Windows 7 Grief, Trying to go back to Vista.

C14N

Hi all, I'm having some problems right now. I installed the Windows 7 Beta recently (64bit version) on my computer and overwrote the Vista OS (really, really stupid I know) and it was good for a while but there were some major problems, main one being that it doesn't recognize my DVD Drive.

So anyway I searched around and I couldn't find out how to return back. I think I should wipe my HDD and re-install it (I have all my stuff backed up) but I don't know how to do this and I'm not sure if Vista will re-install when I do. I already made a 40gb partition to try and re-install Vista with the OS disc and I couldn't do it.

Everywhere online it says that all you have to do is insert the Vista disc and restart and it'll be easy from there but when I insert the Vista disc nothing happens. It just ignores it and goes to Windows 7. I even made the CMOS boot first from CD-ROM and then when I boot up it says "Press any key to boot from CD-ROM" but no matter what I do it won't do it.

I'm using a Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 Mainboard btw and Vista Home Premium 64bit.

Anyone have any suggestions, please?

ED E

I'd pop out the HDD and put in an old wiped one. Put the vista disk in and power up, and see if you can install vista on that. If it works, then hit the real drive.

C14N

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

I'd pop out the HDD and put in an old wiped one. Put the vista disk in and power up, and see if you can install vista on that. If it works, then hit the real drive.

I don't have any old wiped ones. I have 2 PCs and 2 HDDs that have OSs on them.

Donald-Duck

make a gparted live cd, and use it to format the disk. Then try booting from the vista cd

Galen

Download Parted Magic http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=248002&package_id=302801&release_id=661059

unzip iso and burn iso to disc

Boot computer off disc and reformat your hard drive with parted magic.

C14N

Galen wrote: »

Download Parted Magic http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=248002&package_id=302801&release_id=661059

unzip iso and burn iso to disc

Boot computer off disc and reformat your hard drive with parted magic.

Um, yeah but one of my problems here is that I can't boot from CD drive and I don't know why.

Mr. Presentable

Put the HDD in the other PC as slave. Format it. Return to original PC

AlmightyCushion

C14N wrote: »

Um, yeah but one of my problems here is that I can't boot from CD drive and I don't know why.

It could be a fault with your cd drive. Try it in your other pc and see if it works.

Galen

Since that you have your boot setup correctly, it is unlikely to be a hardware fault (you are able to play dvds on that dvd drive?) then I would suspect software corruption on your hard drive. In that I would repartition your operating system's partition or at the very least format it, but a third-party partitioning tool.

I suggested that you creat the Parted Magic disc for two reasons;
A: if you can't boot off the parted magic disc then you would have bios setup problem or a faulty dvd drive
B: sometimes windows OS installation don't recognize damaged systems.

C14N

Okay I moved the HDD to the other PC (a Dell PC btw) and Vista installed successfully and worked fine. So I used the Vista disc boot up thing to format the drive again and I put the HDD back. But when I did this it still wouldn't boot from the disc. I have no idea why this is happening. Again it said "Press any key to boot from disc" but it wasn't registering the keyboard at all (as usual) and it just said that I had to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart which just leads to the same problem. I think that it might be a problem with my mainboard because it doesn't accept the keyboard commands there or at the boot menu (but it does at the BIOS menu). I don't know why this is happening, it worked fine when I installed Vista first...

I'll try swapping DVD Drives and see if that works, hopefully it will, my DVD drive was fine until I installed Windows 7 and it recognises it at the BIOS menu and everything.

Galen

I presume you have turned on USB legacy keyboard in the bios, if it off, it might explain why your keyboard isn't working at command line, dos or in bios. Was the keyboard working okay before?

It does sound like your motherboard is damaged. Can you test your dvd drive in the Dell?

pickarooney

Try a PS/2 keyboard?

C14N

Galen wrote: »

I presume you have turned on USB legacy keyboard in the bios, if it off, it might explain why your keyboard isn't working at command line, dos or in bios. Was the keyboard working okay before?

It does sound like your motherboard is damaged. Can you test your dvd drive in the Dell?

This worked! I hadn't even thought of it! I feel so stupid now...:o Perhaps a PS/2 keyboard would have worked too but I don't have any.

Thanks so much for all the support, I really appreciate it.

Galen

Ah been there, done that..