Boot from Installation DVD Problems

[LosOjos]

Hi all,

wondering if anybody can share with me any ideas they have on what could be causing this.

For a while now (since Vista... eurgh.) whenever I try to boot my home PC from a Windows installation disk, I get a very high fail rate. By that, I mean it fails to load in to the setup environment, either telling me BCD is corrupted (on the DVD) or with a non-descript BSOD.

It varies as to which point it crashes at, and occasionally it does actually work.

This has been happening to me over a period of about 4 years, first with Vista x64, then on Win7 Ultimate x64 and now it's also doing it with Server 2008r2. Before anyone asks, yes they have all been genuine copies (although I burnt 2008r2 myself from download - the disc verified fine and starting the installation in Windows went flawlessly).

I can't get my head around what is going wrong - the system is perfectly stable in normal use, can't even remember the last time I had it crash/BSOD on me.

It has just been an annoyance, but a recent HDD failure has me worrying that the day will soon come that I need to do a fresh install (I've mostly been forced to start installation from Windows) and I'm not going to be able to, so I really could do with sorting it out now.

Any ideas?

[K.C.Leblanc]

Is the opticle drive ok? Try running the install of a USB drive and see how it goes.

[LosOjos]

Is the opticle drive ok? Try running the install of a USB drive and see how it goes.

It seems fine, don't get any read errors in Windows and all other boot disks work fine, it seems to be exclusive to Windows x64 installations...

[mac_shinobi]

This a desktop machine or a mission critical server or what exactly ?

If desktop then I presume BIOS / CMOS is up to date, if you try with another optical drive is it the same ?

Have you got a spare hard drive so you can take your current hard drive out and use a fresh hard drive to see if it does the same or are you using RAID or anything like that ?

[LosOjos]

This a desktop machine or a mission critical server or what exactly ?

It's my home desktop - I'd have sorted it out a long time ago if it was a critical server!

If desktop then I presume BIOS / CMOS is up to date, if you try with another optical drive is it the same ?

BIOS/CMOS is all up to date, I haven't tried another optical drive but I will do

Have you got a spare hard drive so you can take your current hard drive out and use a fresh hard drive to see if it does the same or are you using RAID or anything like that ?

My second HDD died on me a few weeks back unfortunately and I don't have any lying around.. I intend to get an SSD over xmas though so I'll know by then. No RAID setup at the moment as it's a single HDD machine now

[Oaktech]

i've had loads of problems with X64 installations doing exactly what you've described, on both desktop and notebooks. I've run from a liteon external usb dvd drive and it's gone faultlessly for the last 5 win7 enterprise x64 installs i've done (we're trying to get the KMS count up!)

Give that a go.

[LosOjos]

i've had loads of problems with X64 installations doing exactly what you've described, on both desktop and notebooks. I've run from a liteon external usb dvd drive and it's gone faultlessly for the last 5 win7 enterprise x64 installs i've done (we're trying to get the KMS count up!)

Give that a go.

On the internal drives you tried it on, were they all SATA by any chance? I'm starting to wonder if I need to embed SATA drivers in to my installations, although I'd have thought that the SB600 drivers would be built in by now...

[Oaktech]

yeah, all sata, but changing to ide mode didn't help... the installs have also, from time to time, moaned about being unable to read from installation media please remove windows disk and install required cd/dvd drivers... all the machines i've installed on had no sata drivers available for streamlining.

[mac_shinobi]

On the internal drives you tried it on, were they all SATA by any chance? I'm starting to wonder if I need to embed SATA drivers in to my installations, although I'd have thought that the SB600 drivers would be built in by now...

In the BIOS / CMOS it's not by any chance something to do with either AHCI or a compatability mode for SATA ie IDE Mode / Compatable Mode or something ?

I think there are forums were people have installed windows using compatability mode and then tweaked around with the AHCI Drivers afterwards to enable AHCI.

As you mentioned about injecting / intergrating / slip streaming the SATA / Chipset drivers with the installation disc - might be worth a shot

[LosOjos]

In the BIOS / CMOS it's not by any chance something to do with either AHCI or a compatability mode for SATA ie IDE Mode / Compatable Mode or something ?

I think there are forums were people have installed windows using compatability mode and then tweaked around with the AHCI Drivers afterwards to enable AHCI.

As you mentioned about injecting / intergrating / slip streaming the SATA / Chipset drivers with the installation disc - might be worth a shot

I have recently started using AHCI (and had to perform a registry hack to get Win7 to recognise it), but this problem pre-dates that - still might be worth me switching to IDE mode and giving it a go though!

[Michael]

It is a bit strange I must say. I would probably replace both the DVD drive and the data cable as it's not expensive to do.

I have seen it where disc drives will read CDs fine and not DVDs or visa versa. They do break eventually.

[SYNACK]

Have you run an extencive memory check with something like memtest86+. I have seen this a lot with messy memory as Windows installs by booting WinPE into a RAMdrive and then expanding the image stuff into memory to speed up the transfer to the drive. This can lead to some weird results even though the machine may be stable or stablish during normal running it will die horribly in an install.

With SATA also check the SATA cable path and cable itself, SATA, especially with cheap cables seems to be very prone to interference from power cables etc. as well as being slightly loose.

[Arthur]

I'm starting to wonder if I need to embed SATA drivers in to my installations, although I'd have thought that the SB600 drivers would be built in by now...

Microsoft includes a generic AHCI SATA driver on the disc, so you can either stick with that or install the relevant driver once Windows has been installed. There's no need to integrate the driver if the Windows 7 disc "sees" your HDDs. I also wouldn't leave the BIOS set to IDE compatibility mode as this reduces the performance of your HDDs.

[plexer]

I'm with Synack run a full memory scan.

Ben

[difinity]

I recently had install problems with Windows 7 x64. it would throw up a read error. I tried new DVD rom, new cables, different media etc.

I had to remove one of the two sticks of memory before it would install even though Memtest shows them as fine.