Trying to install Win7 on a netbook

Mr KillKill

Mr KillKill

Active member
I have an ACER Aspire One Netbook model# AOD250 I have installed a new 500g hard drive and am trying to install Windows 7, I had initially installed Windows XP Home but decided to upgrade it to Win7.
I tried a fresh install but when it asks where I want to install it to, my hard drive is not listed. If I click on “Load Driver” and then click “Browse” it will list my hard drive as Boot (X) Also, if I insert a flash drive into the USB port, it will list it as my C drive but it will not show up in my drive options. I have even tried to “upgrade” it from the XP OS but it says that I need to go online to do this which seems kind of weird as all necessary drivers should be either on the XP OS already installed or on the Win7 installation disk.
All I want is to work out how to get the netbook to recognise the HDD so that I can install Win7, since it installed XP ok, I thought recognising the HDD would be a given.
 
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Mr KillKill said:
I have an ACER Aspire One Netbook model# AOD250 I have installed a new 500g hard drive and am trying to install Windows 7, I had initially installed Windows XP Home but decided to upgrade it to Win7.
I tried a fresh install but when it asks where I want to install it to, my hard drive is not listed. If I click on “Load Driver” and then click “Browse” it will list my hard drive as Boot (X) Also, if I insert a flash drive into the USB port, it will list it as my C drive but it will not show up in my drive options. I have even tried to “upgrade” it from the XP OS but it says that I need to go online to do this which seems kind of weird as all necessary drivers should be either on the XP OS already installed or on the Win7 installation disk.
All I want is to work out how to get the netbook to recognise the HDD so that I can install Win7, since it installed XP ok, I thought recognising the HDD would be a given.
Click to expand...

Did you try going into system bios during boot and running auto detect for the drive?
 
Yes is was a BIOS problem, I usually try to refrain from buggering around with BIOS as I have a phobia that I'm going to do irrepairable damage, but the BIOS on this particular netbook is is pretty limited in what changes you can make so through a process of elimination and trial and error I made some changes in the BIOS and now have Win7 installed
Cheers
 
The problem is this. Windows doesn't recognize your SATA driver. You will need to supply it. The driver should be on ACERS website.

First thing: Did you make sure the USB stick was plugged in before you started the Windows install? Windows Installer doesn't always like HOT SWAPS on USB devices. So if you are using a stick make sure its plugged in before you start the PC. You might to have to enable the BIOS option to set USB devices to BIOS (it means the BIOS and not the OS controls the USB ports). If your BIOS has this option use it.

If it still doesn't work then its most likely that the netbook mainboard doesn't recognize a USB stick as a disk drive (which is a common problem).

What you need to do is get a USB floppy disk drive (costs about $20 US) copy your SATA driver unto a 3.5 floppy and use that to install the driver. Remember to have the floppy drive already plugged in the moment you start windows.

That should work.

However, I might recommend you NOT install Win7 on that netbook. If you want to run Win 7 you need at least 3 GIGS of RAM (which I am sure your netbook doesn't have). The 1.6 ATOM processor is underpowered as well, and Windows 7 is an absolute PIG when it comes to resources. I have 6 GIGS on main hog.

You are just begging for problems, I'd stick with XP.
 
I've read Windows 7 was a pain to install on netbooks in general. I figured the answer was the BIOS. I, too, hate playing with them. I also hate the whole Windows 7 / netbook thing. Mine has XP and I'm just fine with that right now.

________________________
"You need a Maglite and a gun; the rest is skill."
 
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OK I've sorted the problem
It was definatly a BIOS problem, heres what I did;
Went into the BIOS options and under the "Main" tab there is an option that says "SATA mode", there are two options
1) IDE
2) HCI (sorry I'm writing this from work and don't have access to the netbook but its somthing like HCI)
The option already highlighted was 1) IDE so I changed it to the the second option saved the the changes restarted and let the Win7 disk (I'm running the installation from a Samsung slim ext DVD burner, a lot less dicking around that with a USB) boot up and it immediatley recognised the drive and from there I was able to load the OS as per norm


mmarsh said:
The problem is this. Windows doesn't recognize your SATA driver. You will need to supply it. The driver should be on ACERS website.
Click to expand...
If this is the case and considering that it comes with a SATA drive installed, you would think that not having a driver already on the netbook would be a pretty glaring oversight in the overall design
As for the netbook having trouble accommodating Win7, I think you might be wrong as Win7 originally came installed on the netbook and once I reinstalled it, it is running just fine.
I did have XP originally installed but couldn't get the video drivers to work and when I started installing the drivers I came up against a multitude of problems, for instance, the chipset driver crashed the PC and basically all other drivers kept refusing to install as it kept saying that I was missing various .dll files but once I did a fresh install of Win7, all the drivers loaded up fine. The funny thing is, when I was downloading all the drivers off the Acer website, it stated that the netbook could run XP and Win7 but not Vista (why XP but not Vista if it can run Win7) so don't understand why I was having so many problems loading the drivers when I had XP installed.
Acer also states that it can run Linux so I have that loaded on a 4g SD card and installed in the reader on the side
 
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Mr KillKill said:
OK I've sorted the problem
It was definatly a BIOS problem, heres what I did;
Went into the BIOS options and under the "Main" tab there is an option that says "SATA mode", there are two options
1) IDE
2) HCI (sorry I'm writing this from work and don't have access to the netbook but its somthing like HCI)
The option already highlighted was 1) IDE so I changed it to the the second option saved the the changes restarted and let the Win7 disk (I'm running the installation from a Samsung slim ext DVD burner, a lot less dicking around that with a USB) boot up and it immediatley recognised the drive and from there I was able to load the OS as per norm



If this is the case and considering that it comes with a SATA drive installed, you would think that not having a driver already on the netbook would be a pretty glaring oversight in the overall design
As for the netbook having trouble accommodating Win7, I think you might be wrong as Win7 originally came installed on the netbook and once I reinstalled it, it is running just fine.
I did have XP originally installed but couldn't get the video drivers to work and when I started installing the drivers I came up against a multitude of problems, for instance, the chipset driver crashed the PC and basically all other drivers kept refusing to install as it kept saying that I was missing various .dll files but once I did a fresh install of Win7, all the drivers loaded up fine. The funny thing is, when I was downloading all the drivers off the Acer website, it stated that the netbook could run XP and Win7 but not Vista (why XP but not Vista if it can run Win7) so don't understand why I was having so many problems loading the drivers when I had XP installed.
Acer also states that it can run Linux so I have that loaded on a 4g SD card and installed in the reader on the side
Click to expand...


Im glad you got it working...

Yes but you are doing a scratch install. And during a scratch install you will (should have) have already reformatted your HD which means all your drivers installed on C:\Windows\drivers\etc (Where Windows keeps all drivers) would have been erased. If Windows installer doesn't recognize the SATA driver automatically then the only way for it to recognize the HD is by copying the *.inf driver files to a remove disk like a USB stick or floppy. If that BIOS setting hadn't worked my tip would have been your next course of action. Had you been doing a Windows upgrade then yes, the OS would have looked in the default driver location (because there is no HD format) and retrieved the drivers it needs. BTW I strongly advise NOT ever doing OS upgrades, always do scratch installs.

I didnt realize you had downgraded from Win 7 to XP. That isn't commonly done. I though this was an older netbook and that you were trying to upgrade the operating system for XP to 7, Obviously if the system was pre-installed with 7 then there is no trouble. Netbooks are "as is" PC, its not as robust as a full-blown laptop which is why they cost less. Trying to upgrade the thing past its shipped spec is an *iffy* affair. It can be done but there is no guarantees. In these situations I always tell people to exercise caution.

One thing I still don't understand...you shouldn't need to be installing drivers the netbook video should work right out of the box. You shouldn't have needed to downgrade. If you turned the netbook on the the video card isn't working that isn't right...and I'd give Acer a call or take it back to the store if its still under warrenty.
 
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Hmm, I probably better start from the beginning.
I bought the netbook from a store, it came with Win7 pre-loaded and worked fine but I wanted to load a lot of different software on it and while it took most of it, there was some stuff that was simply not compatible with Win7. A prime example was a cheap digital TV tuner that worked great on XP but not on Win7.
I bought a cheap 500g HDD, removed the original drive and replaced it with the new 500g. I then formatted it and ran the XP installation disc from my external dvd drive and loaded up the OS. Once this done I loaded the chipset driver but when I restarted the netbook it promptly flashed me the blue screen of death before going into a cycle of BSOD-restart, BSOD-restart etc.
I reformatted the drive, reloaded XP and then tried to load other drives like the graphics (while everthing on the screen fit the screen, it was all short and fat) and audio drivers which, as stated, failed to load as they kept stating that certain .dll files were missing. I don’t know if this was because I decided against loading the chipset driver since I had problems earlier, either way I gave up in disgust and decided to load Win7 (onto the new 500g HDD, not the old original drive which is still sitting in a draw since I originally removed it) and thus began the problem with the netbook not recognising the drive.
As for your suggestion of doing a fresh install as apposed to an upgrade, I couldn’t agree with you more and it is a rule I live by.
 
Here some requesments your computer needs to have


• A netbook (Minimum 1GB of RAM, 8GB storage space)
• A 4GB or larger USB drive
• A Windows 7 RC Image (details below)
• A Windows XP/Vista PC or a Mac to prepare the flash drive
• For low-end netbooks, lots (and lots) of time
 
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