[Dezi100]

Just shows the single drive in the "Where do you want to install windows" screen, other than that its just the same,
message says...
Windows cannotbe installed to this disk. (show details)
when I click on "Show Details" another message comes up saying...
Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The computers hardwaremay notsupport booting to this disk. Ensure that
the disk's controller is enabled inthe computer's BIOS

?

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Strange lets take a look in the bios and see if the drive is setup correctly.

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Also you need to find the Controller area and make sure what the controller is set for. On some systems if the controller is not set IDE emulation it may not install correctly.

Hopefully you have already put the Win7 cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:

"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over. Then follow the prompts or if you need assistance we will help.



One other question.... is this the original OS installation disk or is it a burned or downloaded copy?

[rshaffer61]

Strange lets take a look in the bios and see if the drive is setup correctly.

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Also you need to find the Controller area and make sure what the controller is set for. On some systems if the controller is not set IDE emulation it may not install correctly.

Hopefully you have already put the Win7 cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:

"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over. Then follow the prompts or if you need assistance we will help.



One other question.... is this the original OS installation disk or is it a burned or downloaded copy?

[Dezi100]

Everything is as it should be, though with this machine its F2 for the BIOS setup
the only mention anywhere about the drives, other than the boot order, is in the "ADVANCED" section", > "Drive configuration".
At the top of the page it says "Use automatic mode" and theres a choice of "Enable" and "Disable"
Below that is a heading ATA?IDE Mode, and theres a choice of "Enhanced" and "Legacy"
Below that are 4 SATA ports numered 1 to 4 all showing "Not installed"
Then "Primeary Master" shows as WDC WD1200JB-00R - 120.0GB which is the drive I want to put windows on
At the bottom "Primary Slave" which shows as TSSTcorpCD?DVDW - ATAPI
In the "BOOT" section there is a choice of Boot menu type "Normal" or "Advanced"
Then there is the "Boot Device Priority" which is set for CD then HDD


?

[rshaffer61]

Are your hard drives IDE or SATA?

[Dezi100]

"C" is an IDE as is the CD/DVD drive

[rshaffer61]

OK strange as IDE should have no problem with Win7 at all.
Let me ask when you start the installation does it identify the hard drive as one partition or no partition at all?

[Dezi100]

Yes, it shows as "Disk" 0 Unallocated space 111.8 GB.

[rshaffer61]

Unallocated tells me it is not partitioned yet.

[Dezi100]

I have even tried to load Windows XP Pro into this drive, the partitioning and NTFS formating is a bit more of a "Visual" event than Win7 and you can see whats going on. This went fine until the first re-start during the loading when it stoped just after the "Press any key to boot from CD" message appeared then shortly afterwards another message came on the screen sayind "Disc Reading Error".

[rshaffer61]

All indications is the hard drive may be the issue.

[Dezi100]

I thought that too... so I've swaped out the "C" drive and the IDE cable to see what happens (fingers crossed) :-)

[Dezi100]

Windows 7 loaded and on the re-start it now says A "Disk read error occurred"

?

[rshaffer61]

On the other hard drive now?

[Dezi100]

Yes that was on the other hard drive...
Howevere as I seem to be making no progress I thought I'd try somthing else....
I got a SATA drive and cable from another computer (was a "D" drive) then configured the CD/DVD to "Master" and put it on the end of the IDE cable, so I now have a Sata HDD and a CD pluged into the IDE channel.
Loaded win7 again and it went in fine up to the re-start now after the e-machines flash screen it just goes to a black screen with the curser flashing in the top left corner.
I have a Hiren's boot utillity CD which amongst other stuff has an "Advanced Boot Options" section and one of the options in this section is :- "Boot from Hard Drive-Windows vista/7(BOOTMGR)"
Clicked on this and Windows 7 fired up no problems so the program is loading OK... so the question is how do I get from the curser to the program starting, I'm guessing its somthing to do with the Boot Manager but isn't that somthing the BIOS controls?

[rshaffer61]

I'm confused as to your hard drive connection. How are you connecting a IDE controller to a SATA hard drive? Do you have a adapter for the data ribbon and for the power connector?