Problems installing Windows 7 OEM

desktop-computerwindows 7windows-installation

I recently 'built' a computer by scrambling together parts from various PCs. Up until now, I've been running Ubuntu 14.04 on it, but now I decided to get Windows 7 aswell.

The computer has three HDDs:

  1. HDD1 – 250Gb: Ubuntu 14.04
  2. HDD2 – 500Gb: blank -> trying to install Windows 7 here
  3. HDD3 – 250Gb: blank

So I bought Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM, disconnected all HDDs but 2 and booted with the disk inserted. This is what I see:

1.
2.
Select CD-ROM boot type: _

I select 1 and the installaton process starts fine (copying windows files, expanding, …). Then it says it nedds to reboot in order to complete the installation, and when it does, I get the above menu again.

  1. If I select 1, it begins the installation process anew!

  2. If I select 2, it tells me

    Non-System disk or disk error.
    Replace and press any key when ready

If I simply hit enter it goes through and says 'completing installation'. Then at one point, the screen just goes black and says 'no signal' even though the computer is still on. It then reboots automatically, the screen comes on, shows me that menu again, I select 2, the Windows loading logo comes on and then the screen goes off again, this time for good. If I then reboot without the CD, same thing happens without the menu.

What is going on?!

I've tried installing on HDD3 instead, same result. I thought I might try updating the BIOS next, but as I don't know how to do that and I heard it might be 'fatal', I figured I'd get some advice first.

This is the hardware:
Intel DP35DP Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU
AMD Radeon HD 4650 GPU
6Gb DDR2 RAM

Best Answer

I got it working in the end. By making a bootable flash drive from my DVD I discovered that the Select CD-ROM boot type issue actually didn't have anything to do with what was preventing the OS from installing.

From my other question:

As it turns out, Windows was having issues with my AMD Radeon HD 4650 graphics card - this meant that when, after the initial installation phase was complete and the OS tried to boot, the screen just went blank.

I worked around the problem by swapping out my GPU with a different one I had lying around, and completed the installation that way. Now I can just install the proper drivers for the original GPU and I'm off!

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