If you cannot install Windows did you know that the installation can fail due to several main reasons?
Cannot install Windows XP
If your installing Windows XP and this fails it’s generally down to three things, these include..
- XP cannot recognize SATA or Serial ATA hard drives in their native mode, to get around this it’s a question of either adding the SATA drivers to the XP installation or as a much quicker alternative go into the computers BIOS and make sure hard drives are set to legacy or compatibility mode.
- If Windows cannot install and its freezing halfway through the installation the mouse and keyboard might be failing as drivers cannot be install, to get around this go back into the BIOS and under keyboard or USB select legacy or compatibility mode.
- If you have a new computer all of the hardware may not be compatible with Windows XP, this is an all too common issue as more and more hardware manufacturers do not create drivers for XP.Incompatibility issues associated with this can range from sounds card not working through to major components failing causing blue screens and the like.If Windows cannot install on your computer and you’re attempting to install XP if it turns out to be a driver issue your only option is to install Windows 7 and change its appearance to at least make it look like Windows XP.
Cannot install Windows 7 or Vista
Unlike Windows XP Windows 7 or Vista has no trouble with USB devices or SATA hard drives, but the one thing it does have issues with is incompatibility, many older system are simply not compatible with Windows 7, I recently was trying to install Windows 7 on a desktop pc with an AMD Athlon 64×2 it would get most of the way through the installation and fail when I tried to reboot the pc.
Unlike myself if you still have an older operating system in place download and run Microsoft’s Windows 7 compatibility checker this can save a lot of time in the long run, in my case having to reinstall Windows XP from scratch together with the failed Windows 7 installation took around 5 hours after all the updates, installing apps etc.
Windows Cannot Install Other Causes
Problems such as having a DVD drive that needs cleaning or a Windows installation disk with a scratch can easily cause installation problems.
When you install Windows I would recommend deleting the hard drives partition rather than just formatting it, only performing a quick format may still not fix any existing hard drive problems, if your previous version of Windows was experiencing any issues due to the hard drive these could be carried across.
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