Windows 7 Installation issues; HP dv6000 laptop; Vista-32 to Win7

markzpe

New Member
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
 
Don't waste your time trying to upgrade Vista, the results will be problematical with left-over files. The fact that you could install Vista makes me think that drivers are not an issue. Have you tried burning an MSDN Windows 7 X64 ISO to a flash drive and installing with that? The only thing that pops to mind is a defective or scratched install DVD but that is highly unlikely.
 
Turns out the DVD I used was a MSDN iso download... oh well, think I'll just install XP-64 and call it good until MS or HP get their act together.
Thanks,
-Mark
 
SOLVED! too much DRAM caused install failure

After giving up on installing 7 on my HP Laptop, I remember scanning a few posts that mention a problem caused by too much DRAM. The laptop came with two 1GB sticks, which I replaced with two 2GB sticks when I installed the new HD. So, what the heck, I removed the new DRAM, and only installed one of the original 1GB sticks, turned it on, and voila, it picked up where it failed, which was at the following point,
Expanding Windows files (20%)...

It completed the install and is currently up and running fine. I am installing some S/W updates and then I'm going to reinstall the two 2GB DRAM sticks and see if it still functions properly...

What a pain this has been, and it seems too ironic that many people will upgrade to make use of more DRAM, and when you install the DRAM before the OS, the OS installation fails!!! Geez, I certainly hope that this gets back to MS and they fix this problem.

Hope this will help others... Merry Christmas!
-Mark
 
Bug in Windows-7 boot code

UPDATE:

My HP dv6646us is now running Win-7 x64 just fine and is all up to date software-wise...

HOWEVER, when I tried to put the two 2GB DRAM sticks back in, the exact same behavior occurred, in that the thing reboots very early on in the loading of the OS.

Your first thought will be that the memory is bad, but I highly doubt that for these reasons:
1) when the installation process is rebooting after copying files, it give you the multiboot screen so you can choose which OS to boot; the old OS or to continue the installation. At the bottom of the screen there is a Memory Diagnostic option that I chose and it ran for about 30 minutes and did not find any problems with memory.
2) I installed and ran BOTH WindowsXP and Vista Ultimate (x64) when I had the 4GB DRAM sticks installed, and these ran glitch-free for at least 2 days each.

Thus, the data so far strongly suggests that there is a bug in the early boot software of Windows-7; it most likely is not in the BIOS either, because this problem doesn't happen when booting the XP or Vista DVDs...

-Mark
 
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