Details:
HP Pavillion running Vista Home Premium, 32bit (all factory, have not made any H/W changes in 2 yrs owned)
model: dv6646us
CPU: AMD Turion TL-58, Dual Core 64 x2
4GB PC2-5300 DDR2
New Seagate Barracuda 320giger, 7200 rpm SATA (wanted to save existing HD 'just in case' !)
Bought Win-7 Professional Upgrade
GOAL: to install Win-7 64bit
On existing HD, I downloaded and ran the Win-7 Upgrade Advisor from MS and it only had a few warnings but just that I should uninstall two apps before upgrading; ALL drivers showed up as compatible with Win7. I decided to buy new HD and do a clean install so that I could always put the original HD back and be up and running if install fails.
Installed new HD (ten minutes).
First choice was to put in the 64bit DVD. It booted from CD and got to the point where it has the black screen and is copying temporary files (to RAM I guess). When the white bar gets to right side of the screen, it pauses a few secs and begins to reboot, and would repeat this indefinitely if I didn't stop it.
Second choice was the 32bit DVD. It rebooted even sooner!
Since this was sold as an 'upgrade', I thought that since the new HD had NO OS on it, that might be causing the problem (the least MS could do is TELL US what the problem is before rebooting so rudely!). So I installed WinXP Pro (32bit), and then SP3; PAIN in the A$$, had to go to HP website and download and install all the drivers MANUALLY; for some reason they are not on the XP install DVD. Having a valid running XP OS did NOT change the rebooting of Win-7 64bit install, but Win-7 32bit DID START the install and got to the point where it was expanding files. Then it rebooted prematurely (i.e., it did NOT complete the file expansions). NO BSoDs, just black! When booting now, there is the option of going back to old OS, or continuing with install (EMS). If I choose to continue install, it just hangs with a black screen, no disk activity, and I have left it this way for over 40 minutes; Ctrl_Alt_Del has no effect. If I choose Old OS, it boots XP just fine and there is some file on Desktop about the failed install...
Using F8 to get boot options, I select 'Debug' and find that it gets to loading 'fileinfo.sys' and then pauses for a few seconds and then reboots.
So all attempts to do a clean install with:
1) new HD with no OS
and
2) new HD with WinXP-SP3 installed
have FAILED for both 32 and 64 bit DVDs.
So now I think that its a driver issue. So I then installed Vista Ultimate x64 (thanks to MSDN subscription) and that went pretty smooth, other than the same hassle about installing drivers manually. HP sold a bundle of laptops; you'd think that MSoft would include drivers on their OS install disks! So now I have a clean Vista 64bit install which sees all 4Gig of RAM and all important updates have been installed. So do I dare try to upgrade now to Win7/64??? Thought I'd run it past all the wisdom here before trying!
Thanks for any suggestions...
-Mark
HP Pavillion running Vista Home Premium, 32bit (all factory, have not made any H/W changes in 2 yrs owned)
model: dv6646us
CPU: AMD Turion TL-58, Dual Core 64 x2
4GB PC2-5300 DDR2
New Seagate Barracuda 320giger, 7200 rpm SATA (wanted to save existing HD 'just in case' !)
Bought Win-7 Professional Upgrade
GOAL: to install Win-7 64bit
On existing HD, I downloaded and ran the Win-7 Upgrade Advisor from MS and it only had a few warnings but just that I should uninstall two apps before upgrading; ALL drivers showed up as compatible with Win7. I decided to buy new HD and do a clean install so that I could always put the original HD back and be up and running if install fails.
Installed new HD (ten minutes).
First choice was to put in the 64bit DVD. It booted from CD and got to the point where it has the black screen and is copying temporary files (to RAM I guess). When the white bar gets to right side of the screen, it pauses a few secs and begins to reboot, and would repeat this indefinitely if I didn't stop it.
Second choice was the 32bit DVD. It rebooted even sooner!
Since this was sold as an 'upgrade', I thought that since the new HD had NO OS on it, that might be causing the problem (the least MS could do is TELL US what the problem is before rebooting so rudely!). So I installed WinXP Pro (32bit), and then SP3; PAIN in the A$$, had to go to HP website and download and install all the drivers MANUALLY; for some reason they are not on the XP install DVD. Having a valid running XP OS did NOT change the rebooting of Win-7 64bit install, but Win-7 32bit DID START the install and got to the point where it was expanding files. Then it rebooted prematurely (i.e., it did NOT complete the file expansions). NO BSoDs, just black! When booting now, there is the option of going back to old OS, or continuing with install (EMS). If I choose to continue install, it just hangs with a black screen, no disk activity, and I have left it this way for over 40 minutes; Ctrl_Alt_Del has no effect. If I choose Old OS, it boots XP just fine and there is some file on Desktop about the failed install...
Using F8 to get boot options, I select 'Debug' and find that it gets to loading 'fileinfo.sys' and then pauses for a few seconds and then reboots.
So all attempts to do a clean install with:
1) new HD with no OS
and
2) new HD with WinXP-SP3 installed
have FAILED for both 32 and 64 bit DVDs.
So now I think that its a driver issue. So I then installed Vista Ultimate x64 (thanks to MSDN subscription) and that went pretty smooth, other than the same hassle about installing drivers manually. HP sold a bundle of laptops; you'd think that MSoft would include drivers on their OS install disks! So now I have a clean Vista 64bit install which sees all 4Gig of RAM and all important updates have been installed. So do I dare try to upgrade now to Win7/64??? Thought I'd run it past all the wisdom here before trying!
Thanks for any suggestions...
-Mark