Can't install OS

mitchwohlman · Feb 17, 2014

My DELL studio 1555 has no operating system on it because the hard drive was completely wiped. Before the wipe it had windows 8 installed on it. it had no issues, I just wanted to install windows 7. But when installing windows 7 I get to the select a partition screen and it says it can't find or make a partition and that I should check the setup log files. I have already troubleshooted everything for that problem that I could find and absolutely nothing worked! I tried deleting all partitions and making a new one and then going into the command terminal and cleaning the drive and a few other things but none of it worked. After windows 7 failed I tried to re-install windows 8 but when I select to boot from my boot device (USB in my case because disk drive is broken) I get an immediate error message telling me that the boot configuration data is missing or contains errors. (status: 0xc0000225)
After that didn't work I tried installing Ubuntu Linux and I got and error message right after I selected my boot device saying remove disks or other media and press any key to restart. I have tries multiple times but it never works.

Thanks,

Mitchell W.

house70 · Feb 17, 2014

How did you wipe the drive?

mitchwohlman · Feb 17, 2014

By using the command center thing when you first start the windows install by pressing shift+F10 and going through the cleaning process in that.

house70 · Feb 17, 2014

If you really want to wipe the drive I would suggest something like Killdisk (a bootable version is available for free, as well, and allows zeroing the entire HDD, or just a partition). That restores the HDD to a factory-like state, easier for fresh OS installs.
Of course, if the HDD is old, it may need replacing, but I'm assuming it's not that old.
Formatting the drive is not wiping it; that's why you might run into issues.

mitchwohlman · Feb 17, 2014

Thank you, I will try that and tell you how it goes. And yes, the HDD is fairly new.

mitchwohlman · Feb 17, 2014

It is asking me to enter the full shell command line and I have no idea what that means.

house70 · Feb 17, 2014

No need; create a bootable media with Killdisk on it, then boot from it. It will take you to a basic interface (navigate with arrow keys, select with Enter) and you can select the entire HDD from there.

mitchwohlman · Feb 17, 2014

That is what I am trying to do and it asks me for the full shell command line. It also says that the initdiskbad or missing command interpreter: command.com /P /E:256

house70 · Feb 17, 2014

That's weird; I have never encountered such error, it always booted from CD straight into the basic interface (red window on blue background, if I remember correctly). You did use this page: http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm to get the program, didn't you?

Needless to say, you need to have this bootable media created on a different machine, since yours is not usable right now.

mitchwohlman · Feb 17, 2014

I used that link and I created it on my desktop pc. I made the bootable usb version from that site and it prompted me with the things I posted earlier.

house70 · Feb 18, 2014

Try this: http://killdisk.com/comlinemode.htm Use number of passes = 1.

Also, first make sure the bootable media was created from a Windows version, not a MS-DOS version.

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