Repeated failure to install win7, not sure why.

Hardware is
Gigabyte ud34 x58a
i7-930
hd 4870
hd 5770
4 gb gskill 1333 ddr3
corsair 750hx
samsung 250 gb hdd

I insert the win7 disk, select install and go. The installation gets through to the first restart, restarts, continues setup. It states that it needs to restart again, does so, shows the "starting windws" glowy logo, then proceeds to hard lock. monitors stop receiving signal and shut off; the machine just hangs. (at the point when I'd expect to see a login screen.)

If I select start from safe mode it shows the "preparing to set up windows" with the glowy bar at the bottom, but then says that it can't finsh configuration in safe mode and will do so upon reboot, which it clearly doesn't do.

I've tried multiple sata ports, same behavior. I'm at this moment installing buntu and seeing if it works, if not I'm going to swap out drives and try another, if it works, I'm just as lost as before.

Any thoughts would be very helpful;

Thanks much,
-Me

In installing ubuntu I noticed another problem; only the very bottom two sata ports, the lowest sata3 ports, detect disks on them. The other ports refuse to detectt whatsoever. I was wondering if this was a known problem with nix on this board, or if it's RMA time.

Sounds like a bad windows disc to be honest, although thats only happened to be me on my "backup copies." I even had an origonal Vista disc, installed it and when my laptop ran into problems it would always ask for the disc, but when i put it in it would tell me the disc was not windows Vista.. yeti t was the same disc used to install.

Windows can be kind of funny, try downloading and burning an image, you have the product key so its not stealing. You just need another copy of the disc.

The SATA port issue... try clearing the CMOS, and when resetting the BIOS settings, make sure you are set to AHCI on the SATA ports.

As for installing Windows, it will most always call out bad RAM. Meaning if you have a bad stick of RAM, it will most always cause a Windows install to fail. Download memtest .iso, burn to cd and test that memory to be sure.

Try those and let us know.

remove one of the video cards and a stick of ram, install with bare minimum of hardware and try again.

UPDATE the BIOS, too.

Hey guys, sorry to wait so long to respond, I didn't notice there were any new posts on this thread till now; seeing as I'm lying in bed as i answer this things are going to have to wait; but the to do list for tomorrow will be

update the bios
memtest the ram (I have a hdd with grub and memtest on it so I can stick that in and go pretty easily.)
I can't pull a stick, it's a single 4g stick
Pull the secondary gpu and try the install then.

updates to come in 8-10 hours, thanks for the help everyone.

hope it helps


since you have one stick of ram try it in another slot.