Windows 7 What happened during my installation?

[zhitz351]

Hello everyone.

Running on AMD 64 Duo Core, nvidia 8600 GT, 4gb ram.. got it through dell with Vista 32 bit installed on it. Just graduated college, I got a copy of Windows 7 32-bit through my university's academic alliance. Burned a bootable disk and here we go:

Steps taken to get to where I'm currently at:
1. Backed up all my music, files, etc.
2. Did the upgrade check, had 2 or 3 warnings, but nothing that would've made the install fail.
3. Restared computer, booted from Windows 7
4. Here is where I may have screwed up - went to the partition manager because I wanted to install on a freshly formatted partition. There was a partition there, with either 1gb, or 100mb, that of which has either 700mb or 70mb free. It said (reserved) next to it, with a OEM there as well. I never saw this partition there when I would reformat with Vista, which I did countless times (computer science major : ) ). Anyways, I didn't think the partition was important now that I was going to be changing to 7, and also for the fact it never showed up when I was reformatting in Vista.
So, I deleted that partition. Deleted the partition Vista was on. Now I have one partition, at my HD's capacity, 250gb.
5. I install Windows 7 on the new partition.
6. Everything runs awesome, I get to where it is essentially had installed. I enter my name, name for my pc, password, confirm pass, pass hint. Click next. THEN here is where it goes terribly. After going through the time-zone and whatever other pre-first boot set up stuff, it goes to "Preparing your Desktop". It stays here for about a minute, no biggy, then its like my graphics card just took a crap on the screen. This pixilated madness comes onto the screen, but, you can still see through the pixels. The only way I can describe it is that its almost like a layer of misplaced pixels. For example, during my own attempts at resolving all this, when I would get to a point where the mouse is movable, there would be about 4 or 5 other spots on the screen that would move in unison with my mouse. But the other things moving were just a few pixels that were, what looked like to be, a mouse pointer, just not at the right place. Even my DELL startup (where you can select boot menu or setup) has these misplaced pixels, the giant blue DELL logo causes a few other blue spots (clumps of pixels?) on the start up screen.

-If I let start up go by itself, it eventually just ends up at a black screen, nothing happens.
-I just installed vista back onto that computer and the pixel issue is still there, but I'm on the OS and its working fine... minus the pixels making things hard to read.

So basically, I'm either thinking, when I deleted that partition that the Windows 7 partition utility picked up (that Vista didn't) I lost something critical. OR, when Windows 7 tried to prepare the desktop for the first time it blew up my graphics card.

Also, the weird thing is, this happened last night, I gave up around 1 a.m. When I started that computer up this morning, no crazy pixels during the start up screen, and it only went nuts when I chose to boot to Windows 7.

Anything at all would be huge!! I need to start coding some projects I'm working on and clearly can't get anywhere without my pc running smoothly. Thanks a lot!

 

[Radenight]

Hello and Welcome to Windows7forums..

Ok, rather then list off a number of things it COULD be and a list of ways to potentially fix it, I'm simply going to say start fresh.

As in put you're Windows 7 installation disc back in and boot off of it. This time when you get to the partition manager screen delete all partitions like you did before. Now, create a new partition that is between 50-80 GB's (this partition can be whatever size you want it to be but since it will just be OS and apps being installed to it, it doesn't need to be huge). When you create this first partition you should have a prompt pop up telling you that a 100MB partition will be created for Windows 7 system files. Accept this and proceed to make another partition out of the remaining HDD space. (The point of this type of setup is you'll end up having a C: that contains you're OS and any apps that you wish to install later on and then a D: that you can store all you're personal files on)

After you have created the partitions and formatted them proceed with the installation as normal. Everything SHOULD work out fine now.

The 100MB partition is needed with Windows 7. It is where Win 7 stores system files needed during and after the installation. It is annoying but also needed for things to flow smoothly. You are correct that it wasn't present in Windows Vista but it is present in Windows 7 so unfortunately you're going to have to get used to it being there..

If you follow this partition setup you should end up the 100MB partition, the "C:" partition (which is whatever size you want it to be), and the "D:" partition (which is also whatever size you want it to be)..

You can also just create one large partition and have things work right but DON'T delete the 100MB partition that Windows 7 creates itself...

Hopefully this clarifies things a little bit for you.. Please report back how you make out..

I suggested the dual partition setup because that way if something should happen down the road and you end up having to format and install again, you're personal files will be on a seperate partition which means less work for you in the end.. Though I strongly suggest creating a backup of all you're personal files weekly or monthly depending on how often you obtain new files..

 

[zhitz351]

Thanks for the response! It was, to my surprise, a very coincidental failure of my video card during installation. Which explains how when I fired up my computer the following morning the pixel issue was non-existent.. for a few minutes. Then once it started to get put to work it freaked out and began sending pixel all over my screen. So, I replaced my video card and now 7 works like a charm.

So, to anyone else that may see random pixel flares/runners all over your screen at any point (during boot, bios menus, setup...etc), its your video card, not some poor installation of whatever OS you're installing.

Thanks again for the response!