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I have a nice HP pavilion dv9740us laptop. I took out both hard drives and put in a new sata drive to install windows7. I came to a screen that asked for drivers and could not continue. I decided the drivers needed were on the vista c drive. I put that back in to retrieve the drivers but neglected to remove the windows7 dvd from the disk drive. Since I expected vista to come up I wasn't paying close attention. I quickly shut down the computer when I realized my mistake and took the windows7 dvd out of the drive. When I restarted the computer I had a black (dos?) screen that says no operating system found. I made recovery discs when I got the computer. Is my best choice to put disc 1 in the drive and start the recovery process or should I take it to a computer shop to see if there is another alternative? Thanks for your help. Sallie
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Thanks Dale! I put the DVD in and it restored my system to factory settings. Just as good as new. Repair wasn't an option unfortunately. I am busy installing anti virus, a firewall & updating windows. I still want to try windows7 on the extra drive I bought. HP gave me a link to mother board drivers. Do you think that is alI need to give it a try? Thanks, Sallie
Trying windows 7 will require you to make an extra partition on your hard drive. Do not use a different hard drive for installing Windows 7 as Windows 7 will not be able to detect vista and then vista will not work. How to create a partition in Windows Vista can be found here:
Hi Sallie,
if you have the option in Bios to set boot drive? then install Win 7 on the 2nd drive, I did this on a desktop running 2 sata drives & I was able to access the files on my XP drive while in Win7 & the other way round.
You will need to enter bios each time you want to use the other o/s, this is where dual boot on the same drive is much easier!
Win7 has most drivers already in the package, so installation shouldn't be much of a drama since your laptop was orignally set up for vista, any that are missing you should be able to download from the HP site.
Hi Sallie,
this on a desktop running 2 sata drives
Regards Jac
Sallie is using a laptop and I think changed the drives around to install Windows 7. Windows 7 did not detect an operating system and this is why the error message occured. I think...
I worry about damaging either of the drives that came with the computer or my data. That is why I put in a new drive and attempted the install of windows 7 by itself. I had a dual boot system with vista rc1 and xp on my desktop a couple of years ago and had to go thru some hoops to get back to a single operating system. Do you think my idea is doable if I have the motherboard drivers? HP of course says I shouldn't do it. Sallie
You should not install Windows 7 on a seperate hard drive as when you jave finished with Windows 7 and want to go back to Windows Vista you will have to reinstall Windows Vista again. I suggest if you want to try Windows 7 then you install it on a seperate partition rather than a seperate drive. This way if you want to change back to Windows Vista you can do without reinstalling the whole OS. If you are just curious and want to try out Windows 7 then I would suggest a Virtual Machine. These are completely safe and will not require you to make any changes to your system.
Virtual PC sounds worth a try but I have a new larger problem. When I reinstalled Vista I only had the #1 drive in the computer After I finished I put the #2 drive back in. Now I have partitions I believe and not a lot of space left on some. When I purchased the computer it has a C drive with the operating system on it and a D drive with an HP recovery partition and all my data. I would like to send a picture. Sallie
Click the Start menu, Right click Computer then click manage. Click Disk management in the left pane. You Will see your hard drive and partitions here. You can delete partitions you do not need and extend others to fill that space.
Sallie as I suggested, if you have the option in BIOS to select boot HDD (I admit I am not 100% up with your system) then yes install Win7 to your 2nd drive, If!!! it is not being used in a raid setup!!
This set up (Yes, in XP, on a desktop) worked for me running 2 SATA drives set up in an non-raid situation.
If you haven't already done so? download the RC as soon as you can, & read the win7 forums for information.
I found when trialing the Win7 beta, using the set-up I choose things worked, but found a few changes when the RC came out, so you will have an advantage starting off with the RC!!
Again I was using XP, I choose to dual boot using 2 drives instead of 2 partitions, this option allowed me to access all the files I had on my XP drive with-in reason (my docs, pics, & Music, plus I was running 3 partitions on my XP drive, all accessible!! and no need to copy things over to the 2nd drive)
Win7 does not have a default Email like outlook, you can access your outlook via live mail (but only current after install, unless you have something like office?)
I haven't used Vista, so possibly what Dale is saying is correct that Vista will not be recognised, but I believe in a dual boot (HDD) it would!?
Maybe some of our Geek's & Guru's could add weight to this???
I’m currently running the RC versions of Windows 7 but this is how I set it up initially with the Beta releases on my laptop with Vista preinstalled. It originally had a Vista partition and a recovery partition (Disk 0 above). I reduced the size of the Vista partition to create a Data partition (D).
I put the second HDD in (Disk 1 above) and using Vista, split it into 2 partitions. I installed Win7 32-bit and had to change the drive letters so that Data was always D, irrespective of which system was booted, it’s fiddly but easy to reallocate letters.
I then installed Win7 64-bit to Disk 1 and had to once again ‘reletter’ the Data partition.
When the RC versions became available, I used VistaBootPro to remove the 2 Win 7 beta systems from bootmgr and formatted both partitions of Disk 1. I now have 3 operating systems again but had to go through the relettering again so that my Data partition was always drive D. When Windows 7 RTM is available I will install it to the first partition on Disk 1.
