"Red Dot of Death"

[d3athstarr]

Alright so I built myself a new computer to upgrade from XP to 7, but I started from scratch with the following:

MSI P67A-GD65 B3
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3Ghz w/ Turbo Boost
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superclocked
G.SKILL Ripjaws 4GB 1600 DDR3
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB HDD

I installed all of the parts into my new tower, checked all of the connections and booted it up for the first time and it went right to BIOS with no issues. I continued to follow the instructions in the MOBO manual and set BIOS to run the optimized defaults, save & reset. After that I put in the drivers and utilities disc which contains "Winki III" which is MSI's version of Linux, but I didn't want to install that on my computer so I opted to go right to Windows 7 (remember I have NO OS on my computer yet).

Windows 7 successfully gets to the Activation screen and when I type in my product key it says that it is invalid. I called Microsoft to find out that my product and/or product key is for an upgrade disc. When I pop the disc out I take a look at it and what do you know, they're right.

Now I cannot get anything to install on my computer, whether it's Winki III or Windows XP (Also unfortunately and upgrade disc ) or Windows 7. Even after I tried to do a custom install which is a "clean full install" according to Microsoft.

Here's where I need help. My roommate tried to help me out so we put my HDD into his computer and tried to do the clean install of Windows 7, and by his dumb luck, without entering an activation code, he go Windows 7 to work, but with his components, not mine. And now whenever it goes back into my computer I get a BIOS error on start-up that says "No Hard Disk Drive Detected" and it continues to boot up until the "Starting Windows" screen it hangs on the first red dot and that's it.

I need help, because it won't allow me to run Seagate's Disk Wizard or a DOS Boot Disk so I can update my BIOS, I can try to do a full reformat and hope for the best, but I'm out of ideas and ready to bite the bullet and buy a full install of Windows 7.

 

[hang-the-9]

What you tried with installing in another computer then moving the drive over, not a good idea. This will work well only if the hardware is very similar, at least the motherboard is. If you have a valid XP license for the computer (which it sounds like you don't unless you have a retail XP version for an old PC that you no longer use), you should be able to do the upgrade setup though. Take a look here http://news.cnet.com/windows-7-upgrade-dos-and-don-ts

If you don't have a legal old OS version, you need to get a full or at least OEM Windows 7 copy. Which sounds like what yo uneed to do.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Since you already have XP, I recommend Option 4 - double install method.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

 

[martamarta]

Hi there, Speaking of death prediction, I find it really odd that one of the on-line death prediction services showed me the same death date that I was foretold in my dream about a year ago. http://yourdeathdate.info/1/index.html - I can’t explain this coincidence in any other way except that there must be some kind of magic involved here.

 

[d3athstarr]

I'm still having issues. I used my Seagate Disk Wizard and did a full wipe and reformat of my HDD, so there should have been absolutely nothing on it. I put it back into my computer after that and booted it up. Right off the bat it tells me that there's "No HDD Detected," but when I went into BIOS it was there. So I rebooted it and let it run through BIOS and I got to a black screen that said to "Insert Boot Manager" blah blah, but when I put in my Windows 7 CD to try for a "clean" installation it brought up the white bars telling me that Windows was loading files. Once it finished loading files it didn't bring me to the installation screen it brought me right back to where I was, the "Starting Windows" screen and all that loads is the one "red dot" and then it hangs there and I have to power down my computer.

I changed my boot order and tried to just boot from the HDD, then from the DVD Drive, and now I'm just getting stuck at a black screen with a flashing cursor. It's not asking for boot media, it's not doing anything, but if I boot from the DVD Drive it will do the same as mentioned before, load Windows files, then freeze at the "Starting Windows" screen.

I'm pretty much out of ideas now. And the Winki 3 Linux system that came on my Drivers & Utilities CD with my P67 mobo won't install either. It brings me to a screen asking if I want to run "Winki from the installer" and when I click that the screen just goes black and nothing happens.

I basically can't run anything, either Windows hangs, or my other CD's start then go to a blank black screen.

Any ideas? I'll give a full list of my parts, maybe there's a conflict?

 

[hang-the-9]

When you see that black screen with the cursor it means that it's hitting the drive but is going to a non-boot partition. I have seen this happen when we get brand new drives from companies that don't have a partition at all on them, and then people try to run a setup on it. What happens is that a small partition gets created or space is left on the disk that is not partitioned, and the system hits that to boot from, which causes it to go to this flasing cursor. This can also be caused by a bad boot sector.

There is a chance your disk is bad, do you have a second hard-drive to play around with? Also see if you can load up a Live Linux disk and see what partitions it sees on your disk. I'm thinking you will see 2 of them, or at least a partition and some MB that is unassigned. You need to make sure when you run the setup to the drive that it fully formats the drive. Also, if you are getting stuck at the Windows logo after it loads the files, I have seen this happen twice, both times it needed a motherboard replacement after doing full scans of the system with a utility (RAM was OK, drive was OK, all components tested OK).

 

[d3athstarr]

I finally got Windows 7 to load to the install screen and my computer has been running fine for 2 days now. The only issue I'm still having is with my front panel power button, if I hold it down the computer turns off for about 3 seconds and then turns itself back on instead of powering down completely. Could this be a short, or a BIOS option that I need to change?

 

[Hawkeye22]

I beleive that is a bios option. It usually listed as soft reset or hard reset or something like that.