Can't Figure This Out... Windows 7 Install.

Pulse · 7 Aug 2010 at 00:14

Basically having problems installing windows 7 onto an old 945GC chipset board. Really have no idea why this isn't work, after the language selection comes up and it says 'Starting setup' or whatever, it then proceeds to error with

'A required CD/DVD device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVDm or USB flash drive, please insert it now. Note. If the windows installation media is in the drive, you can safely remove it for this step'

No idea what I'm doing wrong, I've tried every driver under the sun to try and get it working and yet it still comes back and says 'No device has been found'.

Really getting ticked off with this. Can't remember having this problem before, I may try a different DVD drive in the morning and see if that solves the problem if not that I have no idea what it is. But I guessed that it was just a Intel Matrix driver for all SATA/IDE/RAID/ACHI devices as I thought it couldn't be a problem with the DVD drive itself as it's just loaded up the Windows 7 installer from it?!

Raumarik · 7 Aug 2010 at 00:21

Try a different DVD or alternatively put the installer on a USB drive and run it that way if the PC can boot from it.

SiriusB · 7 Aug 2010 at 00:33

This was a common error with badly burned installation media. If you created the disc yourself, try burning it again at a slower speed. If it is a proper MS DVD, you might want to go ahead and try a different DVD drive.

Pulse · 7 Aug 2010 at 08:24

But I don't understand why it would suddenly stop working, I've used the same disc previously with no problems.

theheyes · 7 Aug 2010 at 10:41

SiriusB said:
This was a common error with badly burned installation media. If you created the disc yourself, try burning it again at a slower speed. If it is a proper MS DVD, you might want to go ahead and try a different DVD drive.

This should work. Although I'm not really convinced about the reason. It is strange how it fails at the same point for everyone.

SiriusB · 7 Aug 2010 at 14:41

It is weird, but nearly every time this has come up a newly burned DVD has solved it. I can only assume the installer does an integrity check or something, and if it finds something it doesn't like, throws a wobbly. *shrug* grasping at straws I think

SimonC · 15 Dec 2010 at 12:31

Thought I'd waken this thread back up.

I'm having the same problem when trying to install Windows 7 64 bit on my laptop. I've tried installing from the retail dvd, which I know works as I used it to install Windows 7 on the desktop, flash drive, which again I know works as I reinstalled Windows 7 on a dell laptop just the other day, and I used the same flash drive to install Windows in a virtual machine.
So I'm certain it's not the media, most stuff I've read is to do about burning discs at slower speeds.

I have the latest bios, updated dvd drive firmware which says its compatible with Windows 7.

The laptop is a dell vostro 1500, which you could have gotten with vista with, and I've read posts about people installing Windows 7 on the vostro with no problems.

I even tried to install from usb and took the dvd drive out, but same message.

Through searching I did see some mention sata drivers, so from the dell site theres this or from intels site I found this although, I'm not quite sure which one I need.

Any help? :confused:

SimonC · 16 Dec 2010 at 19:52

hazzah, got it installed.

Thought I'd just type this out incase anyone else has the same problem and comes across this thread, this might be of some help.

Even though I done this the first time around, before I posted... under sata in the bios I changed it from ata to ahci, so maybe this wasn't the problem but it changed anyway.

I also read, not that I think it makes any difference tbh, I changed the dvd drive to #1 under boot priority.

Lastly as I was installing from a flash drive, and something else to rule out, I ripped a windows 7 64 bit HP disc to the hdd using imgburn, then used microsofts usb tool to create a bootable drive, which I done inside a windows 7 64 bit virtual machine, as I couldn't be arsed to go and something about bootsect.exe which happens when you try and create a bootable 64 bit OS drive using a 32 bit OS.

So... even though I already tried the ahci, and the flash drive already had windows 7 64 bit on which I used to install onto a dell laptop a week back, and I used it to install in a VW.
The only thing that's different is the dvd is #1 in boot priority, when I got further than the missing driver message, I was going to restart and change the boot priority and ahci, but thought better of it lol