Windows 7 Win7 won't complete setup

Uriah

New Member
I'm currently trying to dual boot Win XP 32bit, and Win7 64bit. I have separate partitions on one HDD for each of the OS and I currently have XP pro installed without any problems. i've burned the Win7 ISO at x4 speed to ensure I get a good clean copy and I've booted from the DVD and stared installing 7.

Everything goes fine (it installed and expanded all of the files very quickly) untill it restarts to boot into 7. I am able to choose between 7 and XP and when I choose 7 the new flashy windows boot screen comes up for about 10-15 seconds and then it goes blank and the monitor displays a "no signal" and the computer just sits there. No DVD action, or HDD action going on at all. I tried starting in safe mode and it gets a little farther and shows the setting up for first use (something like that) but tells me that I can't complete installation in safe mode.

I've redownloaded 7 again and I will be burning another copy of it tonight to make sure that I didn't get some kind of error on the first disc but it really seems to me that there may be a driver or hardware issue going on that isn't letting windows finnish setting up.

Also when I boot into XP I can look at the partition that I have for 7 and see that all of the directories for windows ect are on the partition (well at least it looks to me like everything is there).

system specs:
AMD Phenom II X2 55BE
ASUS M4A78 PLUS
G-Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2-800
HIS HD 4850
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB
Antec 550W PSU

Everything except for the PSU is less than a week old. The PSU is about 3-4 months old.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I acctually was downloading another copy of the windows 7 ISO before I left for work today so that I could burn another disc tonight. When you say download it from Connect, what do you mean? Do you mean Microsoft? And also I used ImgBurn to burn the ISO to disc. It was recomended by tech spot in their article on dual booting xp and 7. Is there better software to use?

As a side note, a co-worker of mine mentioned that he had a similar problem with XP when his laptops video card went out. I know mine is good but do you think that possibly the generic windows drivers are not loading properly? I may put the catalyst drivers on a disc and see if I can load them if I run into the same problem after I do the install again tonight.

Thanks for the advise so far, I really appreciate it!
 
Ok, so I re-downloaded 7 from Microsoft again and burned it to disc at x2 speed with ImgBurn. I formatted my second hard drive and started the install on it. The setup went through like before. When the computer restarted after expanding the windows files I got to the screen that said "Competing installation" and then the same thing happend as before. The monitor just shut off and says no signal. I can hear the HDD working for a few min and then nothing and the computer sits there. I really think its some kind of video driver issue but I don't know how to get past it.

Is there a way to impant video drivers into a directory for 7 to pick up when it needs to? I can use Xp and look at all of the directories for 7 but I don't know where I would put a video driver.
 
Ok so I solved the problem(sort of). I borrowed an older CRT monitor and used my DVI to VGA adapter and I can now get into 7 and everything is installed properly. I've installed the latest catalyst drivers from ATI for my video card and I still can't use the lcd monitor. It still will not display anything. It works perfectly in XP but I cannot for the life of me get it to work in 7. Anyone have any ideas?
 
BIOS Settings

I had quite a few issues with installing Vista Ultimate x64 and Windows 7 x64. Ultimately the combination that made the grade was BIOS, not drivers. However, that doesn't exclude drivers as the problem also. I would do a BIOS upgrade to the most current for your MB and then set the settings for the individual items as listed:

HDD Format = RAID or ACHI (probably ACHI since you only have one drive)

CPU Voltage = Look up your CPU on Intel.com and find out what the maximum safe voltage is for your chip and set it at that, a lot of times BIOS doesn't know what it's supposed to be at so it puts it at the lowest setting. Mine was defaulting to 1.2v when it should have been at 1.5.

RAM Voltage = Again, look up your manufacturer's voltage reccomendations for your RAM and set it at that.

Don't mess with the clocking settings until you get it stable first. Those two things, however, could be what's limitinig your machine. I had issues with mine until these three things were properly set. I think what was happening was the 64-bit OS was really 'using' all of the functionality that the x86 ones never did so it was finding it's theorhetical 'limits' if you were (speaking in gross generalities here) and it was locking up. Once set properly (according to safe manufacturer's specs) it posted fine, rebooted and I'm typing this message from IE8 x64 on Windows 7 x64 with no problems.

I have also read some other forums that suggest (in some successful cases) that the x64 Vista drivers were working somewhat for Windows 7, it might be worth playing with in a pinch since W7 drivers are probably not going to be around much for another few months.

I hope this brings you some level of success. Keep us posted. Cheers!
 
Cpu & ram

I would look up the maximum safe voltage on your RAM, CPU and then enter those two values manually into the BIOS settings, the defaults are rarely correct on those two from my experience. Once I set those two values and set the HDD settings to ACHI or RAID it worked like a champ!
 
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