Difficulty with new OS Installation

[Traxsguy6]

The frustrating problem child on my workbench is an HP Pavilion tx2697cl Entertainment notebook. 

Here is the situation.  The machine was running 64 bit Vista Home.  A clean install was performed with Win7 Home Premium 64 bit.  Machine worked fine for a week or so, and then just up and quit.  I was not able to recover the OS.  I suspected a faulty hard drive (OEM Hitachi 320 Gb 5400 rpm sata).  Replaced with equivalent hard drive.  No joy on a new Win 7 installation.  Reinstalled old hard drive. 

Now, when attempting an OS installation (on old HD or the new HD), here is what happens:

Install XP - machine loads drivers from disk, the BSODs

Install Win7 - machine starts normal install, gets to stage 2, and BSODs.

Have rebuilt and reformatted drive partitions as NTFS numerous times.

Have yanked SIMMS one at a time, a tested multiple times.

Have tried to hard reset the BIOS.

HP tech support out of the Philippines was less than helpful.

Have original Vista recovery disk on order, to see if that will fix the problem.  Line of reasoning is to reinstall that, upgrade the BIOS, and then (hopefully) install clean Win7.

Anyone out there have any clues as to what the problem is here, and the resolution?  I'm stumped.

Thanks in advance.

Traxsguy6

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I don't know why the W7 install won't work (it should), but I know why the XP install probably isn't working. That being due to the fact that you need to load the sata achi drivers in order for XP to see the drive.

Please see this link below for info on how to do that.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and/SATA-drivers-for-XP-solution-on-0x000000...

The problem is obviously you can't use any software tools to ID the SATA controller you need, but the service manual states the notebook has an AMD chipset, so it needs the AMD SATA ACHI driver.

Chipset ATI Northbridge: AMD M780G
ATI Southbridge: SB700

Paul

[Traxsguy6]

Thanks Paul.  I'll give it a shot.  This whole thing has me stumped.  I've never run into a situation like this.

Thanks again for the prompt reply and suggestion.

Traxsguy6 (Dave)

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're welcome, Dave.

Definitely an odd situation.

Almost sounds like the drive controller on the motherboard went kerflooey on you.

Paul

[Traxsguy6]

Dude;  Worked like a champ for XP.  You da man!

Many thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Now you should see if you can install W7 over it.

At least it isn't a hardware problem.

Paul

[Traxsguy6]

Yes, that was my thought.  BTW, that nLite is very neat.  I think you have steered me to a new favorite program.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Isn't it fun learning new things?

I have learned about so much stuff on these forums from everyone, I almost feel like I know what I'm doing. 

[Traxsguy6]

Sigh.  Me again.  I've spent the last day or so attempting the win7 installation on this $%^%$# laptop.

A straight install, won't load, as the install program indicates that it can't copy over a file.  I eventually got the Win7 OS on it, but the whole thing was fragile, and had to be started in safe mode after blue screen crashing.

I used a new program RT Seven Lite, to bassically do the same thing as I did with nLite.

1.  Copied the while install disk to a folder

2.  Downloaded the SP1 into another folder

3.  Downloaded all the HP update drives for this model and stuck them in separate folders after extraction.

Then I slipstreamed everything together into an iso image, and burned a bootable disk.  Sounds, good, but didn't work, as the install crashes in a new place now, saying there is an ntfs error.  Drat.

Any thoughts on what to attempt next? 

As a last resort, I'm waiting on the original Vista system recovery disk to be mailed to me, from which I just figured I do an upgrade.

Still, this puzzle is perplexing me.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Wow...

That is perplexing, and I have no idea what the issue could be.

Installing W7 should be a snap on that PC.

Are you burning the DVD's at the slowest possible burn speed you can?

Hopefully the vista recovery disk will work. At least I sure hope it does!

Paul