help with osinstall

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dazham01

New Member
i have a notebook that had faulty hard drive. got hard drive off friend that was previously in laptop. it starts to load up then ends up giving me allthe repair options but none will work. tried total install from usb drive but when the(win 7)install menu comes up and i click on custom, no drives, partitions etc are listed.,.,. please can someone help me as i am of very limited funds so really cannot pay to get it sorted. would be so grateful of any suggestions:confused:
 
You need a fresh install of windows. You can't use a hard drive that had windows installed on it for a different machine and put it in yours and expect it to boot up. You will need to reinstall a copy of windows.
 
thanks for the quick reply

i hoped the 2nd hand hd would work as has done in pc's before. have downloaded copy of 7,,then usb/dvd bootable installer and put on usb but get so far then no drives listed when selected custom...am so desperate...where can i get win 7 from(free if poss to download) as that how i got it a few days ago. I just assumed that it would work on the notebook as it did on the old pc's.........its blown my mind how my mind has gone blank, pls help....
 
Why are you using a usb drive? Doesn't the laptop have a dvd rom drive? If the installer doesn't detect a hard drive then make sure the sata controller isn't running in ahci/raid mode, check this in the bios.
 
im a idiot

ive just looked over my posts and realised i never mentioned i was trying to install on a notebook(sorry john)
 
net book

yes,,netbook( small with no cd drive and 12inc'ish screen)am on a relatives lap-top at moment(borrowed it cos i was hoping i could find a soluotion to the problem with the netbook... i made a bootable copy of win 7 and get tothe point of install when asked where to install windows but no drives are listed. its a samsung 250 gb hdd.
 
no further

the samsung hdd is recognised by the bios but when i get into the win 7 installer and i am asked which drive i would like to install win7 on, there are no drives listed on the box. I have selected re scan but still the same. can any one pls advise me where i could download win 7 {or vista etc:} as i would like to get a fresh copy and try again............ Or any more advice on using the copy i have and where ill be going. would be very much appreciated.
 
Go into the bois and see if you can change the sata controller to ide/compatibility and try running the installer again. What is the model number of netbook you have?
 
format hdd?

ive formatted and re-installed on a desktop(few yrs ago mind) but cant seem to do it on this thing...when i get on system recovery options and try command prompt i get,,,,,x=\windows\system32>.......have done chkdsk and get the result but i cant remember how to change cusror to the drive i want(im probably talking total rubbish) think ikm digging the hole too deep...
 
Ok. Could be a couple issues here. What I would do is attach this drive to another computer to verify that its detected and you can access it. If you can't, the drive is bad. If you can access it then download killdisk or dban and totally wipe the drive. Then put it back into the netbook and try installing windows 7.

The other issue could be that you will need to install the chipset driver before the install can physically see the drive. With the drive attached to the netbook, does the bios detect the hard drive?

However, the problem you may have is that netbooks will have windows 7 starter or windows XP. If you try installing the windows 7 home premium, you most likely will run into issues. The netbook has a max ram capacity of only 2gb yours may only have 1gb in it right now.
 
is it worth bothering?

:confused:thanks johnb,,i really do appreciate your advice,,the problem is i haven't got another lap-top/netbook to try the hdd in.(the one im on at moment is a family members) and although i do feel fairly confident i wont damage it by swapping the drive,i just cant risk it. is there anything else you can think of that i could try? when i turn the netbook on, i get the message: windows failed to start. a recent hardware or software change might be the cause.... Then am given the options of either Startup repair(recommended) or to Start windows normally.if i launch repair i get to theSystem Recovery Options,,then the box with choices of using recovery tools or Restore using system image(am i right to assumethe sys rec tools are on the hdd?),,also a button for Loading drivers-when pressed i get "Insert the installation media for the device",,I insert my bootable win7 usb then click ok and get system32 files.................Is there anything there i couls use? I know it probably seems alot of messing for what it is but as i said i really could do with sorting it... much app
 
Ok, I just went through a reread some of this thread, must have missed when you said the bios detected the hard drive. And like I said before you can't use a hard drive that had an operating system installed on it from a different machine as it won't boot up anyway with different hardware. A fresh install would be required but without the correct installation media, you will have some headaches.

At this point I can only assume that you need the chipset drivers in order for the installer to see the drive. So at this point this is what I think you should do. Contact the maker of the netbook to get recovery cd's so that the OS can be reinstalled on it. Like I said before you really need either XP or Windows 7 starter and not the full version of home premium as you don't have enough memory. What was installed originally on this machine?

This is one reason I don't recommend netbooks, no cdrom drive.
 
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