Reformatting Vista to Win 7 Problems

[brainpup]

Hey folks, I got a friend that I'm trying to fix/update his Acer Laptop that keeps hanging up in Vista(go figure). well he said he wanted me to reformat it, I said is XP Pro Ok, he said yes. I tried ( and I do have a Volume license that I've put on several rigs with no trouble but this laptop froze up at 3% twice, so I used my Win 7 disk (that I have a Volume license for) and it went thru the Windows setup and then quit, with some dumb stuff about enabling a controller in the BIOS, so I went back in and switched it from SATA to IDE and it was loading again but stopped and says the installation was cancelled, "can't install required files", "no changes were made to your computer", but I have already wiped the drive. So even thou it was running but freezing up with Vista, theres nothing to go back to.

What is wrong with my reformat procedure ? I've put this Win 7 disk on 2 Rigs already with no problems. I'm running it right now on this rig, and the XP Pro on 2 other ones, I do have a Win XP Pro V license disk also (thats always worked)but I tried it with no luck.
NOTE: this laptop was running, but all wierd like. maybe a virus or trojan, but I figured with a fresh install that would all be gone.

What am I doing Wrong ?

grateful for some help

brainpup
Brian
Charlotte, NC

 

[brainpup]

Ok well hell I just tried another XP Pro disk in this lappy and it got to Windows setup and froze again. Now it says it can't find a hard drive ?? I've set the SATA drive to back to IDE because Win couldn't find the SATA drive...

Please some one tell me what i'm doing wrong. I've rebuilt/built probably 30 rigs and nevr had this kind of problem.

help

Brian

 

[brainpup]

ok now it says
Boot BGR is missing
press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

which this does nothing but bring me right back

 

[The_Prophecy]

Hey Brian,

Your formatting issues aside, I think you have a RAM problem on that laptop. If the install is crapping out 3% into the process.... a hardware fault is very likely.

Grab a copy of MemTest86+ and let it run a complete pass. Let us know if there are any errors shown.

 

[brainpup]

hey thanks for the reply, but I can't run nothing on this lappy because I've already reformatted it and wiped the HD and I did save all the files that were relevant but it keeps hanging up on the reformat. like right now I did it again and its stuck at 0% for like the last 2 hours.
anything i can do ?

oh yeah I did get pass the boot problem, but it still won't let me put an OS on it

 

[The_Prophecy]

MemTest86+ is not something you run from within Windows. Download it from the link I provided above and burn it to a cd. Turn your laptop on a boot from the MemTest disk. Let it test your ram and see if there are any errors detected.

Edit: Oh, and please see your other thread on this same topic (that I will be deleting shortly after you have read it).

 

[brainpup]

Hey "The_Prophecy", I'm sorry about the other post ..my bad I was just getting a little frustrated, oh and I did burn "memtest" like you advised but just now I saw the progress bar go up to 1%.... woohoo... do you really think this Acer Aspire 5325-2698 is really that slow ? I mean I know its only got a 2.13 Celeron in it, but it did show 1.5 GB of DDR2, would it really take that long to reformat a 120GB drive ?

please forgive my dumb stuff before and know that I really do appreciate everybodies here's help.

B

 

[The_Prophecy]

reformatting a drive should be almost instantaneous (full formats are not necessary). If it's only just hit 1% of 1.5GB of ram, you definitely have a problem. Even if Memtest is not displaying any errors, the first test should only take a few (no more than about 10) seconds to complete. Test number 2 should only take about 15 seconds (max of 30 on slower systems).

Do you have another ram stick you can pop into the machine?

Edit: Are you looking at the Test progress bar? Or the Pass progress bar? There is a difference. Each pass consists of, if memory serves, 7 tests which are not of equal length. The first 2 tests in the pass should go as described above. The next 5 tests take considerably longer.

 

[brainpup]

No I didn't run memtest after I downloded it on my other machine, this one, because the progress bar on the reformatting started moving, well it got up to 14% so I was like kool its going to work....but now it stoppped and says "the insallation was cancelled" "Windows cannot install required files. The file does not exist. make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. error code : 0x80070002."
now I don't know what to do...

I've used this same disk with no problems on this computer and one other. what could be going on wrong ?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Forget about trying to format the drive and install Windows on that system. If there is a RAM (or other hardware) problem with the machine, it's not going to work anyway. Run MemTest and see if it shows any errors. Replace the ram if there are any.

 

[brainpup]

Ok, I'll give that a shot and holler back in a few minutes then, I don't have any extra RAM for it thou, ..if it was a Desktop, it would have been fixed long ago because I have 4 other HD I could have put in, 2 already have fresh copies of Win 7 on them and the other 2 have XP pro. dang lappy.
but ok I'll go and run memtest and see what it finds.
Thanks for the help so far, will you be here for a little bit lnger so I can come back and tell you what I find out ?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Yup... i'll be on for awhile.

 

[brainpup]

ok I stopped the reformat with XP Pro and memtest86 is running and so far no errors.
its on Test # 6
system says slot 0: 512 MB DDR2-333, slot 1 : 1024 MB DDR2-333

 

[brainpup]

wow test 7 was a trip the numbers flew by....
settings RAM : 266mhz (DDR532) / CAS : 4-4-4-12 / Dual Channel

 

[brainpup]

ok hey Prophecy, it wen thru all the test I think (thru #8) because now its back to Test # 4 and it says Pass=1, errors= 0.
Pass complete, no erroors, press Esc to exit.

now what do I do ?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Ok... next most likely candidate is the hard drive. Got a spare you can pop in and try?

 

[brainpup]

not for a lappy

 

[brainpup]

oh and soon as I pulled the disk out it came up with a message BOOTMGR is missing Press ctrl+Alt+del to restart

 

[The_Prophecy]

Ok... download and burn a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD. On it are several good hard drive diagnostic tools. They are specific to certain hard drive manufacturer's though, so for best results, check who your hard drive was made by first, then run the appropriate tool. The UBCD can be found at www.ultimatebootcd.com

 

[brainpup]

ok I 've got that CD already, so what about the BOOTMGR being missing, how'd that happen ?

 

[The_Prophecy]

stopping the format mid-process would do it, but like I said earlier, you don't need to do a full format on hard drives. I haven't done one in about 6 years.

 

[brainpup]

alright I just ran thru all the diagonistic stuff and it found no errors, what should I do next try to load my Windows disk again ? should I do a quick format instead of a full format of my harddrive

 

[The_Prophecy]

I don't see how those ran properly in 30 minutes, but try installing again, and yes, do a quick format this time.

 

[Vampyrbyte]

I have a suggestion.
Try burning your XP or 7 disc again at the lowset speed your drive will burn at.
When i was runnning the Windows 7 RC I burnt a disc on one machine, installed fine with no hitches yet when i tried the same DVD in my laptop there was no end of issues. After burning the CD at a low speed it all turned out fine for my laptop too.

 

[brainpup]

Good morning and thanks for the reply, I actually tried tio install XP Pro again over nite and it keeps getting hung up part way.

This morning it just got stuck at 17% :
" Setup cannot copy the file: driver.cab"
To retry press ENTER
and yes my XP Pro CD is in the Drive

I hit Enter and it runs for a few seconds and then its rigt back to this page again,

This is my Volume License disk of XP Pro that I've had for several years and I have never had any problem installing it on my other computers. Do you think because the Laptop's drive runs at a slower speed then my Desktop HD drive, it would make it miss files ? or just because the disk was burned at a faster speed orginally the lappy is missing them ?