Issues installing Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

Question

I recently got a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate because it was due time for a reformat on my machine anyway. Even though I built my machine a few years ago, it still exceed the specs Microsoft has on their site.

I have not formatted my hard drive yet, so I still have XP on it. I put the W7 disk in, reboot my machine, then it takes a couple seconds to load components. Then it goes to the blue and teal background where a dialog box should be prompting me what to do next. Instead, it decides it is just going to sit there.

I thought it had froze the first time, so I restarted it. It didn't move any faster the second time. I left it alone for about an hour and a half while I ran some errands, and when I came back the dialog box was finally there.

I clicked repair windows because I wanted to see if there was a utility in there to format my drive but now it is sitting at the same screen again. I am currently waiting for the next dialog box to come up.

Does anyone know what might be going wrong? I do know that my C:\ is pretty much full...if that is causing it to be god awful slow, I could format my drive with my XP disk and then reboot with the W7 disk.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Is this a Microsoft DVD or an .iso that you burned yourself? If the latter, it may be a bad burn. The installer may be hanging on reading from the disk.

Also, since you built the machine yourself, you may need to verify that the individual components are on Microsoft's hardware compatibility list. I think the general rule of thumb here is that if the hardware supports Vista (driver-wise, not specs.), it should support Windows 7.

Answer 2

Doubtful that it's your hard drive. It sounds like there is something wrong with your DVD drive providing slow reads. Check the drive's configuration settings in the BIOS.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tool will tell you if you meet all the requirements, in case you are a bit skeptical.