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Question for the computer techs...

tyflier

tyflier

[Insert Witty Commentary]
OK...My daughter needs a computer this year for school. Rather than trying to save enough to buy her a computer, I decided to re-build my old computer for her. I removed the old 20gig hard drive and CD-ROM, and put in a brand new 250gig drive and a DVD-RW.

I have a legal, licensed copy of Windows 7 I want to install on this new hard drive. I do NOT have a boot disk, just the installation and .exe files. Here's my question...

How do I make my now completely blank computer recognize and read the installation disk? It won't auto-run, obviously, and I have no idea how to enter a command-prompt-BIOS-whatever you call it. Can anyone help me out?

I know there are a few tech gurus floating around this site. If anyone could give me a layman's list of steps on how to access my DVD-RW and run the installation disk on a completely blank computer, I would be incredibly appreciative...

Thanks in advance!!
 
Is the Windows 7 on a DVD? If so, and it's an official copy, you should just need to make sure you have the DVD first in the boot order (in the BIOS setup) and then boot off it. If it's a copy and isn't bootable, you'd have to copy all the files from the DVD onto another computer and then google around for how to make a Windows 7 bootable DVD, or alternately, if the computer can boot from USB, you can make a bootable USB stick with the Windows 7 installation files. Again, google should get you plenty of how-to's. I've done both these with other OS's but not Windows 7, so don't have exact steps for this particular case.
 
I tried that, but the setup utility doesn't recognize the new DVD drive. Could it really be as simple as a loose connection in the DVD drive?
 
It could be a bad drive/loose connection or bad disc. I'd try to go the bootable USB route which would bypass the DVD drive altogether.
 
Probably not the case but you can check the jumper settings and/or what plug on the ribbon cable you have the dvd drive connected to (unless its a sata drive). If it is supposed to be the primary and is plugged into the slave connection/or the jumper settings are wrong it *might* be causing some issues with how the bios sees it. Then you can go back and check that it is recognized and set as the first boot device. :D
 
All I did was pull out the old CD-RW and plug in the DVD-RW. Same with the new hard drive...unplugged the old one, and plugged in the new.

Trying the bootable USB route, it's asking me for the directory of my "ISO files", and I have no idea what that means. I'm at an impasse...again...

Thanks for trying guys. I really appreciate it!
 
Duff said:
It could be a bad drive/loose connection or bad disc. I'd try to go the bootable USB route which would bypass the DVD drive altogether.
Click to expand...

It's not a bad disc. I was able to get the upgrade process started on my working computer, no problem. I didn't complete it, because I'm both familiar and currently comfortable with XP, but the disc performed as expected.
 
Double check in your bios that the DVD drive is recognized. Depending on how old the original motherboard/processor is, it may not be 'seeing' the drive and may not be capable of seeing it at this point in the build. This happens with older machines because they weren't made to recognize DVD drives as they weren't produced at the time. If that's the case, you'll need to perform a BIOS update to see if that resolves the issue.

The iso files it's asking for are the disc images. I've never tried it with a Windows 7 disk, but the older versions (XP on back) you were able to rip the disc to your hard drive as an iso file with the right programs. If you get to this point, I can see what might work. Microsoft has quite a few safeguards to keep people from doing that these days unfortunately.
 
Dracoluna said:
Double check in your bios that the DVD drive is recognized. Depending on how old the original motherboard/processor is, it may not be 'seeing' the drive and may not be capable of seeing it at this point in the build. This happens with older machines because they weren't made to recognize DVD drives as they weren't produced at the time. If that's the case, you'll need to perform a BIOS update to see if that resolves the issue.

The iso files it's asking for are the disc images. I've never tried it with a Windows 7 disk, but the older versions (XP on back) you were able to rip the disc to your hard drive as an iso file with the right programs. If you get to this point, I can see what might work. Microsoft has quite a few safeguards to keep people from doing that these days unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Yea, it's an older comp, and it's not "seeing" the DVD drive. I also can't boot from a USB. I was thinking of getting a cheap DVD-ROM, see if that might work. Any ideas?
 
Some of the old machines did not even support usb booting. I agree with the bios update route if there is one for it. It may and it may not solve your problems though. :(
 
The other option here is to see what form factor your case is (probably at or atx) and price a new motherboard and cpu from newegg. It may be a little more complicated but you can call them and they will help you through it. This route can be as cheap as a couple hundred dollars if you find the right deal. Especially if all you need is a school computer and your not trying to map the human genome. :D
 
Sorry, forgot something. You will also need to know how many pins the power supply plug/s have. There may be one or two plugs going to your mobo from your power supply. :)

Also, since your drives are parallel ata make sure to get a motherboard that supports this as some of the newer ones only support serial ata.
 
Nah, I'm gonna make it easy on myself. I have a legal copy of XP, bootable, on CD-rom. I'm just gonna take out the DVD drive, reinstall the CD drive, and boot XP instead of 7. Save time, money, AND headache. I KNOW the XP disc works on the computer in question. I reformatted the old 20gig drive with it a couple years ago. Should work just fine on the 250gig drive...

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to consider and answer my questions. I really do appreciate it!
 
You could try the cheap DVD-ROM route, however, alot of times, if it can't see the one you have, another one isn't going to solve the issue. One way I've worked around the problem of older hardware not recognizing something is by using an older version of Windows (one on a CD and not a DVD) to get it started with an OS. Once it has that, upgrade/update drivers via the internet until you get the one you want. It's a pain, but if you're really trying to avoid buying new hardware, that's one way to manage it.
 
are the jumpers set correctly on the new drives?
did you take out ones that were set up as master/slave and add ones that were setup as cable select mixed with master/slave, or vice versa?
are all the drives on ide cables or sata?
i can't remember what service pack you need on xp (i think 2) to get it to recognize a drive larger than 160 gb (i dont really remember the size limitation prior to the service pack), but if it doesn't recognize the capacity of the drive right away, then you need to incorporate the service pack into your windows installation cd (you can do that with nLite)
 
It's just for my daughter to do homework. She can use it with XP. If we need to watch or burn a dvd, she can use my computer. We know the old box runs XP with no issues, so it should be fine...

Thanks again!
 
tyflier, Starting with XP, Microsoft initiated security to prevent multiple PCs from sharing OS copies. The software uses a combination of the software serial# and info from your hardware to create a unique registration number for Microsoft. If you change too much hardware you will need to re-register with Microsoft when installing. Hopefully you have a full retail version of XP because they are very difficult to convince to re-register an OEM copy to different hardware. Good luck.
 
tsst said:
tyflier, Starting with XP, Microsoft initiated security to prevent multiple PCs from sharing OS copies. The software uses a combination of the software serial# and info from your hardware to create a unique registration number for Microsoft. If you change too much hardware you will need to re-register with Microsoft when installing. Hopefully you have a full retail version of XP because they are very difficult to convince to re-register an OEM copy to different hardware. Good luck.
Click to expand...

Yea, no worries. I have a completely clean, legal copy of XP Pro and 7 Ultimate. Neither one has ever been installed.

As for the DVD-RW...that's going in my working computer. I already have one, but I have a couple of "extra" internal drive bays, and one is gonna get filled soon...
 
Yeah, definitely stick with XP. Even if you somehow manage to get 7 on there, I seriously doubt that you will find any drivers for the rest of your hardware. If the PC is old enough to have a 20GB harddrive in it, everything else in there is probably not going to have Windows 7 support.
 
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