error comes up. By then it was getting late so I said I would head home and do some reading but here are my thoughts for when I try again on Saturday: -Use my Linux CD to try wiping the drive completely before installing (maybe the partition isn't quite working, old MBR or something?) -Check his hard drive SMART status using the Linux CD -I guess I could check RAM but I'm guessing this is probably OK -I could try to see if there are firmware upgrades for his burner or motherboard but I'm not sure how I would install those with no working computer Any other thoughts? I'm kinda stumped at this point. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CR6 Posted January 8, 2010 Share Posted January 8, 2010 Very well could be a hardware prob. It may take a process of elimination to find the faulty part. Definitely check RAM (there's a free MS memory diagnostic out there), and check the HD for bad sectors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly2442 Posted January 10, 2010 Author Share Posted January 10, 2010 Glad I had my Linux Live CD handy this time. Upon booting it immediately came up and said that it had detected problems with the disc and after running a simple check it was clear from the SMART status that his hard drive was failing. We went to the store and got one but it kinda surprised me that Windows 7 didn't have this check built-in the installer..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROCO*AFZ* Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 it does but if it ran it, it would take you an extra 5 minutes to load to O/S. Don't forget they are advertising quick install times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.