A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing.

[kww]

This may fly in the face of all that us HP, but I want to install a fresh install of Vista Ultimate on my machine. Pavillion m9350f. AMD phenom quad core 64 with 6GB of RAM. I have the disk from the MS store and want the cleanest install I can do. No 'total care', no HP this or HP that to bog the machine down. I want to use thier hardware but not thier software. I launch the dvd and get this error on the first screen after arriving at the main Vista 'Install' screen from the DVD.

"Load Driver

A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a floppy disk,

CD, DVD, or USB flash Drive, please insert it now.

Note: If the Windows installation media is in the CD/DVD Drive, you can safely remove it for this step."

Even when the operating system that came with the machine was installed, Vista Home Pemium 64 bit, I was unable to get past this seemingly perplexing message. How on earth could it not continue off the dvd if it cant find the drivers - after it booted from the dvd -, which is a misnomer in and of itself since there are no CD/DVD 'drivers', only firmware.

I get this message still after:

Trying to install with the system all upgraded and up to date with all the drivers and firmware upgraded.

Trying to install after booting from a USB drive

Trying to install after a fresh reinstall of the backup system and not upgrading anything to keep it as basic as the day it arrived. (Which installed fine by the way)

Trying to install to a freshly formatted empty drive.

My CD/DVD is the TSST CDVDVW-TS H653N Lightscribe

So now I have a blank drive and still cannot install Windows Vista off the Manufacturers DVD. Amazing.

It appears obvious to me that HP makes it as difficult as possible to do anything that does not have HP software all over it.

They also wont give me a disk with any of the software I purchased on the machine, as a seperate install.

Only through the recovery DVD, which is an installed image, not an installation disk.

So all that software is gone to me too unless I stick with the image they put together.

Anyone have an idea of how to get past the 'missing' driver issue so I can install ultimate and use the machine the way I want to

instead of the way they think I should be?  Thanks for any help.

[MKueffner]

I ran into the same problem. What I found was the DVD drive is SATA. I downloaded the drivers from HP to a USB drive. Browse for the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller. That should get you going.

I would be interested in hearing how your system performs after the upgrade. Mine worked fine for three or so days, then performance would degrade to the point where I could no longer use the system. I rebuilt twice with Vista Ultimate with the same results. Finally I have resorted to going back to Home Premium via the HP recovery disks to see how it performs (I'm on day two).

Good luck

Mark

[kww]

MKueffner,

Sorry for the tirade on HP there, but this solution appears to totally have gotten me past my stumbling block!

An awful lot of searching bboards led me to posting, which solved the problem much more readily.

Thanks so much, and I will keep you appraised of the machines' fortitude in the coming days.

I am finally installing now and will see how it goes.

I knew it was more amazingly simple than all other solutions I had found.

Just have to know the right file to have ready to install which was very difficult to discover.

Putting it on a USB was not precisely clear, but I simply extracted the files from sp37486.exe with winRAR into the same folder

I had saved it in. Then copied it all to the USB. Installed the USB upon prompting for the driver files and found it in the-

 \Source\IDE\WinVista64\sataraid folder.    nvrd64.inf    is the file I used when you finally go to look for it while installing.

Cheers.

[MKueffner]

Awesome! Glad to hear you go it working.

[kww]

Just checking back in...

So far it hasnt been a walk in the park, - 2 blue screens, 2 complete hangs -

but everything is working and there are no driver  '!'  in the Device manager.

Loaded office 07 pro and it became a real pig.

Put in a  2 gig SD card as a ready boost drive.

When it works, it's smooth. But I already have 6 gb of ram so I dont understand

why it needed the ready boost to improve the performance so much.

Found and installed the newest drivers.

Been running for a few days now. We'll see.

Still not confident enough to port over all my data from my XP box, but getting there.

Its a much faster processor on phototshop and graphics files - my career of choice.

Cheers.

K

[Bill_Hicks]

Try the steps in this doc to improve Vista performance:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00815926&dlc=en

[lmann]

Hi MKueffner

I am hijacking this thread to ask if going back to Home Premium resolved the system performance issues on your m9350f?

I am having similar issues with my m9400f and am trying to figure out what is going on.  According to http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1274730&admit=10944... and http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistaannouncements/thread/22a3f5f8-db7a-4583-a... it is more of a hardware problem (bad/underpowered psu vs bad sata controllers).

Appreciate your response.

[kww]

I did not resolve the performance issues with the initial install of Ultimate.

I am too impatient to do the proper debugging process uninstalling and installing one item at a time and finding the issue.

I reinstalled Vista ultimate and everything worked great for awhile.

I mostly used the HP drivers instead of the newest drivers on the hardware sites.

With no exclamations in my Hadware manager I left it at that, instead of trying to update them all further.

After loading some other software - I am pretty sure it was I tunes 8- i ran into the same slow down issues. 

But after disabling all the hooks that apple puts into itunes these days - genius, server connections, auto updates, etc

it all started to work again. I have been fairly error free since then.

So it was likely some software that I installed that balked at the hardware the first time around.

Frankly I have a feeling that if I did go back to home premium, I would have much less issues.

HP has had the chance to sit and debug all the issues, so they had it all working well. 

I just dont want all the HP xtra software addons.

Does void my warrantly though not having thier configuration on there.

Cheers.

[lmann]

iTunes, eh?  Funny u should mention that's one of the last programs I installed before everything started to slow down.  I did un-install the itunes and that did speed things up just a bit, but the core issues that I'm having are still there.  So right now I am in the middle of wiping the hard drive and then I'm going to restore to factory specs. 

Anyways, thanks very much for ur reply and I'm happy for you that your system is running how you want it. 

[MKueffner]

Hi Imann,

No, going back to Home Premium fixed absolutely nothing. My case is like the others you have probably found. It runs great for approximatley a week and then takes a nose dive. The only way I have been getting around it is by doing System Restores. However, after seeing some other threads, chkdsk seems to temporarily fix the issue also.

One of the HP helpdesk people transfered me to their PC Tuneup department. I spent $100 for them to do basically clean out my temp folders and run smitfraudfix.

Here are they steps they took:

1. Ran Smitfraudfix

2. Ran Malwarebytes scan

3. Cleaned out temp / windows temp / prefetch folders

4. Ran chkdsk /r

I am waiting to see what happens next. If it continues to happen, I am not sure how to proceed with HP. They effectively send me in endless loops when I ask for a replacement or a refund.

Thanks,
Mark