Windows 7 Cannot Boot from CD, Code 5

[OldTimer]

I'm sorry if this is a duplicate post, but honestly, I did Search for "Code 5" and found nothing.

I have a HD on an eight year old desktop PC that had an early beta version of Win-7 on it.
That old version has already expired.

I wanted to boot up with my Windows 7 Ultimate DVD and just do an overlay install. Well, every time I tried to boot the PC from the DVD drive, I got the dreded "Cannot Boot From CD, Code 5" error message. Of course I Googled the problem and found only one fix that I was able to execute.

The fix involves running the Setup on the Win-7 DVD from within an earlier version of Windows. The suggested version was Viata, but since I already had an early version of Win-7 on there, I tried that. So far so good.

The Setup program informed me that it would put the old OS in a folder called Windows.OLD.
I guess that's OK, because I can always delete that later. Eh?

This OLD computer may not run Windows 7 Ultimate very well at all, but at least I found a "Work Around" for that nasty Code 5 error message.

+ Win-7 did get the sound working and set up my wireless N card with no problem.
But it doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with my 8 (or maybe 9) year old video card.
I can live with 800x600 resolution, for now. It does have one higher res., but the on-screen text is almost unreadable. But for a testing machine, this one is working pretty well. I even got Windows Mail working with a minimum of effort.

Cheers Mates!

 

[Saltgrass]

You are not supposed to be able to do an "upgrade" install over a beta version.

When Win 7 first came out, Microsoft stated you could use a beta version as a prior OS, but that has since been changed, so you may not be able to now.

That said, I never saw such a message, so perhaps the DVD is bad.

 

[OldTimer]

You really need to do some Googling then. There is a raft of complaints about this very problem.
Evidently the boot sector on the Windows 7 install DVD is not compatible with some older Bios's.
That's just a SWAG at the problem.

Anyway, the only fix I found on the net is exactly the one I outlined in my post.
Update is NOT what I did.... nowhere did I ever say the word "Update".
It was a NEW install and the old OS was shoved off into a folder called "Windows.OLD".
The first time I ran the extended version of windows' Disk Cleanup, it removed that .old folder.
So now, there is nothing on the HD but the new install of Win-7.

Except for the lack of a proper video driver, the whole system is working remarkably well.

Cheers Mates!
Old Timer

And as I said in my post, or meant to say, I had tried every possible way to burn a DVD that would load on that old system.
I even tried three different DVD readers, each one newer than the last.
Every one of them (the DVD's I made) would boot just fine on any newer PC, but not on that old one.

 

[Saltgrass]

Uhmm........I must have misunderstood your entire post.

 

[Andrea Borman]

But can you still use the beta version of Windows 7 or is the beta version not valid anymore? It looks like you have installed Windows 7 beta as an upgrade from Windows Vista or Windows XP that was originally on your computer. Is that right?

I have got Windows 7 but because I bought my Netbook in April 2010,the first one,it already came with Windows 7 Starter pre-installed. So it is a Windows 7 computer. But I upgraded that Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium with Windows anytime upgrade.

But I could get Windows 7 Starter back by restoring to factory settings.Which puts back the original Windows I had when I bought the laptop. So if your Windows 7 beta no longer works,you could try the factory restore. To get back the version of Windows that was on the computer when you bought it.

At least then the computer would still work,but it does seem strange that if you have a genuine Windows 7 CD it won't let you do an installation. Maybe the CD is faulty or scratched perhaps. Andrea Borman.