Well my Alienware m17x laptop has windows vista on it and i decided to reformatt and install win7 but i cant becuase of a blue screen everytime i try to load win7. It doesnt even get to the first step of windows 7, its just loading and about 10-15 mins of waiting it blue screens. I can still use my computer to use windows vista but i cant put win7 on it.

Have you tried upgrading directly from vista to w7 ?

Originally posted by Maggon

Have you tried upgrading directly from vista to w7 ?

 ya then it sat at installing windows for like an hour and nothing happend so i restarted my laptop and it wouldnt let me finish the install

How are you trying to install 7, while in windows or before you load vista?

Were you able to see what the BS was about? (look at the bottom if it happens again)

Schedule a disk check?

mmh

Sounds either like a corrupt installer, or some error happend somewhere to me.

Does sound rather odd however as I have never tried that before.

Have you had any problems on your vista installation, as it could as well be related to hardware errors.

Originally posted by Maggon

Have you tried upgrading directly from vista to w7 ?

Not the best bit of advice given I must say :D

There are not many reasons why a instalation does not work if it has been ok in past.. Im guessing you must of installed it before? or you just go and download some copy of windows? Laptops generally if you bought it have the oem install stuff for it anyhow.. your info is a bit lacking really..

majority of bluescreens used to be due to the old 4gb ram issue at times.. where you had to remove a stick to get it to install... Id go with a sparkly fresh untouched windows iso from ms, and make sure you dont need drivers installed mid instalation for your drives, windows 7 or not... I still find some machines I reinstal for people needing such tinkering,  seems a bit odd if you are not even getting to the format/and partition part of it though...

Can safely say though upgrading windows from any previous is a messy way to do things.. Dont care what ms gumphy info tells you....

Originally posted by wyldmagik

Originally posted by Maggon

Have you tried upgrading directly from vista to w7 ?

Not the best bit of advice given I must say :D

Nope :p... I know xD...

It was mostly for info gathering really :o

Originally posted by wyldmagik

Originally posted by Maggon

Have you tried upgrading directly from vista to w7 ?

Not the best bit of advice given I must say :D

 

There are not many reasons why a instalation does not work if it has been ok in past.. Im guessing you must of installed it before? or you just go and download some copy of windows? Laptops generally if you bought it have the oem install stuff for it anyhow.. your info is a bit lacking really..

majority of bluescreens used to be due to the old 4gb ram issue at times.. where you had to remove a stick to get it to install... Id go with a sparkly fresh untouched windows iso from ms, and make sure you dont need drivers installed mid instalation for your drives, windows 7 or not... I still find some machines I reinstal for people needing such tinkering,  seems a bit odd if you are not even getting to the format/and partition part of it though...

Can safely say though upgrading windows from any previous is a messy way to do things.. Dont care what ms gumphy info tells you....

well i know how to install windows lmfao and i do it from boot never directly from the desktop tho i did try it and it didnt work. also this is a older model alienware has 4gb of ddr2 ram. Also i tried 3 different win7 disk which 2 were legit copies of win7. Im thinking its my hard drive or something not working. cuz it says something about hard drive issues 

Probably corrupt installation media. Try cleaning the DVD with window cleaner and lint free cloth.

If you *ahem* downloaded it - get it from someplace else and reburn the DVD at the slowest speed you can. It's probably loaded with viruses anyway.

Post the blue screen error message.

Originally posted by timmy12

Well my Alienware m17x laptop has windows vista on it and i decided to reformatt and install win7 but i cant becuase of a blue screen everytime i try to load win7. It doesnt even get to the first step of windows 7, its just loading and about 10-15 mins of waiting it blue screens. I can still use my computer to use windows vista but i cant put win7 on it.

So I guess my question is after reading this... Is the drive now freshly formatted or were you using the installers format option?

I've had some odd issues now and again .. you'll have to forgive me because its been a while but..

There should be an option off the DVD to get to a command prompt.   At that point if you remember your dos commands you can make a director or not bother with one and copy the files off the Win 7 disc.   That's what I had to end up doing with my SSD because it would not install Win 7 off the disc no matter what I did.   If you try that just remember to remove the disc from the optical drive before you start the install (have seen it cause issues just because there is a disc in it.. even if you aren't reading from it).

*edited to add* Oh and in my case it was most definitely a legit copy lol.. I bought one when I ordered the rest of the stuff from "The Egg".   I saw the OP mention in another post they had 2 legit copies... anyway this is what I had to do with my ssd.

Originally posted by Antarious

Originally posted by timmy12

Well my Alienware m17x laptop has windows vista on it and i decided to reformatt and install win7 but i cant becuase of a blue screen everytime i try to load win7. It doesnt even get to the first step of windows 7, its just loading and about 10-15 mins of waiting it blue screens. I can still use my computer to use windows vista but i cant put win7 on it.

 

There should be an option off the DVD to get to a command prompt.   At that point if you remember your dos commands you can make a director or not bother with one and copy the files off the Win 7 disc.   That's what I had to end up doing with my SSD because it would not install Win 7 off the disc no matter what I did.   If you try that just remember to remove the disc from the optical drive before you start the install (have seen it cause issues just because there is a disc in it.. even if you aren't reading from it).

 

i dont know what u mean nor do i know any dos commands lol forgot most of them 

scan your hdd to see if it has bad sectors. if it does have bad sectors, you might have to replace your hdd or if your laptop still under warranty.

ok put cd or dvd in slot!while the computer is running vista then restart computer it should go it does take a while!

make sure cd or dvd drive is first boot in bios

In my experience this is usually bad sectors on a hard drive or bad memory. Find out your hard drive brand (probably Seagate), go to the manufacturer's website and grab their hard drive diagnostic tool, and run that to see if there's any problems with the hard drive.

Seagate's tool is here: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

If the hard drive is ok grab memtest86+ from here: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

The USB auto installer is probably the easiest to use but you can burn the iso to CD and boot off that to run it too. Let it run 2 passes and see if anything turns up.