Topic: Issues upgrading to Windows 7.

[Quemaqua]

So I don't get it.  I buy a copy of Windows 7, back up all the stuff I need, then when I go to install it, it won't find the drive I want to install it to.  I have no idea why.  The drive is right there, nothing wrong with it, but the C: and D: drives don't show up, just the F: and G: drives.  I tried to boot from the DVD to see if I could do something with the partitions, but when I tried that, I got a message saying NTDLR missing, and it wouldn't boot from the disc.

I'm so tired of this shit.  Anyone have any ideas?  I'm too exhausted to even think about it anymore.

[Cobra951]

I had the same issue when I tried installing XP on a system with Vista on it.  It had something to do with newfangled standards for dealing with HDDs.  I can't remember specifically, but I'll go look.  Just wanted to post this in the meantime.

Edit:  This may be useful:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx

Still looking around . . .

Edit 2:  OK, dug enough to remember what my problem was.  It was related to AHCI vs legacy IDE.  I had the issue because I was trying to go back from Vista to XP (which I ended up not doing).  My choices were to drop the modern AHCI method and go back to legacy IDE, or hunt around for low-level drivers.  It seems to me that this shouldn't be your issue, since you're upgrading Windows, and both Vista and 7 know all about AHCI natively.  I'd still look in the BIOS and see how your offending hard drive is communicating with the world.  Wish I could be of more help.

[scottws]

That is very odd that you can't boot from the DVD and that is concerning because you should be able to do that (unless you have the upgrade version and that works differently... I'm not sure).

Have you tried putting the drivers for your hard disk contoller on a disc or USB drive and loading them during the install?

[scottws]

Your disc has to be defective if you can't boot from it.

What version of Windows 7 do you have?  If you bought Ultimate, I can create an ISO of my disc and put it on my web server for you.  I have 5 Mb up now so it shouldn't be too bad to download from me.

[Quemaqua]

It's an upgrade disc, Home Premium.  I don't know if I mentioned, but upgrading from XP, not Vista.  It seems to be a problem with the device, not the disc.  I looked up the error message and saw tons of posts about it all over the web, but none of them seemed helpful at all, and the bitch of it is... I can't get on the internet on my PC, only on my laptop.  The virus killed my connection somehow, and no amount of fiddling and searching ever solved the problem.

But drivers may be the problem as far as the install.  That would at least make sense as far as them not showing up on the list of drives to install to when I pop the disc in.  I don't think I have any driver discs, though, so I guess I'll have to go find them.  *sigh*  Why the fuck can't anything be simple?  I mean for heaven's sake, why should this be a fucking problem?

[scottws]

I am a bit surprised as Windows 7 has tons of hard disk controller drivers from IDE to SATA to RAID to SCSI, but honestly I've seen it once before where 7 didn't have the drivers and I had to load them from a USB flash drive (at least you can do that now and don't need a floppy disk).

I'm willing to help you solve these problems.  Just let me know the model of PC or motherboard or hard disk controller (if it is an expansion card) and I'll see what I can track down.

Also, I'm not experienced with doing a Windows 7 upgrade, especially from XP to 7.  I didn't think you could but I see that Microsoft does allow it.  I thought you had a full version retail disc because of this.  Anyway, it seems the upgrade process is much more involved than it was when you did upgrades to XP.  It used to be that you just had to put a disc from a previous version of Windows in during an otherwise normal full/clean install of XP, but I understand that changed with Vista and I haven't tried it since XP.

Did you see this site:  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/help/upgrading-from-windows-xp-to-windows-7

Also, you didn't make this totally clear in this thread:  how many hard drives do you have and how many volumes on those hard drives do you have?  What are F: and G:?

[Xessive]

I had a problem detecting drives when I was reinstalling 7 on my current system. I resorted to making a USB installer and that seemed to resolve the issue as well as speed up the install significantly (since there's no seek rate).

I just followed these instructions to prepare my USB stick for booting and setting up Windows 7 installer on it.

Hopefully that could help.

[Quemaqua]

I guess I need to buy a USB stick.

And sorry about sort of abandoning this thread.  I haven't meant to, and I do appreciate the help... some other, more major life problems have sprung up in the interim and I'm pretty much just dealing with those at present.  I have very little extra brain left to spare.  But thanks again for the help.  Hopefully I'll get my shit together and figure this out again soon, probably after I get back from a trip I'll be taking in early October.

[Quemaqua]

Okay, so here's the deal.  I finally got Windows 7 to install.  It's not really worth relating the details because basically it just decided to work after not working for months.  Go figure.

Anyway, now I have a new problem.  I had to install from boot and go around my previous Windows install to get it to work properly, and because of this it won't let me enter my product key because it's an upgrade key and not a full key.  I read several guides that indicated I should be able to easily work around this by either doing a regedit to reset something, which failed entirely, or by doing the "good old double-install trick", which is apparently accepted by Microsoft and yet won't work because Windows updated already and the version on my machine is now newer than the old.

As it stands now, I'd have to re-wipe the fucking OS, reinstall XP, and then reinstall Windows 7 again.  Or possibly try to install Windows 7 twice over again.  And this, of course, only if it actually decides to detect my hard drives (which I never did find a solution for).

So I'm sincerely hoping one of you guys has a magical trick to make this work.  I'm getting to the point where I'm half ready to throw this piece of shit in the garbage and install Linux.

EDIT - Well, I uninstalled every stupid update and got it to install again, and the double install trick doesn't work.  The shit is still broken.  I guess I'm going to have to either break down and call Microsoft or just pirate this bitch.

*sigh*

EDIT x2 - Done.

[scottws]

What was the solution?  Magic underworld?