Windows 7 upgrade

[f4rn4th]

Hello my fellow geeks...!

Right. The school where i am working have recently bought these nice new HP minis, and we're having a hell of a time installing them.

Due to being a school etc we've got a VLK and we've got to download the exe file from the Microsoft education part. So we've now got Windows 7 on a disc (DVD-RW don't know if that makes a difference or not possibly?)

It gets to the point where it says ok install Windows 7 now, then says 'select the driver to be installed'... but what i can't figure out is what are the drivers they're looking for? Do they want the windows installation files or do they want the HP drivers? I would of thought all the drivers which would be needed to install windows would be on the disc?

I've never had this problem before when installing XP or Vista, why on earth would it need drivers to install a PC, you install the drivers at a later date when you have the OS up and running?

And due to our Bl**dy Council and the fact that everything is websense'd or blocked, i can't download the drivers for the HP, but i will do this tonight, but i was just wondering if anyone has come across this before and/or if anyone has a solution?

I am rather confused over it?

Cheers

Ben

[Mr.Ben]

Sounds like it needs the storage controller drivers so that it can see the hard disk (it needs to be able to see this at least before it can install anything to it). Some are not standard. HP should be able to provide you with it.

[LeMarchand]

Can't help you with the install - I've never been asked for drivers on W7 installs. Always been pretty much the same procedure as previous flavours of Windows. Have you definitely got the correct disc (and processor architecture version)?

As for HP drivers, are you actually part of SCC? Their Websense filter is a PITA for blocking "free software" sites (though the block seems to vary amongst my 4 sites) but I've never had any problems getting to the HP site. Contact IT Services or whatever they're called these days and request that HP and any other manufacturers sites you have noticed are blocked are allowed through your filter.

Ooh! Just a thought - did they have XP installed? If so, have you checked the BIOS for how the disc is set up? (SATA etc)

[jedmondson]

On some laptops you can change what mode it is in ie eeepc. perhaps those laptops have got something similar?

[pritchardavid]

I may be wrong

But when you get to thuis error, to you get to chose what to do with the hard drive? ie format, new partition

If you don't this sound like it has a problem with the cd drive not loading, this is normally sloved by restarting it a few times.

Does the laptops have an internal cd drive, or is it external?


Another easy way of sloving this problem

Setup a Windows Deployment Server, is is easy! (Thats if you have a server to use for it)

You you can be asked to maked a deployment image, you can use use the standard iso you downloaded, to deploy to the laptops

[Tunster]

You need the SATA drives my friend! Looks like the generic storage (hard-drive) driver won't load up the bridge to read the hard-drives properly. When you get to the HP website, you'll need the SATA or storage driver. Then you can chuck them (uncompressed) with the *.inf file on a memory stick. You must restart the install though with the memory-stick in the computer while booting up the computer. You won't get to the format part until the setup knows it can reach a hard-drive that is accessible.

Give me a shout with the model number of the HP machine if you're having problems. I've had to inject these drivers into deployment server many times as a last resort so we don't get these hiccups when installed a suite of 20+ computers.

[Psymon]

You dont have WDS or RIS or something similar in order to image them over the network?
Si

[Tunster]

You dont have WDS or RIS or something similar in order to image them over the network?
Si

Even with WDS or RIS, the boot-up image would need the driver injected into it or they'd have to do the same process by placing the drive on a CD or USB Drive.

[Psymon]

Even with WDS or RIS, the boot-up image would need the driver injected into it or they'd have to do the same process by placing the drive on a CD or USB Drive.

Im aware of that, i was just thinking why use a external drive and VLK key when you can use WDS / RIS as they all have NIC's.

The driver injection into WDS on Server 2008R2 is pretty straightforward also.

Si

[Jamesdavid3]

change the mode on the laptops

[pjstrns]

You may need to slipstream your drivers into your bootable disk.