Tried to reinstall win 7 on my moms laptop - it won't work, need help/suggestion

[MorePower!]

My moms laptop had a bunch of viruses on it so I thought we should reinstall the OS. I had a windows 7 premium disk that I used to install my OS on my gaming computer so I figured I would just get my moms license key and then plug that in after using my install disk.

I tried to do a clean install and ran into some problems fairly quickly. The first one was that when the installer process needed to restart, when my computer came to the splash screen it just froze up, the mouse wouldn't move or anything. So I hard rebooted it and when it came back on the installation process continued. This freeze up happened one more time and I hard rebooted again and the process finished. The desktop came up and I installed some drivers I downloaded from the lenovo website and when it came time to restart the splash screen froze up with the words shut down on it. Not sure how to prevent it from freezing up. Any ideas?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Why not use the recovery partition on the laptop?

 

[MorePower!]

I was following a guide on about.com and it said to delete all the partitions so I don't have the recovery partition anymore.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

..... Well, there went the easy fix.

What's the laptop? Full make and model will be needed.

 

[MorePower!]

its a lenovo B575, runs win 7 64bit

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Does the computer have any built-in hardware checks? And have you run any of them?

 

[MorePower!]

I'm not sure if it has hardware checks. I never looked before because I didn't know about them.

edit: I need to get to sleep I'll check back here tomorrow thanks for helping me out this far

 

[ATMINSIDE]

During the BIOS splash screen, you'll need to hit a key to get to them, if it has any.

 

[redduc900]

Curious as to how you deleted the hidden recovery partition? And I assume recovery disks were never created using the OneKey Recovery software that came preinstalled?

 

[MorePower!]

I think on the bios splash screen theres only two selections. one for bios and one for multiboot utility.

Curious as to how you deleted the hidden recovery partition? And I assume recovery disks were never created using the OneKey Recovery software that came preinstalled?

The recovery partition was listed with all the other partitions when that screen came up. Yea we never made recovery disks.

edit: I don't know if I answered your question right. But when I deleted the recovery partition I did it just like all the other ones (I think I just selected the partition and clicked the delete button. So after I deleted all of them there was only one unformatted partition left).

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Use this.

Burn it to a CD/DVD and boot to it to check the hardware.

 

[MorePower!]

I could find diagnostics for the B575 for only HDD, memory, and wireless. The top thing that is the all in one software doesn't work for the B575. Its only for the B575e and a bunch of others.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Can you run the HDD and memory diagnostics?

 

[MorePower!]

It passed the memory and HDD tests.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Can you put the Windows image on a USB stick and try to install from that? It might avoid the freezing issue due to being different install media.

 

[MorePower!]

I'm gonna try using a copy of windows 7 ultimate I have in iso format from a USB drive. I'll report back here after.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Download

If you have any trouble setting up the bootable USB, use this tool.

 

[MorePower!]

I tried getting the laptop to boot from the USB drive. I made sure that in the boot order in the bios usb fdd: was selected first in the order. However when I power up the computer I don't get the screen that says "press any key to boot from external device". It just goes straight to the windows loading screen and then the desktop appears.

edit: yes I've been using Win 7 USB DVD download tool to copy the iso file onto the usb drive.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Find out what you need to hit at the splash screen (usually F12) to select a boot device, then pick the USB drive.

 

[MorePower!]

its installing now, your suggestion worked. I hope it can shut down properly after. I'll tell you how it turns out.