Windows Vista or 7 just don't want to install.. Help! :(

[mehmeh]

Hey all.

Machine in sig.. Last night Vista x64 locks up, reset the machine and it fails to boot. Tried safe mode, last known good settings, each time it just hangs halfway through boot. Eventually, it boots as far as wanting to do a checkdisk. Hung on that a couple of times, but eventually completes it and I get numerous errors that read...

"insufficient disk space to fix the security descriptors data stream"

There was over 50GB free!!!

Didn't have a clue, so decided was as good an excuse as any to format and go Windows 7..

Windows 7 install seems to be either running exceptionally slow or hanging.. Takes a good 5minutes from seeing the first splash screen to language selection. After 10mins of looking at "Starting setup..." I give up. Have gone through this numerous times now. Vista x64 gives much the same result, although managed to get as far as expanding files with that on one attempt and it gave up, telling me files were missing or corrupt and to check the install media. Which is fine!

Now here's the thing.. I burned a copy of Ubuntu 9.04, it boots and does both LiveCD and full install fine, infact is what I'm using now.

Have tried two different DVD drives to rule out that.

Everything seems to otherwise be running ok, did think maybe windows setup taking so long was a performance thing, but Ubuntu seems happy enough and no idea where to start with benchmarking programs on Linux, but if someone can point me towards something to check the CPU, Ram, etc, be much obliged.

Kinda running out of ideas, anyone shed any light or point me in a different direction on this?

[petrefax]

i had a similar woes installing windows 7 x64. kept either telling me my media was corrupt or the drivers for my my optical drives weren't present.

i nominally attributed it to having an old motherboard & running SATA hard drives with PATA opticals, (whether this actually was the cause i'm not 100% sure ) anyway, i got round it by installing Win 7 x64 from a USB drive.

there are plenty of sites with instructions on this if you google it. eg this one

if you have a suitably sized USB drive its well worth a try

[mehmeh]

Thanks for the reply.

Managed to track it down in the end with the help of a completly random google search and once I saw it, relised I'd had the same problem back when I installed Vista all those years ago. If you have your floppy drive enabled in BIOS, but no floppy connected, it grinds the install to a near hault. 'Course one of the first things I did was reset my BIOS to remove overclocks etc.. Once I disabled the floppy drive, everything suddenly started to go smoothly..

Crazy man, dunno if its a problem with specific boards or BIOS, but hey, sorted, so don't care. Just frustrated I wasted a whole day on this. Added a note on my 7 media so I remember for the future.