Windows 7 installation

[Dparson05]

I can get the cd to run and bring up the Windows 7 install screen, but for some reason my hard drive is not showing up! How can I get it to find my hard drive?

Dan

 

[sminlal]

If you invoke the BIOS configuration menus when your system first starts up, does the hard drive show up there? If not, then you have a basic issue you'll need to solve before starting the Windows installation. It may be that one of the cables (data + power) is not properly connected or the cable itself is faulty.

If your motherboard has two SATA controllers (typically indicated by having some SATA plugs as one colour and some as another), then check to make sure that both of them are enabled, or try connecting the drive to the other controller.

 

[MrBig55]

Is your HDD connected via USB? cause no Windows version can install to USB HDD without modding the Windows CD. For Windows 7, Microsoft released a software to install Win7 on a USB HDD: it's called "Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe".

Also what is your HDD? cause my cousin once wanted to install Windows 7 on a 2TB hdd but it wasn't recongnized by Windows. He even tried Windows XP but the same issue applied. He then needed to unplug the 2TB HDD so that Windows 7 did recognize the other 2 HDDs. So weird that Windows 7 didn't recognize the other HDDs when the 2TB HDD was plugged in.

 

[Dparson05]

I have tried a 500 GB hard drive with a SATA connection and a 320 GB one with an ide connector.

With either one they show up in the BIOS, but Windows 7 can`t seem to figure out that they are there, VERY frustrating.

I am running this setup:

MSI NF750-G55 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition Callisto 3.2GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Desktop Processor - C3 Revision

MSI N470GTX-M2D12-B GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory w/ Red LEDs Model BL2KIT25664TR1608

LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner with LightScribe

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 RS-700-AMBA-D3 700W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Dan

 

[Dparson05]

I am still waiting for some help with this, my computer is still down!!!

 

[sminlal]

Did your motherboard come with a CD containing Windows drivers? If Windows doesn't already include the right drivers for your chipset or disk controller then you'd need to load them when starting the installation.