No install menu during W7 64 bit install - help?

Hello, I'm trying to install W& 64bit over my current XP 32 bit
install. My CPU is in fact a 64 bit processor and the W7 advisor tool
doesn't show any errors on its 64 bit report.

I'm booting to the DVD which seems to hang on "Loading Windows" for
about 10 minutes before going to what looks like a blue Windows base
screen, but there are no menu options, the screen just stays that way
and the menus never appear.

The only odd thing I can see is that my Speccy report below shows my
hdd's as IDE drives when they are actually SATA drives connected with
SATA cables.

Thanks for any help with this.


Operating System
MS Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3
CPU
AMD Athlon 7750 Black Edition 44 °C
Kuma 65nm Technology
RAM
4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 400MHz (5-5-5-15)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. M3N78-VM (AM2)
Graphics
Default Monitor @ 1280x768
128MB GeForce 8200 (ASUStek Computer Inc) 56 °C
Hard Drives
117GB Western Digital WDC WD1200JS-00MHB0 (IDE) 53 °C
156GB Western Digital WDC WD1600AAJS-00B4A0 (IDE) 42 °C
Optical Drives
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7220A
Audio
VIA High Definition Audio

 

I don't think I can help much here. Do note that if your bios can do
AHCI, it is best to enable that first before installing win 7. You can
do it after the fact, but it is slightly more complicated.

I don't know if win 7 can upgrade XP. I would wipe the disk (after
backing up) and see if that fixes the install problem.

I have a similar mobo (M3N78 PRO) running win 7 pro 64 bit.

 

1. Make sure you have the latest BIOS and your BIOS settings are
optimal. Check carefully: e.g. the default SATA setting will be Legacy
IDE, not AHCI.

2. An upgrade from 32 to 64-bit Windows is always a clean install. To
transfer your files and settings use the Easy Transfer Wizard
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transfer
before upgrading.

3. If you still find the install does not progress, try reducing your
RAM to 2GB. The other 2GB of memory can be added back after
installation. Long delays do sometimes occur, but 10 minutes is too long.

4. You will need to install Windows 7 device drivers for your M3N78-VM
after installation. These are available from your regional ASUS site.

 

Thanks for the sugggestions you two, no luck though.

So far I've tried using a different keyboard and mouse, using a single
brand new unformatted SATA hdd, no luck. All I get is that base
Windows install screen with no menus to use. Changed BIOS setting
from SATA to AHCI as well.

The only thing left to look at is a BIOS update though I really don't
feel I should need to do that for an OS install.


Donnie

 

1.) With Asus, a BIOS update is always a good idea!
2.) Remove ANY devices plugged in to USB except keyboard and mouse.
3.) Reduce RAM to 2 GB
4.) Install from an IDE DVD drive, NOT a SATA DVD drive if at all possible.

 

Hi RC, and Charlie

I updated the BIOS to the newest one at the ASUS site. I didn't see
any specific mention of SATA drives and W7.

No, I'm not running setup from within XP, that wouldn't work anyways,
it's not a valid Win32 app.

I do have an IDE DVD drive and SATA drives. I have two 2GB sticks of
RAM, I've tried installign with just one of them in, swapped them as
well. Just one time I was able to get to a Set Up menu after leaving
my machgine for 45 minutes, after that I got to a "Setting up
Windows" window with the spinning circle but after like 2 hours at the
screen I hit the reset button. The DVD Rom was spinning the entire
time and the cpu light was locked on.


Donnie

 

FWIW, I'm using an IDE DVD drive with sata disk drives on a similar mobo.

I don't recall if the MS install disk has a ram check, but I know suse
linux has one. There are probably diagnostic cd with ram checks as well.
I kind of doubt RAM is the issue.

I don't get the reduce RAM to 2G. What does that accomplish? This system
I run has 8G on a similar mobo. I had the full 8G on when doing the install.

To my recollection, the Asus mobo doesn't have a hidden BIOS (advanced
mode), but check and see if it does. There may be more options to play with.

I built a SSD system with win7 64 bit. It doesn't have a built in drive,
but I was able to install from an external USB drive. If your drive is
funky, that might be an option.

Just to be clear here, you are seeing the actual win7 boot display

 

FWIW, this version of Memtest86+, on a 350 MB Linux bootable CD,

http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-en_System_boot_floppy_disks

spotted my HP TouchSmart TM2-1010 laptop as having bad memory
(one of two 2 GB modules) when Windows only gave me filesystem
error messages, and I think the laptop's own (EFI) diagnostic
said that the memory was fine. I assume that it's also happy
to check memory above 4 GB!

The memory was returning some wrong bits in certain places,
all across 2 GB of space. Apparently if you just have a few
bad bits in a memory module, you can tell Linux at least to
not use those memory addresses...

MemTest86+'s own ISO is available here. Their install-to-USB
tool may be more successful than SRCD's was for me. Then again,
some systems just don't like booting from a USB stick or SD card.

http://www.memtest.org/

Apparently one or more web servers with IP addresses /near/ to
www.sysresccd.org serves nasty software, and for that reason,
MalwareBytes and other security tools may report that SRCD is
a bad site as well. If it was mine, I'd probably move it,
and maybe they have - it was some time ago that I ran into
that condition.

 

I've pretty much decided that this install isn't going to happe but
thanks for all the replies and suggestions.

Good job Microsoft..


Donnie

 

Thanks. I forgot about that program, but it's a classic.

If the program is smart enough to determine stuck at zero and stuck at
one, then I would call that a hard failure and you are hosed. But if the
readback is off, I'd be inclined to experiment with the timing.

Some mobos have you slow down the timing depending on how much DRAM you
have installed. The Asus Atom that I built has a strict qualification on
how the memory sodim is built. That is, it needs a certain configuration
using larger memories than some vendors use, presumably to reduce bus
loading. I'm not stating that very well. Basically the sodimm is made up
of mem chips and an address decoder (oversimplified). You can have the
same capacity sodimm with different size memory chips. The decoder makes
up the difference.

 

I'm not sure I'd blame MS. I've built 3 win 7 64 bit machine and never
had an issue with win 7. Win 7, other than a few really annoying things,
is the best version of windows ever. [Aero! MS should of looked at how
KDE does transparency.]

Have you tried using a hard drive with no data on it?

Thinking outside the box here, you could disconnect the hard drive and
try the install. My recollection is it will say "no hard drive
detected." If you don't get that far, then something is seriously wrong.

 

Problem solved. As a last ditch effort, I was able to plug in a
portable DVD drive and boot to it thru a USB port, form there the
install went just fine. After I was up and running I was then able to
install chipset drivers and W7 64bit sees and uses my DVD drive just
fine. Without that portable DVD I'd have never gotten this OS
installed.


Donnie

 

Well good news. Microsoft is probably so relieved not to have lost
another customer to those evil people in Cupertino!

I was a bit leery when I built this intel Atom box without a built-in
DVD drive, but the install went fine. I think you need to select boot
from external drive in the bios.

You may want to google AHCI win 7 if you didn't build the system with
AHCI in the first place. This is the kind of thing you don't do often
(same goes for bios fiddling), so I don't have the procedure on the top
of my head.

The search in win 7 is crap. I would like to flog the person who thought
it should be changed from older versions. I would set up no indexing.
Then install
http://www.voidtools.com/
Microsoft should admit defeat and just buy the rights to this program,
much like they bought out the SysInternals guys.