Windows 7 install taking hours

  • Thread starter Thread starter PR.
  • Start date Start date

PR.

PR.

PR.

Associate
Joined
29 Mar 2005
Posts
620
Location
Bedford, England
So I just got all my new kit, put it together, stuck my burned technet copy of WHS2011 in and it took nearly 3 hours before it failed out.

I've since burnt another disk of WHS2011, used my official Win7 disk, tried swapping the USB DVD-ROM drive to a SATA one and it makes no difference.

It gets to Expanding Windows files... and then slowly crawls up to 100%

I've tried to create a USB memory stick version of both Win7 and WHS2011 but the system won't even read it.

Kit - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/121322/Screen shot 2011-05-05 at 12.05.24 AM.png
 
Nah, it's not formatting, as the Win7 gets past that.

I've also pulled all the RAID drives out and am just using an old 300Gb drive.
 
When you say it crawls to 100%. Does it actually pass it, or does it just stop? Have you installed it successfully and just took ages, or is it not playing ball?

I've had this happen before when I used a usb drive. Doesn't like them for some reason. Also happened when the hard drive was dodgy and the ram. Maybe be worth checking the hard drive and ram for errors.
 
I do know that the first couple of % takes a while to get moving (especially the first%) but it then takes off after around 10%

And this is with a SSD.
 
Well it's been running for 30mins and it's got to 20% of Expanding Windows files...

I have yet to successfully install either WHS2011 or Win7 just because this step takes so long. WHS2011 got to around 75% when I went off for dinner and went I came back it had failed...

I'm thinking it might be worth popping out a stick of ram
 
Try installing windows with only 1 of your RAM sticks installed. If it fails again, swap them over to see if the other works.

This solved my problem a few years ago when I was experiencing similar difficulties installing windows.

Good luck !
 
its a bit of a shot in the dark, but I had a similar issue with vista, turning off floppy seek in the bios suddenly made the step which was taking ages instant instead.
 
if u think it might be your ram, u could try running memtest and check it before doign the install

u can do it one stick at a time and test again with all of them
 
Tried swapping both sticks of RAM and still slow.

Cleared CMOS jumper, going to try that...
 
Joey1988 said:
Try installing windows with only 1 of your RAM sticks installed. If it fails again, swap them over to see if the other works.

This solved my problem a few years ago when I was experiencing similar difficulties installing windows.

Good luck !
Click to expand...

Have you tried this yet? I find w7 64bit installs way faster when I only have 1 stick of ram in(2gb) I think one of the updates once you get windows installed addresses this issue

Maybe if you can make a w7 image with sp1 installed it will sort it aswell
 
Yer tried it with only one stick.

Reset CMOS didn't work either. Now going to try a live Linux disk and see if it will even boot properly
 
Knoppix live disk boots fine.

It's possible the copy of WHS2011 is corrupt, but I see the same behaviour from my retail Win7 Pro disk.

Ah well, I'm going to bed, shall resume the shouting and swearing in the morning... :)
 
When you burn your WHS2011 make sure you burn it at the slowest speed to try to prevent errors with the burn process.

Also, I know you have tried both sticks of RAM but have you tried them in different slots? might be a dodgy slot rather than stick.

When I install windows 7 it takes about 20-30 mins for the whole thing on a HDD (not a SSD).
 
I would personally try installing it from a USB stick again. That's going to rule out dodgy optical drives and usb drives.

With windows 7, you can actually just copy and paste all the files from the dvd onto a pen drive. Works a treat for me. Or there is an actual USB tool that microsoft provide. Just google it... if you can't find it, let me know and I'll link to to it.
 
I give up!

  • Swapped the memory slots/sticks
  • Removed all the USB/Audio case connectors
  • Disabled USB ports
  • Disabled Virtualization, Multithreading, restrict to 1 core
  • Removed all the HDDs
  • Switched to AHCI/RAID/IDE
  • Switched BIOS between F2, F3, and F4

Still won't boot from USB (Be it a Windows stick or a Linux stick). Still won't finish the install, left it for 3hrs and it got to 55% before failing. Stuck the WHS2011 DVD in my Mac and using Parallels installed WHS in less than 20mins.

Only thing I can see is that the mobo I have here is v1.0 and the Gigabyte website lists that there is now a v1.1.

Going to see if I can return the GB board and swap it for a the Asus one :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom