Windows 7 freezes during installation?

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Limp Gawd
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Jan 31, 2005
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Im pretty sure its hardware related but I knew of no where else to ask.

Computer hardware is:

Intel Core 2 Duo E5200 2.5GHz CPU - Retired as of yesterday from main gaming rig...known to be working.

DFI X38 DK-T2RB Motherboard - Used with above CPU (as in used yesterday before installing new CPU/motherboard in main PC)

2 x 1GB PC2-5300 667MHz DDR2 RAM - HP pull.

ATi HD4850 512MB video card - Used a few months ago...was working fine when pulled.

Western Digital 160GB hard drive (SATA) - 2.5in drive (laptop)

Lite-On Blu-ray/DVD-RW combo Drive (SATA) - Brand-new...honestly used once in this installation.

PC Power & Cooling 610watt PSU - Known working when pulled.

Basically the installation freezes at any random point during installation. It can freeze right after copying installation files, at the hard drive format screen, at expanding files portion...just basically freezes whenever it freezes. This is trying both the 64-bit and 32-bit DVD's, retail legal copies.

Now, I know the obvious answer is to test all the individual components but Id like some feed back before I start that long tedious process.

Now, the BD-ROM drive Im pretty sure works. Its brand new at least, and loads the setup files fine...system freezes at any point following this loading process...never during the loading though it does freeze right after the progress bar fills up sometimes.

The hard drive is a Western Digital 2.5in laptop drive...thought this might be the issue but I have 2 of these and Ive tried each one with no changes in the system freezing...so for now Im ruling these out.

The RAM was pulled today from a HP system I have, so I know it works for sure, might be a problem with compatibility/picky motherboard.

Video card I thought might be the culprit since the fan speed is realllll low since I can manually adjust it yet cause I dont have access to a fan speed control program. It was getting real hot but I put a 120mm fan right in the side of the card and it stays a lot cooler to the touch...plus heat isnt an issue 2 minutes after system startup from cold power on no matter how slow the fan is...video card ruled out for right now.

And the CPU and motherboard were working perfectly fine as of yesterday evening when I yanked it from my main PC to replace it with another DFI X38 motherboard (better/more features) and a Intel Xeon C2Q X3350 CPU (which rocks!)...so unless something happened between last night and today both the CPU and motherboard should be perfectly fine.

Im at a loss...anyone have any advice? Thanks guys!
 
OK...no one has advice?

Anyways...thinking it was the RAM I went ahead and put what I know to be a working module...same freezing. I know at this point that its NOT RAM related...know this for sure.

Thinking it maybe that the 4850 has whack fan speeds, the fan is at the lowest speed because of not having ATI control panel control...the freezing may have to do with the card overheating...so I switched it out for an older 2400Pro I have and the installation gets further (to the point of actually installing services and stuff then freezes again!

I am at a complete loss here...its apparent that no one can help me so Ill be keeping more of a log here than anything else.

Could it just be the Windows DVD? Theyve been successfully used before...hmm...
 
Just an FYI, there are a few parts in the process, like 30 and 60ish % where it looks like it's frozen but the % just takes a long time to move past. After it starts expanding files, just walk away if you are getting tempted to play with it.
 
OK...Ill keep this in mind.

I will however say that at these instances where it freezes the system DOES become unresponsive...like no loading animations or anything, mouse pointer will not move either...complete freeze.
 
OK...still freezing...so now I am going on to a different optical drive...swapped out the new BD-ROM for a IDE HP DVD-RW...another known working device. We'll see in a bit...
 
OK...installation got past all the copying and expanding...now its stuck at the "Completely Installation" section with the loading bar at the bottom...same total freeze, not able to move the mouse or anything...

If this doesnt work I am going to try a USB thumb drive installation instead of using a DVD...maybe thatll help...we'll see.

It just sucks no being able to install Windows because I have no way of knowing whats working and whats not without being able to stress test...hum...
 
make sure as much as possible is set to default in BIOS, also double check the cpu heatsink ?
 
BIOS set to default and the heatsink, while being a cheap-o stock heatsink, is well placed and BIOS shows normal temperatures when I reboot and check temps.

Well, with the DVD-ROM drive it froze...

See, Im wondering...if its a hardware problem why does installation freezing vary so much...say its the CPU overheating...why is it that itll get 90% done sometimes and 10% done others...the pacing makes no sense if its hardware related...

Trying USB install now...if it freezes this time I know its not the actual installation, which makes this problem a whole lot more confusing...
 
i cant tell you how many times i have had the same problem, with different versions of the OS and different media types as well and even on different systems.....from what i can tell Win 7 is just plain picky as all hell during install with the slightest thing causing it to get off track and hang up.....and then the next time it will just install right away the first time....once installed its been great, but i have literally spent all night trying to get it installed, finally give up, then come back to it the next day and try again and it work the first time and install in 20 minutes or so.....its really bizarre
 
OK...tried the USB method same thing.

Following the advice in the post above this one I tried a different OS...this time trying Vista Ultimate, both 32 and 64-bit flavors all with the same problem.

So now I can officially say that it is not the following:

Optical drives
Windows DVD
Video card
Hard drive (Ive tried two...both Western Digital Blue 160GB 2.5 SATA's...only spare hard drives I own)

Also, the RAM I think can be checked off too...Ive tried both a 2GB set (2 x 1GB) from HP (Hynix RAM) and a single 2GB module from Corsair...both used, both the system freezes.

Only think left really is the CPU and motherboard...CPUs I know are rare to be unfunctional, and in my experience if you have a bad CPU then everything else usually won't even work.

So if is the CPU I highly doubt I wouldve made it this far in the installation with a bad CPU.

This leaves only the motherboard...again, it was working fine the other night and for months before then...but shit happens...maybe it fucked up somewhere when uninstalling or when installing in the new case...who knows.

My next option is to try a new motherboard...thatll be fun and kind of impossible considering I only have one other motherboard and thats in my main system...so no go there.

Hum...
 
Im also counting out the powersupply mainly because it works and its works so far so its retty clear to say that if ifs it going good it should.
 
I had a very similar problem when I installed windows 7. I tried both X32 and X64 with the same issues. After several days of frustration and many hours searching google with no prevail, I figured out what was causing it on my end.

My motherboard comes with 4 RAM slots, I had all 4 filled each with 1GB of ram, totalling 4. After trying everything under the sun I decided to pull out 1 stick or RAM and try again. It worked just fine after that.

Once I got windows installed I re-entered the stick of RAM and windows would take about 2 hours to boot up, then it would run to a crawl until I eventually have to force restart it and remove the 4th stick of RAM. All 4 sticks of RAM are good and all 4 RAM ports are good. There seems to be some unidentified compatability problem with Windows 7 and my motherboard's ability to use all 4 RAM slots at once. It worked just fine under Vista.

That being said, I would recommend you just keep experimenting with your hardware configurations until you find out what's causing it. I would try pulling out 1 of your sticks of RAM and see if that effects anything.

edit: Well I just read the previous post where you said you tried swapping out the RAM already. Hopefully you can figure out what the issue was!
 
Ill try a different RAM slot...Ill try the other 3 slots as I was using just the first slot to try and install.
 
Tried all 4 slots...still nothing. Even used a stick of RAM from my gaming machine...something I KNOW works...next...

I think its the motherboard, plain and simple. How? Hell if I know, but who can with computer parts.

Too stoned now, but Im going to check the motherboard tomorrow...my moms got an Dell that she said I could use temporarily to test components out. Hers is a 775 socket and C2D so it matches CPU and all...same with the RAM and video card, even though Ive tried all the RAM I have and 2 video cards.

Might work...maybe I can convince her to let me install Windows 7 so I can test the hard drive too ;-)
 
I did some more google searching on the topic. Basically anytime somebody claims they found a solution to the issue, it always has something to do with their hardware configuration.

Some people fixed it by plugging their HDD into different ports then trying again. Somebody else disabled his floppy drive in BIOS and that fixed it. And myself, I fixed mine by removing 1 stick of RAM.

That being said, it could be 1 of a number of things. The hard part is finding out what it is. If you're getting low on options, start removing anything that isn't essential until you figured it out. If you know how to install from a Flashdrive, you could even try removing all your DVD drives and any backup HDD's.

Trust me I know how irritating this is. I went through the same crap months ago.
 
i also had the same issue with Vista, its something about the new installer, its picky as hell....keep trying, eventually you will get it to work
 
nobody_here said:
i cant tell you how many times i have had the same problem, with different versions of the OS and different media types as well and even on different systems.....from what i can tell Win 7 is just plain picky as all hell during install with the slightest thing causing it to get off track and hang up.....and then the next time it will just install right away the first time....once installed its been great, but i have literally spent all night trying to get it installed, finally give up, then come back to it the next day and try again and it work the first time and install in 20 minutes or so.....its really bizarre
Click to expand...

Before upgrading to windows 7, it would be a good idea
to run the Windows 7 advisor program first, to spot any
incompatibilities that might arise later.
 
My motherboard had an issue with 64-bit Vista and >3GB of RAM. Made it boot REALLY Slow (as in, like 10-12 minutes to desktop).

Found a BIOS update that fixed the issue.

You have the latest BIOS for your board?
 
msny said:
Before upgrading to windows 7, it would be a good idea
to run the Windows 7 advisor program first, to spot any
incompatibilities that might arise later.
Click to expand...

i did that before going to vista and before going to 7 of course, theres something very buggy or very tempermental about the new installer starting with vista
 
OK...wow...dont know what caused this but I did fix it to those who care enough to know.

Basically I just installed the video card in the lower PCI-e slot and installed the single 2GB memory module in the 2nd slot...BAM! Windows 7 installed without a hitch. After installation I shut down the machine, put the RAM in the 1st slot and then put the 4850 back in the top slot...been stress testing with 3D Mark 06 and Crysis CPU test in a loop for about an hour now with no problems...

This makes me worried because:

Were the problems I had related to bad hardware...if so why is it working now fine with stress testing...could problems arise later on?

If the installation was just being picky why did it do the same thing when trying to install Vista...I know both use the same installer but Im pretty sure that they both have fundemental differences between the two to the point that the same issue wouldnt exist with both OS's...

I dont know, in either case now its working...and flawlessly to boot!
 
no, i think you dont have faulty hardware

the installers i am sure are if not identical then close enough to being the same it would have happened whether you were installing vista or 7

once you get it installed everything is fine...this was always my experience also, there's nothing really wrong, its just the installer being very tempermental :)
 
OK...not so flawless...seems as thought the culprit of all this was the first PCI-e slot...system freezes with video card in 1st slot, but not in second...I have no idea why...but it is solid now at least...very strange problem, might take this over to the motherboard section and find out whats going on.
 
I spoke too soon...same shit different slot lol...

System froze again...with video card in second slot...so I moved the RAM module back over to the second slot (same setup I used that successfully installed Windows 7) and the system froze again!

OK...now I seriously know its the motherboard...its got to be...but why was I able to install Windows which was something I wasnt able to do before no matter where the RAM was...it seems as though moving the video card to the second slot "fixed" it, or was able to run long enough to install Windows 7 but the same setup cant get me into Windows longer that 3 minutes before freezing again?

Also, let it be known that having the video card in second slot and RAM in 2nd slot was also able to install Vista no problem (I didnt realize I had the Vista DVD in the tray on first install). So with the above configuration I was able to successfully install Vista AND Windows 7 and got all the way to desktop with both...

Could it be video drivers? If so why? That wouldnt have effected the computer when it was freezing before...

Sounds like my problem is very unique...havent been able to find anything like mine online...
 
I doubt it would be the video drivers. Windows 7 should automatically update most video card drivers, so that would rule that out.

I have read other places that updating motherboard BIOS to the most current one fixes these similar issues for some people. Just know if you screw up your BIOS you're out of luck. If you've tried everything else I would try updating your BIOS (if its not already the most current) and see if that fixes anything.
 
You may already be past this, but I would say give it a shot--

Go into your BIOS and (if you can), ensure that the voltage for your memory is set to the proper amount and that the timings are correct.

I had a horrid time once with a system I built when the voltage was being set to 1.8V instead of 2.0V. The timings were also off. Nothing was faulty necessarily (although the memory seems to be questionable, it has since been discontinued), but this fixed my problem.
 
Ill try that...Ive still tried different types and brands of RAM...so Im looking more at the video slots or something else with the motherboard.
 
You have done everything I would have tried. Now that you have windows installed and it's still crashing I'm thinking it's time to RMA the board.

Certainly check out your ram settings and all the voltage settings. My board was bad about being way off at first and nothing worked.
 
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